After June saw the first Canadian ad spending dip in more than a year, July is looking equally soft.

Standard Media Index (SMI) tracking found that cross-media ad investment declined by 17% year-over-year, though the company said this “was to be expected” due to the comparison to July 2021, which included the Tokyo Summer Olympics and a later-than-usual NBA Final.

However, when SMI excluded ad dollars related to sports, spending was still down by 11%.

In addition, digital investment was down 10% year-over-year.

Not all was gloomy, however. There were some increases when compared to last year, such as pure play video (35%), digital print (17%) and digital audio (17%).

Meanwhile, linear TV held a 29% share of total cross-media spend in July, a three-point decline from July 2021.

Darrick Li, managing director for Canada at SMI, previously told MiC after June’s dip that July would also be another tricky month for ad spend, but that things should pick up for the rest of the year.

“The second half of the year is heavier on ad spending likely due to back to school and the holiday season,” Li had said. “July may be another softer month but the rest of the year will be stronger.”

When looking at both cross-media and digital spend, CPG, automotive, and financial services took the top-three spending spots in July 2022. However, automotive was not included in the top three when it comes to linear TV, as supply chain issues caused the sector to move money away from linear channels.

In linear TV, the top three spenders in July were CPG, restaurants and financial services. Despite this development, CPG’s cross-media volume was down 11% versus last year, while automotive was the second-largest spending category in cross-media and digital. The sector was still down, however, by 22% cross-media and 14% in digital.

Restaurants was the second-largest spending category in linear TV with July 2022 investment flat to July 2021 levels. Restaurants held a 13% share of TV spend, a three-point increase versus last year.