Southern Cross Austereo, Rubicon Project and TVN (LiveRail’s reseller in Asia Pacific) have announced a new digital partnership that will allow advertisers to trade programmatically with one of Australia’s fastest growing digital publishers.
The partnership will see the establishment of a private marketplace allowing brands to connect programmatically with premiumnational, local and metropolitan audiences across Southern Cross Austereo’s (SCA) desktop and mobile network of 100+ sports, entertainment and music-based digital properties.
The announcement marks SCA’s commitment to improving the way advertising partners connect with audiences across its radio, TV and digital media properties.
Having increased its daily online traffic by 671% over the last 19 months, SCA is currently Australia’s 14th largest tagged publisher across all devices and the 7th largest publisher on mobile. The momentum is driven by the company’s market-leading social communities and aggressive content focus on sports and entertainment.
SCA’s highly engaged, always-on mobile and social audiences are seamlessly integrating SCA content into their day anytime, anywhere. According to Nielsen Online Ratings for August 2014, SCA is Australia’s largest online commercial radio group with average daily traffic more than double that of its closest radio competitor.
Southern Cross Austereo is also Australia’s most mobile-optimized online publisher, achieving over 76% of its daily traffic from mobile devices. Video content, particularly on mobile, is an important focus for SCA in light of its audience penetration across mobile devices.
James Bayes, SCA digital sales and operations director said: “We’ve executed a sports and entertainment-led strategy that’s delivered incredible digital audience growth in the past 18 months. Our commitment to our clients is to consistently push boundaries to drive improved results for their marketing investment. Coupling our digital scale in sport and entertainment and rapidly improving audience data and insight, we’re really pleased to work with Rubicon and TVN to give our partners a new way connect with our highly engaged audience.”
Chris Waterman, sales director APAC at Rubicon Project said: “Rubicon Project is excited to work with Southern Cross Austereo, one of the leading entertainment publishers in Australia. Their audience growth in the past 18 months is impressive and the team have a strong vision for transforming the digital business. We look forward to working with their team to help develop their cross-platform automation strategy, and further enhance their offering to advertisers in market.”
Peter Ostick, managing director at TVN said: “TVN is thrilled to partner with Southern Cross Austereo. SCA’s audience is on the go, consuming audio and video content across multiple devices and opening up a plethora of opportunities for marketers to engage. Video advertising around streaming audio is an exciting evolution in radio, and by conducting the sale of this ad space programmatically, SCA is leading the space. We look forward to working closely with SCA in maximising these opportunities through our market-leading video monetisation platform.”