News Corp gathered the great and the good of adland at Sydney’s ICC yesterday for its latest D_Coded event. It was short, running for just over an hour, with a few announcements—including a new major AVOD deal with Tubi—but a greater focus on the results that News has been able to generate for its clients, with strong case studies.
It’s an approach that, along with the mercifully short run time and timing in March, sets it apart from most other upfronts style shindigs in adland. News also took the chance to reflect on the announcements it’s made at previous D_Coded events, showing a consistent, coherent vision to serve up audiences for advertisers.
Accenture Song ANZ managing director of media Sam Geer said the event was a good balance of the new shiny, while providing insight into what has worked in the past.
“I thought they did a really good job, which not a lot of media owners do in these contexts, which is get clients involved and actually talk about how the products that they’re launching or that they’ve already got work in reality,” he said.
Melissa Fein, who is also an MD of Accenture Song’s media arm, loved the look and feel of the presentation.
“It’s such a fresh look. And it is wonderful to see the executives bringing a sort of a new colourful spirit and a bit more of a relaxed energy,” she said. “It’s a different look than you usually see from News Corp, and from first impressions, we knew that we’re in for a bit of a different show today.”
Tubi Joins The Fray
Chief among yesterday’s announcements was a new deal with global streamer Tubi. News Corp Australia will sell ads on Tubi. It currently has 1.3 million million monthly active users in Australia, though in its native American it is one of the largest streaming services.
“Welcome to Tubi, the new powerhouse on the big screen. It’s a streaming service that, unapologetically, is built for advertisers,” News Corp’s Lou Barrett told the crowd.
“Advertising on Tubi isn’t an afterthought, it’s the model the platform was designed for. More importantly, it’s the model that viewers want. It’s a win-win situation. Audiences enjoy premium content for free and brands get to connect with engaged viewers in a highly receptive audience.”
News Corp will also be rolling Tubi into its Intent Connect platform, giving media agencies the chance to connect these new AVOD audiences with their existing News buys.
B&T grabbed Omnicom Media Group’s chief operating officer Kristiaan Kroon after the show, who described the play as “interesting”.
“We will have by the end of the half nine advertising-funded available streaming services,” he said.
“I would argue that’s too many in Australia to have that many large-scale competitors. Their price point and scale is another disruptor that goes beyond where Amazon Prime’s put itself. It’s a really interesting one for YouTube to watch, which is not something we’ve said before in that space.
“What is interesting for me is where does Tubi fits in the CTV ecosystem. It will be interesting with the price point that was announced today, whether we start seeing money move from YouTube towards Tubi.”
Accenture Song’s Geer added: “What we’re seeing in market is more and more media owner groups consolidating and bringing that cross platform opportunity to agencies. And I think it’s really important for news to be in that game if they want to be successful in the future. There’s not a lot of big, consolidated players that can actually play there. So the fact they’ve got that box ticked off on the brief, I think, is going to be really important for their growth in 2025.”
Fein said she is “really excited” for News to sell Tubi and that it complements their overall video strategy. However, she raised a question around measurement.
“I think what was interesting is just the little asterisk that was under the screen of Tubi, which is ‘no independent measurement allowed’, she said. “That’s an interesting with the commentary around marking your homework coming up, so I’d be interested to watch and see how they’re sharing those metrics around measurement from Tubi.”
News believes the addition of Tubi rounds out its ability to reach users not only through different channels but also at different times of the day. Put simply, it reckons there’s rarely a time that News’ audiences aren’t engaging.
Jasmine Sparkes, account director at indie agency Multi Media Buying & Planning services, felt that Tubi was “exciting” although she will be waiting to see the proof in the pudding.
“It will be interesting, the numbers aren’t strong yet, three hours of viewing time per month per person is not very long—it’s only one movie. It will be interesting to see once they start putting some amplification behind it how those numbers increase and that’s something we’ll be watching very closely because it definitely does provide a competitor solution in terms of multi-channel including video, like Fairfax is to Nine,” she told B&T after the show.
AI & Intent Connect
Another significant announcement was News adding more AI features to its Intent Connect audience intelligence platform.
News’ Dean La Rosa said that the upgrades would unlock new levels of “precision and personalisation”.
For instance, upgrades to CAI—News’ AI assistant for Intent Connect—has been transformed into a “personal campaign strategist” that can “anticipate your needs and optimise your results,” said La Rosa.
In fact, CAI will now operate “completely autonomously” based on large language models. By 2026, La Rosa, said it “will enable fully bespoke and personalised experiences tailored to every single user”.
“AI in the marketing space is heavily geared to what is the size of the dataset. News Corp can combine the two things,” said Kroon.
“When I talk to people about AI, you have to think about how can it enable us? What’s the opportunity? I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that it doesn’t make us all a bit nervous somewhere, which is what happens with great change.”
Engaged Reach
One of News Corp’s major plays in the past year has been to reframe the value equation of how advertisers get value by reaching audiences on its platforms. It has been vocal in shifting the dialogue from ‘reach’ to ‘engaged reach’.
Cynics might suggest News Corp is gong down this path because audiences are declining, but that is not the case, and anyone who has worked in publishing understands that engaged audiences are far more valuable to advertisers that total audiences.
Engaged reach is a simple equation: page views divided by unique audiences. Media agency leaders agree it is a step forward in working out the value of audiences but would like more details about what it means for advertisers.
Fein told B&T: “Engaged reach is not anything new, but I think the way that they package that today is the truth. So much of how we’re planning and buying media is still about reach, and we need the industry to start shifting the metrics of that buy,” she said. “I’d say today’s messaging around how algorithms interact and engage with us is something we need to recalibrate on and discuss. If we’re connecting with that brand, obviously that leads to intention. So it was a really classy packaging of of that and those metrics.”
“I love bringing in new vernacular like that that can kind of drive the market,” Geer said. “I think one better thing they could have done is to just give that a little bit more quantification. So how is engaged reach talked about they articulated that I’d like a little bit more quantification of that. It was a message they reinforced over and over again. I’ve walked away with it as a key outcome, but I’d love to get a little bit more under the skin of how they’re measuring that and actually productising it.”
Trusted News
News Corp’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, kicked off D_Coded with an overture about the importance of trusted news and media.
“Real journalism is built on a foundation of reliability, responsibility, and in our case, a deep connection with 17 and a half million Australians every month,” he said.
“Australians every month at news, we have an enduring commitment to journalism and trusted media, our values and that commitment will not change.
New Corp’s Client partnerships managing director Lou Barrett said: “Trust us to deliver your message in a grand, safe, effective and impactful way, maximising every dollar invested, driving the outcomes that matter to your brands. A partner with news has never been about chasing fleeting impressions. It’s about fostering genuine engagement that builds lasting relationships.”
Omnicom’s Kristiaan Kroon said: “When Michael stood up, he made the point very clearly. I did wonder how strong a theme that would be in this year’s D_Coded. He made the point, and he made it well but they didn’t labour it. I think the point around principles and purpose for business but then focused on performance which I think was the right plan.”
Sparkes, meanwhile, had a slightly different take on the matter.
“There are certain audiences that will only listen to Australian voices, farmers are specifically that audience and we’ve done a lot of work with farming and agricultural brands and that sentiment towards an Australian voice or an Australian product is very strong,” she said.
Accenture’s Sam Geer wasn’t buying News Corp’s message that its mastheads did not indulge in clickbait.
“I lost a bit of trust in the presentation when they said they didn’t partake in click bait. I wouldn’t say that’s true of News,” Geer said. “But also, I understand it right, and I understand that is the currency of the Australian market,” he said. “So is it more trustworthy than social media? Absolutely.”
Fein believes that News Corp’s positioning as a trusted source of news is smart and part of a broader repositioning of the News Corp brand in recent years.
“We’ve seen such a change of the News Corp brand over the last three years. It wasn’t just today…they’ve really positioned in a smart way around trust,” she said.
Kroon said of the event: “This is the sixth year of D_coded and become a really strong event. I like the fact it’s not at the same time as the other upfronts. And it’s also not all about everything that News Corp wants to do, it’s around how does their digital product deliver outcomes for clients,” he said.
Report by Tom Fogden and Arvind Hickman
