TV ad market lifted by election

ADVERTISING from the marriage equality debate and the Queensland election has breathed some life back into the TV advertising market, but the headwinds haven’t disappeared, a leading analyst says.

Morningstar analyst Brian Han says free-to-air ad revenue increased across the board in the six months to December, thanks to the contribution of several one-off events.

He expects the current half to be similar, with the Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games set to give broadcasters an earnings lift in the months ahead.

But Mr Han said yesterday that the modest ad market improvement would not last long and ongoing cost pressures from digital media competition and new shows would continue to hurt the Australian TV industry.

“I think generally it will still be a pretty challenging set of results for everybody,” Mr Han said, speaking ahead of the first-half corporate results season next month. The headwinds would persist because “obviously we have eyeballs migrating to digital media”.

Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media are both slated to release financial results next month, while Ten Network ended its near-two decade spell as a publicly listed company last year.

In November, Seven announced plans to trim its expense bill by $25 million a year.