Automotive advertising in Australia rose by almost $47 million in the 2017 financial year as part of a record total ad market spend of $7.1 billion.

Figures released by Standard Media Index (SMI) reveals that Automotive is the largest product category in the ad market, responsible for 11 per cent of all advertising.

SMI Australia/New Zealand Managing Director, Jane Schulze, said the main outlet for the increased automotive spend was outdoor media, up 6 per cent to $9.7 million. Radio only saw a slight increase of 1 per cent, while auto brand advertisers reduced their ad spend in newspapers and magazines (excluding digital in both cases).

“The large increase in advertising investment by automotive brands could be the result of Holden’s and Toyota’s decision to end car manufacturing in Australia, which is seeing a lot of that spend being redirected into marketing,” Ms Schulze said.

The Retail category was the only sector to show greater growth than Automotive, with its total ad spend up $90.1 million to provide 9% of all advertising this financial year.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest fall in ad spend was recorded by the Government category following the huge spike in ad spend due to the federal election last year.

The Food/Produce/Dairy and Media categories also declined in ad spend.

Australia’s ad market had its fifth consecutive record financial year ad spend in 2016/17. The SMI 2017 data also showed the fastest growing media sectors compared to the previous corresponding period.

Digital programmatic exchanges recorded the biggest increase in ad spend of all sectors, jumping 67.3 per cent to $338 million, followed by social sites up 20.8 per cent to $229 million and posters/billboards up 18 per cent to $338 million.