Nine is off to a strong start in 2017 on the back of Married at First Sight which has substantially lifted the media company’s performance across all the demographics in the key 7.30pm timeslot.
Sunday night recorded another bumper audience, with an average of 1.275 million Australians nationally tuning in for the “runaway bride” episode, which brought the total TV audience for Australia’s most talked about social experiment to 8.2 million people across the first seven days of the show.*
In the digital realm, Married at First Sight quickly became the number one program on catch-up TV. It took out the top three spots on OzTAM’s Video Player Measurement (VPM) and drove 9Now to a record in terms of most long-form views in a single day.
When compared to the 7.30pm-9.00pm timeslot on February 1, 2 and 3 last year OzTAM data also shows Married at First Sight had a year-on-year increase in its timeslot audience of 40.9 per cent among 25-54s, 73.5 per cent among 16-39s, 38.0 per cent among grocery buyers and 23.2 per cent in total people.**
“We made the strategic decision to kick off the year with a supersized version of Married at First Sight and the audience response has endorsed that decision,” said Michael Healy, director of television. “Australians have fallen in love with our couples and we are thrilled by the significant lift in audiences in the key 7.30pm timeslot.”
Throughout last week the program was consistently number one in terms of social engagement according to the Nielsen Social Content Ratings, with social media helping drive traffic to key Nine digital properties such as 9Honey, TheFix and 9Now, all of which saw substantial increases in online audiences on the back of Married at First Sight.
Nine also launched the Sweet Spot podcast with Katherine Feeney, a joint project between Married at First Sight and 9Honey that explores the relationship issues raised in the show.
“Great Australian content translates across all platforms and Married at First Sight has given our online properties a strong start to the year,” said Alex Parsons, chief digital and marketing officer.
“We have seen significant boosts in traffic on all these sites, with the likes of 9Now now surpassing the 2.7 million subscriber mark as Australians went in search of more information on the couples and wanted to engage more with their stories.”
“We are focused on delivering growth for our advertisers in every key demographic. This is the thing that is most important to our advertisers and Married at First Sight is delivering growth in the key demographics on-air and is also reaching a highly engaged audience within 9Now”, Michael Stephenson, chief sales officer, said.
“We promised our clients that 2017 would see growth in the demographics that matter and greater consistency within the schedule, we are off to a great start and there is a great slate of locally produced Australian content to come.”
