Media buyers and a senior marketer welcome Nine’s focus on outcomes and effectiveness with one industry leader proclaiming ‘media metrics are dead’. However, the heavy focus on data and tech overshadowed content announcements, with one industry leader wanting to see more show business on stage.
Nine’s core message at this year’s Upfront event in Sydney’s Carriageworks is that it is a multimedia company that wants to be marked by outcomes and effectiveness, not solely on audience.
On that front, the message has clearly landed with industry leaders speaking to B&T at the event.
Melissa Fein, Accenture Song APAC managing director of media, said Nine’s shift to focus on outcomes rather than audience puts them in a much better position to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and other global streamers in the battle for video advertising dollars.
“I believe that media metrics are effectively dead in their current format. So when media owners talk too much about audience growth, there’s death because there are multiple ways we can cut and benchmark audience growth,” she said.
“I don’t believe that working in old school sort of media metrics does these guys any favours…but their announcement at the end puts Nine exactly in the position that they need to be; talking about outcomes based modelling versus audience rate, reach and audience media metrics.
“That’s what it takes to have table stakes when we’re recommending large investments of spend to clients. If we’re recommending it based off media metrics, we’re not going to win that battle anymore.”
Jonathan Kerr, the chief growth officer of Budget Direct’s parent company Auto & General, said the shift to outcomes would be compelling to advertisers.
“I can’t believe any business would not be attracted by an outcome based model. So anything that makes it easier to pull that together is good news,” he said.
“I’m really excited about them thinking about how they can converge the channels to create a bigger environment for us to work in.”
Kerr said that he wants to see TV audiences grow again “and not just give in”. Proving TV’s ROI in a challenging market could give Nine the leg up it needs under growing competition from global streaming giants.
“I’m hoping they create an environment where they can grow and reinvest in new programming…rather than just kind of giving in to shrinkage.”
‘A disrupter tone’
Omnicom Media Group chief investment officer Kristiaan Kroon told B&T that he believes Nine is set to be a market disrupter in 2025, which is unusual for a large legacy TV business. He said that CMO Liana Dubois clearly landed the message that Nine’s audiences are not only growing, but skew younger than is sometimes perceived. He said that sales boss Michael Stephenson signalled Nine’s intention to take on global digital rivals.
“I thought there was a theme of transparency and measurement and being far more provocative around the impacts of total TV, and how this compares to the transparency, or lack of it in parts of the digital supply chain,” he said. “I liked the themes they were landing. They sounded to me like a business that’s going to disrupt the status quo, and I think Nine will be one to watch in 2025.”
At a media briefing earlier this week, Nine said it has actually grown its Total TV audience in the past year, but clearly that message isn’t finding traction in the market.
Georga Payne, the chief investment officer at Woolworths@Dentsu Australia, said Nine’s plans to prove TV’s effectiveness could be valuable in a “tough market where everyone is chasing growth”.
“Where there are clients who don’t have budgets for that sophisticated type of modelling, this should help support the case for TV effectiveness,” she said.
For industry veteran, Mike Wilson, the chair of indie media agency Hatched, the focus on outcomes is long overdue.
“Coming from the agency side, a large amount of our conversations over a long period of time with our client base has been about focusing on outcomes as opposed to outputs, and it was very squarely acknowledged by nine’s leadership today,” he said. That’s very, very welcome but the proof, of course, will be in the pudding.”
Where’s the glitz & glamour?
Pudding – in this reporter’s case some fancy-named brownie – capped off a lavish three-course meal in a crowded and blue-hued Sydney’s Carriageworks yesterday.
The event was attended by around 1,200 people; a who’s who of the advertising industry, including media agency chiefs, buyers, senior marketers and more.
And it wasn’t just the mouthwatering slow-cooked lamb main course that guests were feasting on.
Nine packed in a lot of announcements in a relatively short space of time. The major one landed, but others didn’t quite stick.
“There was such a strong emphasis on the data and authentication of data sources that it almost felt like it overshadowed any content that was presented,” Wilson said.
“So I would have liked to have seen more content shown. But perhaps that raises the question then about what the breadth of the new content site is.”
That said, Wilson is looking forward to watching Golden Bachelor and seeing Nine’s spin on a “proven format” that was axed by Channel 10 this year.
Dentsu’s Payne believes Nine’s new gameshow The Floor could prove to be a hit, while Budge Direct’s Kerr is a Married First Sight kinda guy.
Fein felt the lack of TV programming talk was a missed opportunity and that she would have liked to hear from Nine’s programming lead.
“Nine is one of the biggest media organisations in the country. It still has a bit of glitz and glamor,”
“It’s always great to come to an upfront where they still hero the content. They’re still investing in big, premium quality formats that the crowds can laugh at. Emotion still plays a big way on how you decide to engage with an audience.
“There was a lot of talent throughout the room, but to not see any talent up on stage was a bit remiss.”
Stan ads: ‘Bite the bullet’
Running ads on Stan Sport appeared to be a “no brainer” for media buyers in the room, although one agency chief privately questioned whether Stan Sport subscribers would be happy to see ads running on the more expensive Stan subscription tier, while the cheaper Stan subscription remains ad-free.
Budget Direct’s Kerr would like Nine to “bite the bullet and create an advertising tier across all of Stan”.
“I think that the public understands the concept. And they do talk about total television, and that’s the experience that people are consuming now. So my dream scenario is all the walls come down, and we could get all of the different channels together in one single system, so I can understand true reach and frequency and all of those things.”
In fact, Kerr wants Nine to go a step further and make it easier for advertisers to buy content across Nine, Seven, Paramount and SBS.
“VOZ was a good move, but they just got to knock down the rest of the walls and say, ‘we’re either going to all grow and survive together or we’re going to probably be challenged.
“There are some green shoots there, but I would like us to kind of just jump another five years forward quickly while there’s still time.”
Accenture Song’s Fein said she was expecting to hear more about VOZ, which was largely absent from Nine’s presentation.
“It’s been front and centre for the last few years of promise, and it still doesn’t feel like it’s being delivered. We had the Foxtel upfront that stepped outside those boundaries last week. And we’re just trying to understand how that actually comes back together.
She continued: “They’re creating their own ecosystem under Galaxy, but as a buyer, we still need a unified buying platform and a measurement platform.
“That is still going to be critical over the next two to three years, how do we see that total TV viewing and a unified audience.”
That might sound like a pipe dream for now, but Nine’s shift to outcomes is a good start. Over to you SBS and Seven.