Government Online Advertising Drops 54%

As we showed you with this months post, internet advertising has boomed in the past year.  However a significant portion of that increase came from the area known as Government/Political advertising.

This year, with the National Government just coming to the end of it’s honeymoon period, we can already see a decline in this category.

The largest contributors to this sector in 2008 (measured in ad impressions) came from the NZ Retirement Commission, NZ Government Energy Efficiency, Land Transport, Inland Revenue and NZ Government Career Services. As well as the majors there were also campaigns for Housing, Sports and Recreation, Families Commission and Social Development.

John Key has been vocal about the previous government’s advertising spending on social programmes (see Kiwiblog for a comment on this).

It should come as no surprise then to see that the volume of government/political advertising from January to March is down 54% on the same time last year (or should that be, same time last Government).