Nine’s self-serve SMB ad platform, Nine Ad Manager, will introduce the ability for advertisers to buy Nine display advertising, search and social media inventory, providing a one stop shop for Australia’s 2.2 million SMEs.
In its first year, 4,000 small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) used Nine Ad Manager, a self-service platform that allows businesses to create and run TV ads on 9Now for as little as $550.
The aim of Nine Ad Manager is to tap into the SMB market, including businesses that operate in regional areas and don’t have large advertising budgets, opening up 2.2 million businesses that are usually priced out of the TV market.
Nine will introduce the ability for advertisers to buy Nine display advertising, search and social media inventory creating a one stop shop for Australia’s SMEs.
This means Australian small businesses will be able to add display advertising across Nine’s digital network, from 9Honey to nine.com.au and across mastheads like The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review to their 9Now video campaigns using Nine Ad Manager.
Search and social media inventory will be able to be bought using the Nine Ad Manager platform, creating the first one-stop-shop for Australian small businesses to reach their audiences at scale. Nine Ad Manager will be the only place Australian companies will be able to combine search and social media with the power of television.
“With our ability to precisely target audiences using age and sex demographics, postcode and Nine’s 9Tribes audience segments, Nine Ad manager is an all-in-one self-service ad platform that unlocks the power of streaming TV advertising for small and medium size businesses to connect with local customers in a safe, premium environment on the largest and most powerful screen in the home,” Nine’s Commercial Director – Digital, Nick Young, said.
“Around 98 per cent of clients that use Ad Manager are a new client, it’s been hugely successful.”
Young told a media briefing that most advertisers who used the platform returned, but wouldn’t reveal the return rate.
He also revealed that less than 20 per cent of advertisers used Ad Manager’s AI technology to create bespoke ads, which indicates that brands are using agency partners or assets from other channels on the TV platform.
Finding new SMBs
Nine’s chief sales officer Michael Stephenson views Ad Manager as a “huge opportunity” with a 2.2 million-sized market that Nine has only begun scraping the surface. He told B&T the product has already shown strong traction with clients, growth and advertising revenue in its first year.
He described it as “a start-up” within the Nine ecosystem that will continue to evolve, and Nine is launching an ad campaign to promote it to channels where SMEs show up.
“We’ve got our own advertising budget and we are advertising on search, social, including TikTok and other areas where SMBs will be based,” Stephenson said.
“We are also advertising across all of our owned assets and partnering with awards programs that target SMBs.”
Nine Ad Manager is also a sponsor of Football NSW (pictured above on the banner), so we are looking to tap into grassroots engagement with the SMB community.
“There is no silver bullet that says there’s one way to do this. It’s a combination of a whole range of engagement tactics. But the opportunity is massive, the growth rate and advertising revenue has been incredible, and now it’s Australia’s only one-stop shop for SMBs to buy all of their advertising.”
