Australia's agency advertising spend fell only 4.8 per cent in October, prompting Standard Media Index to pronounce that it was "well and truly leaving the COVID crisis behind".

Driving the optimism was the impact of AFL and NRL grand finals on TV bookings, where the spend on metro TV was up 15.7 per cent year-on-year.

SMI figures put digital advertising down by only 0.4 per cent, but newspapers - down by 25.4 per cent - suffered the third-largest fall.

Social media was the biggest winner, with overall growth at 45.5 per cent, and major sites all up by at least a third.

There's also optimism for the coming months, with forward placings up for November and December against last year. AUNZ managing director Jane Ractliffe says future demand is "quickly accelerating".

"Our forward pacings data - which compares the current level of confirmed future ad spend to that at the same time last year - shows November advertising demand is already ten percentage points ahead of where it was in November 2019, and for December the level of confirmed ad demand is now 12 percentage points higher, and that increase in demand is the highest ever seen."