Nine’s acting CEO Matt Stanton is cautiously optimistic about Nine’s results in the next quarter.
He told B&T that buoyant TV audiences, strong programmatic trading and growth in categories such as insurance, white goods and politics will deliver high single digit growth in Q3 and that Nine has its sights set on the rapidly growing digital video advertising market.
“I don’t want to call this reversal (of TV’s recent ad revenue decline) because it is early to say, but the market feels a bit better to us,” Stanton said moments after revealing that Nine had grown its Total TV revenue by 2 per cent in the first half of FY2025.
“I think what is really good is that our audiences are very strong and we are getting a bit of reward for that.”
The audiences Stanton refers to include the Australian Open, which was up by 5 per cent on 2024 and MAFS, which has grown its audience a staggering 23 per cent year on year.
The categories that are growing their spend include insurance, white goods, government spending (ahead of the election), political campaigns including Clive Palmer, while retail spend – which declined in 2025 – has remained steady this year.
“Finance and insurance is a good area for us,” Stanton said. “What we are seeing from advertisers is that they are getting good response from advertising with us, the power of TV is really working for them, they’re coming back again for more.”
Nine’s largest area of revenue half-yearly growth came from its BVOD, 9Now, which grew by 28 per cent ($26.4 million) as broadcast TV revenues declined 3 per cent ($15.6 million).
This means that BVOD revenue accounted for 20 per cent of Total TV, which is up from nearly 16 per cent in FY24 and 9 per cent five years ago (see chart below).
“If you’ve got sort of 10-15 per cent growth in BVOD now, and it’s getting to a good scale, and then you’ve got broadcast TV revenue that is either flat or a little bit down, you are going to get stabilisation of TV revenue,” Stanton said.
“That’s the inflection point that we’ve always talked about…but I don’t want to call it too early. Quarter three is going good but quarter four might come off a bit, it’s too early to call. However if you look at the longer term trend, then it feels like we are on track.”
Stanton realises that growing BVOD audiences and revenue capture is critical for future success, and he no longer views traditional rivals Seven and Ten as Nine’s main competitors.
It is the streamers, including the likes of Kayo, BINGE and global rivals YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and new entrants that Nine must now compete with for a slice of the rapidly growing digital video market.
Just this week, IAB Australia and PwC revealed that digital video investment has grown by 20 per cent to $4.5 billion, and some of this money is coming out of broadcast linear budgets.
“We don’t really view it as BVOD, but rather we are targeting the digital video market. We have obviously announced ads on Stan Sport and we will look to talk to other players for scale and to collaborate,” he said.
“Our horizons are a lot bigger than before.”
