Sydney, Australia – Over the past 90 days, more than 800 influencers have taken to Instagram to share where they stand when it comes to the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, according to AI analytics platform HypeAuditor, who has been analysing how influencers and brands take a stance on social media about the event. 

The past three months have seen 1,773 posts on Instagram about the referendum, shared by a total of 805 influencers, reaching over 4.5 million people. 87.5% of the Instagram posts supported the referendum and only 2.5% were against it. 

Additionally, the report states that 73% of the influencers posting about where they stand when it comes to the Voice to Parliament are nano influencers, with a follower count between 1,000 and 10,000. Common hashtags for posts regarding the referendum are also in favour of it, with the most common being #yes23 in 1,376 posts and #voteyes in 726 posts. 

Alex Frolov, CEO and co-founder of HypeAuditor, said, “The Australian Indigenous Voice referendum will be such a critical point in the country’s history that it is not surprising to see the level of interest it has garnered over social media. While many influencers, brands and organisations might have deliberately chosen to remain silent in this discussion at the beginning, we can clearly see a turning point on social media as voting day approaches and tensions mount.”

“As influencer marketing continues to be a key component of many marketing campaigns across the country, the Voice will no doubt become a criteria brands and marketers will consider when selecting the influencers they want to align themselves with. There is this urge to use their platform to stand up for what they believe in and do what they believe is the right thing, but on the other hand they also run the risk of potentially significantly reducing their future partnership opportunities with brands,” he added.

Sydney, Australia – Following the conclusion of the 2022 Australian federal elections, new data from IAB Australia and PwC reveals the dominance of political and government ad spending in the digital advertising space locally for the first quarter of 2022, reaching a value of $3.449b–an increase of 19.2% on the same period in 2021.

The political and government ad spending scene reached a 13.5% share of the general display market for the quarter, up from 3.9% in Q1 of 2021. By contrast, retail experienced the largest decrease in share, dropping from 16.4% to 13.5% share of general display advertising.

Meanwhile, all general display categories recorded growth on the previous year, with video advertising increasing 24% to reach $715.1m for the quarter, infeed/native by 5% to reach $349.80m, standard display by 11% to reach $167.7m and other advertising by 69% to reach $21.5m.

Lastly, spending on classifieds and search & directories grew quarter on quarter, increasing 4.3% and 3.6% respectively while general display advertising seasonally contracted by 15.1% as it does each year. Interestingly, search & directory spend in the quarter seized share from general display advertising as the recovery of travel accelerates.

Gai Le Roy, CEO of IAB Australia, commented, “The digital ad market saw solid investment growth for the March quarter compared to the previous year with the standard slight seasonal decline from the December quarter. The make-up of the top advertiser categories was greatly disrupted by significant ad spend from the political parties and independents early into the campaign for the Federal Election.”