Recessionary concerns pulled cross-platform media investment down by 10% last month.

That’s according to December figures from Standard Media Index, compiled based on spending data provided by Canadian media agencies.

A year-over-year decline is not a new occurrence for 2022, as several months featured a “leveling off” of ad spending growth when compared to 2021’s rapid ad spending recovery. However, when compared to December 2020, investment was also down by 3%, the only time in 2020 when monthly spending dipped compared to the first year of the pandemic.

Darrick Li, VP of sales, North America at SMI, says that in addition to recession concerns causing ad-buying hesitancy, he says the drop may have also been the result of previous declines in July (11%) and August (4%) getting advertisers to start talking about how it might impact their planning for the rest of the year

Spending was down 11% in linear TV, 24% in radio and 25% in print last month. That contributed to all three channels being down for the full year as well: 4% in television, 6% in radio and 7% in print.

Li says that the decrease in linear TV is similar to what was seen in the U.S. two to three years ago with a shift to digital video. There’s also been a corresponding increase in connected TV investment as offerings and capabilities in the space have matured – investment is up 60% year-over-year.

“It’s been growing in double and triple digits for some time, so I think this is the start of the hockey stick curve that the U.S. saw two or three years ago,” Li says. Linear TV also maintained a 29% share of total media investment in December, lagging slightly behind the 32% share it registered for both Q4 and the full year.

Li didn’t have a clear explanation for radio’s ad decrease, which should have been on the upswing due to both holiday shopping, travel and working from the office all being fully in play this year.

“Even throughout the pandemic, radio as a medium has been pretty steady,” Li said. “During the December holidays, you definitely have a lot of radio tuning when it comes to Christmas music. But the decrease was unusual to see.” For the full year, radio was also down 5% compared to 2020.

Li said one of the biggest surprises was the 9% hit digital advertising took year-over-year in December, though he pointed to Twitter as one culprit. It was the smallest month of the year in terms of ad investment for the platform, and also the lowest since the start of the pandemic. Spending was down across the social media category overall, but no other platform was close to what Twitter experienced – for example, spending at Meta was down 18%, compared to 62% for Twitter.

“With the concerns that advertisers have around their messages and advertising on specific platforms when it comes to brand safety, I think there was definitely a resounding concern across global markets,” he said.

But given recent headlines about layoffs at ad-supported tech companies, digital has not been immune from old-fashioned recessionary pull-back as well. Search was the only area within digital to see year-over-year growth in December (9%). Though it was down last month, programmatic spend still ended Q4 with 4% growth year-over-year.

Digital also had a 63% share of cross-media spending in December, outpacing its 58% share for Q4 and a 57% share for the full year, showing that spending declines in other categories may be to digital advertising’s benefit.

Another surprising area of concern for Li, given recent initiatives around supporting local media, was that Canadian media companies lost 12% of cross-media advertising spending year-over-year in December, ending 2022 down 4%.

“There’s been a lot of chatter about it in the last year, in particular, but it’s also started to really bubble in the last month or so in Canada,” he said. “It’s almost working backwards: there’s a lot more chatter about it, but we’re not putting the dollars where our mouth is and we’re not actually contributing more investment to the Canadian media owners.”

It’s not all bad news: OOH advertising showed a healthy year-over-year gain of 11% in December, and was up 76% compared to 2020, showing strong recovery from the last two years when people staying home had a major impact on the sector.

“CPG is the big category when it comes to OOH,” Li notes. “And its OOH investment was up 53%, despite being down year-over-year in total cross media.”

Looking at advertiser categories, other strong performers include financial services – up 11%, driven by a 17% increase insurance – and telecommunications, which was up 15% despite technology as a whole being flat.

One surprise performer was entertainment, which was up 17% year-over-year, thanks to advertising around getting people to return to attractions and venues.

One of the weaker categories were household supplies, which was down 32%, but Li says that number is largely due to the prior-year comparison to the pandemic, and the decline reflects “a return to normalization.” And while the automotive sector remained weak as ad pull-back continued during supply chain constraints, Li says there are hints that may be almost over.

“The year was down 11%, but December was up double digits. It’s starting to make a comeback.”