Australian print advertising revenue for 2016 dropped to its lowest recorded point, according to newly released data.

Both magazines and newspaper ad spend suffered severe drops. According to Standard Media Index (SMI), consumer magazine advertising revenues dropped 18 per cent from 2015 levels, while newspaper advertising revenues also felt the squeeze. Magazines inserted into newspapers mimicked consumer magazines, with a drop of 18 per cent.

Metropolitan newspapers slumped by 14 per cent, Community newspapers fell by 8 per cent, regional newspapers held strongest with a drop of 5 per cent.

The past year has been marked by multiple consumer magazine closures as the tightening ad spend hit hard with once popular mass market titles such as Cleo, Dolly and K-Zone among the many that closed.

The data from Standard Media Index shows actual agency spend on the printed version of newspapers fell 12.1 per cent from 2015 to $503.7m.

Standard Media Index compiles data on 75 per cent of all advertising agency spending.

Jane Schulze, managing director, SMI AU, cautioned that these numbers do not fully reflect news media advertising figures. The decline in print advertising revenue from news media is balanced by an additional $200m of agency spending towards news media websites in 2016.

"Reporting only print figures in such a siloed way is very much a 1990s view of the news media industry, and certainly not the way the publishers themselves nor especially the media agencies view the media,’’ Schulze says.

“Australia’s news media publishers have led the way in terms of monetising their traditional content online to the extent that now more than 30 per cent of total new media agency revenues are digital. No other media comes close to replicating that achievement.”

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