Canadian cross-media ad investment declined by 9% year-over-year in August, making it the third month of 2022 where investment was down compared to 2021.

This is according to Standard Media Index (SMI)’s latest ad spend numbers. The organization attributed the decline partly to a comparison to a 2021 period that included a heavy Olympic investment. However, excluding Olympic investment, spending is still down 6% year-over-year.

On the bright side, when compared to the same period in 2019, Q3 investment is up 6% so far.

August also saw less investment in TV network digital (55%), digital print (33%), and pure play digital content (17%), leading to overall digital investment being down 4% year-over-year. The month did, however, see gains in pure play video (18%) and search (12%), while social and digital audio investment remained relatively flat at +2% and +1%, respectively. Digital’s share of spending also increased by three points, representing 61% of total spending.

Linear television ad spend was down 23% compared to August 2021 and held a 27% share of total cross-media spend, a four-point decline. However, when excluding Olympic programming, that amount was only down 15%.

OOH also had a big gain, with spending up 22% year-over-year. Print did not fare as well, with spending down 30%.

Looking at advertiser categories, the top three spots in cross-media spend were taken by CPG, automotive and financial services; however, CPG had a year-over-year decline of 3% and automotive declined by 6%, while financial services spending grew by 6%. These gains in the last sector were driven by insurance (67%) and credit cards (5%), offsetting a 4% decline in banking and investments.

The only other category group to see increased investment compared to August 2021 was fashion, with spend up 11%. That was driven by accessories, which were up 45%, more than making up for apparel being down 4%.

“Despite only two of twelve product category groups finishing August 2022 in a year-over-year growth position, nine category groups invested more in August 2022 than they did in pre-pandemic 2019,” SMI’s report also pointed out. These groups also included tech (up 51%), wellness (39%), restaurants (19%), retail (8%) and travel services (4%).