Seven’s Upfronts: No More Plate Of Origin Or Pooch Perfect, The Olympics Is A Go, Plus An Enhanced Data Play!

Nine and 10 have both revealed what’s in store for 2021, and now it’s Seven’s time to shine as it revealed its content line-up and enhanced data play at today’s virtual upfront event.

The biggest changes appear to be a strengthened first-party data proposition, while in the content arena, poorly-rating Pooch Perfect and Plate of Origin are noticeably absent in 2021’s content line-up.

What else? Here’s everything you need to know. But first, a word from Seven’s execs.

Kurt Burnette, Seven West Media Chief Revenue Officer, said: “2020 has been a year like no other. We’ve all faced challenges like never before, with our content for the year impacted and our partners forced to pivot strategies to capture the attention of audiences in different and agile ways.

“But these challenges have presented us with opportunities to innovate and grow together and deliver great outcomes for our partners. For 2021 and 2022 Seven has strategically created and will deliver the most disruptive content line-up in a decade. Offering brands across Seven, 7plus and 7NEWS.com.au new ways to reach and target new audiences. Along with the most consistent and dominant content spine of Sunrise, The Morning Show, The Chase, 7NEWS and Home and Away. We’re excited about what we’re able to offer to ensure that working together, we can make 2021 and beyond a success as we all embark on the road to recovery.”

Natalie Harvey, Seven Network Sales Director, said: “In 2020, despite the challenges we were able to deliver tangible results for our partners across our content lineup. Whether it was in our prime time tentpoles, in 7NEWS, Sunrise or across sport, our objective is to enable brands to connect with our audience, their customer and always create meaningful outcomes.

“We saw huge growth in sport with the AFL, and 7NEWS and Sunrise proved unmissable in the most newsworthy year of our lifetime, further proof of the power of local news that Australians can trust. With phenomenal growth across 7plus and social, driving more engagement with our content than ever before.

“In 2021 and 2022 we’ll have the freshest and most disruptive shows, and the biggest events on Seven. For the first time in a long time Seven is the challenger brand. For our partners, it will represent a unique proposition to reach their audiences of choice. Seven will be the partner for growth in a year where growth has never been so important, not just in terms of our audience but for clients in every industry, across the whole country. Replicating a year like 2020 is not on our agenda.

“When it comes to planning for audience growth, we are making it easier by supplying predicted ratings across the year to be used for analysis as well as buying. To help to help seamlessly create and deliver campaigns that produce real results, 7RED has proven to be indispensable partner for brands”.

Nicole Bence, Seven Network Digital Sales Director, said: “We’re continually pushing the boundaries to enhance the advertiser experience on 7plus. The combined impact of new ad formats, an improved addressable product suite and a growing schedule of exclusive content makes 7plus not just the natural choice for brands looking to reach audiences on BVOD but also a better destination and experience for audiences. The end result is a more engaged audience, delivering better results against the marketing outcomes we know are most important to you.”

Burnette concluded: “In 2021 and beyond, our objective is to continually deliver the most positively disruptive schedule of fresh and engaging content, providing the very best experience for our audiences and partners.”

New (And Old) content

James Warburton, Seven West Media Managing Director and CEO confirmed Seven would be home to five of the biggest entertainment brands in the world from 2021, including The Voice, Big Brother, Farmer Wants A Wife and Australia’s Got Talent, with another blockbuster title yet to be announced.

Warburton said: “Our new content led strategy of outsourcing proven international formats has delivered this year with an incredible resurgence led by the phenomenal performance of Big Brother and Farmer Wants A Wife.

“Coupled with the return of a sensational AFL season, we’ve led every demographic since June. We’re in front in 25-54’s and lead 16-39s by a massive 5.4 share points. That’s a solid transformation, despite the obvious challenges this year.

“We have shown only glimpses of our best from this year and that’s got us to less than half a point from being the most watched Network in the country. With our multiple global tentpoles in play, our first-class Olympics coverage and winning news and sport schedules, get set to see what we’re really capable of.”

Seven today unveiled almost two years of programming, binding its exclusive tentpole, sport and news content.

It also announced it will be the home to Australian Idol in 2022.

New to Seven in 2021

One of Australia’s most successful and much-loved entertainment brands, The Voice; extreme mini golf program, Holey Moley, a US No.1 hit two years in row and Ultimate Tag, the world’s fastest show which takes the game of tag to a scale never seen before.

In 2021 the Network will launch RFDS, a gripping Australian drama starring Stephen Peacocke, Rob Collins, Emma Hamilton, Justine Clarke and Ash Ricardo, portraying the modern-day heroes of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

New international dramas for 2021 include the true crime event series The Pembrokeshire Murders, detailing the cold-case pursuit of the most notorious serial killer in Welsh history. Award-winning actor David Tennant stars in Around the World in 80 Days, adapted from the Jules Verne beloved classic.

Returning hits

These include the world’s toughest test of celebrities, SAS Australia and feel good fan favourite, The All New Monty. In 2021, Seven will continue to seat audiences front and centre for the biggest entertainment events including all the excitement and glamour of The 93rd Annual Academy Awards.

The 7NEWS team will continue to be led by Mark Ferguson, Mel McLaughlin and David Brown in Sydney; Peter Mitchell, Tim Watson and Jane Bunn in Melbourne; Sharyn Ghidella, Max Futcher, Tony Auden and Shane Webke in Brisbane; Rod Young and Amanda Abate on the Gold Coast; Jane Doyle, Mark Soderstrom and Amelia Mulcahy in Adelaide; and Susannah Carr, Rick Ardon, Basil Zempilas and Samantha Jolly in Perth.

Sunrise returns in 2021 with co-hosts David Koch and Samantha Armytage, newsreader Natalie Barr, sports presenter Mark Beretta, features and entertainment reporter Edwina Bartholomew, and weatherman Sam Mac.

The recently-formed 7NEWS Spotlight division is set to deliver a series of investigative specials in prime-time for Seven in 2021, focusing on major breaking news events as well as long-form investigations of national significance. The Chase Australia will also return, as will Better Homes and Gardens, Home and Away; hit US dramas The Good Doctor, The Rookie, and 9-1-1 and season two of BAFTA award-winning UK drama Manhunt, starring Martin Clunes.

Sport

Starting on the 23rd of July 2021, Tokyo 2020 will redefine how Australians watch sport. The 30 days of the rescheduled Olympic and Paralympic Games are forecast to reach over 21 million Australians, even more than Sydney 2000. Seven’s broadcast coverage on Seven and 7TWO – led by the one and only Bruce McAvaney – will be simulcast in HD on 7plus. On top of this, six bonus curated 24/7 channels and 35 live streams on 7plus will allow Australians to experience the Olympics like never before. 7plus will also offer captioning in multiple languages – an Australian first.

Just seven months later, Seven will broadcast the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, starting on the 4th of February, 2022. Seven will offer Australians a comprehensive, multi-platform experience for Beijing 2022, building on the unprecedented experience set to be delivered during Tokyo 2020.

7AFL’s coverage of the 2021 AFL Premiership Season promises to be captivating viewing from the first bounce in March through to the final siren of the 2021 AFL Grand Final on the last Saturday in September. 7CRICKET returns in 2020-21 for its third summer of cricket, LIVE, FREE and in HD on Seven. It’s set to be a sizzling summer as India return to Australian shores to face a full-strength Australian Test team for the first time since 2014-15, with Steve Smith, David Warner and all of Australia’s superstars set to feature.

The BBL and WBBL will deliver another great season of domestic cricket competition. 7RACING will again have Australia’s very best thoroughbred horse racing covered in 2021. Supercars will also return to Seven. From 2021, Supercars will form a key part of Seven’s leading sports coverage into the future, with six Supercars races broadcast Live and Free on Seven, including the iconic Bathurst 1000, plus the Bathurst 12 Hour race.

The Front Bar, featuring Sam Pang, Mick Molloy and Andy Maher, returns bigger and funnier than ever to cover the 2021 AFL season. Armchair Experts, Seven’s innovate social sports show, continues in 2021 with its AFL and NFL editions.

a new data play – 7REDiQ

Seven also unveiled its data-driven solution for brands to reach their target audiences. Comprised of millions of SWMIDs, Seven’s unique first-party audience identifier, enhanced with extensive second-party data partnerships, will power a new audience insights, activation and measurement solution within 7REDiQ, SWM’s new audience intelligence platform.

7REDiQ will bring brands closer to their desired audiences than ever before. Brands will then be able to leverage this intelligence with 7RED, Seven’s cohesive strategic cross-media unit for brands.

The combined impact of these initiatives will enable brands to better reach their key audiences across SWM’s market-leading content offering and deliver them enhanced results.

Charlotte Valente, SWM Chief Marketing Officer, said: “Being an audience-centric business means that knowing and understanding our audience is key to our success. It’s already driven big decisions, like acquiring The Voice which builds on Australians’ affinity with live music and entertainment. The fused data inside 7REDiQ was key to establishing that audience understanding.

“Leveraging our first-party data around each consumer, a unique SWMID, combined with what our data partners add, offers an unbeatable starting point for your people-based marketing strategies.

“7REDiQ takes that data and offers brands the ability to target exactly the people they want to reach, along with comprehensive audience forecasts and measurements. Best of all, it’s straightforward for brands to take the insights and knowledge 7REDiQ provides and turn that into an actionable campaign with 7RED

“Identify, enrich, fuse, activate and measure – one clear pathway to delivering results for your brand. That’s what Seven can offer you.”

SWMID and data partnerships SWM’s first-party data, anchored by the SWMID, offers brands a comprehensive picture of consumers in the SWM audience universe. It associates not just a consumer’s viewing habits with them, but a collection of other data about them, including location, brand affinities, purchase insights, sentiment and more.

Leveraging a diversity of data points is key to the powering the SWMID, which is why SWM has partnered with leading Australian data and analytics businesses to help provide the most complete picture of each audience member.

These partnerships span a broad range of different data types, enhancing their combined impact for brands that partner with Seven. TEG Analytics’ (TEGA) dataset, powered by over 16 million active Australian ticket buyers, allows insight into consumers entertainment and lifestyle preferences. Building on top of TEGA’s leading dataset is their partnership with flybuys, which through their 8.6 million members enables insights into a consumer’s affinity across food, beverage and CPG categories.

LANDMARKS ID enables SWM to understand the real-world movement of consumers through a comprehensive point of interest network mapped against 350 of Australia’s top brands locations. This provides an expansive set of location-based insights about our consumers. CarsGuide provides insight on auto-intenders, enabling a closer and more strategic targeting of this key, competitive sector, that every year drives billions of dollars in purchases. Combined with LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) to enable cookieless data collection, which SWM is the first media organisation in Australia to implement, the result is a comprehensive and unbeatable picture of audiences, and one that will only get richer as time passes.

SWM will continue to enhance their second-party data partnerships, with more partners to be announced in the coming weeks. 7REDiQ 7REDiQ is SWM’s audience intelligence platform and will prove to be the end-to-end solution for brands as they look to understand and reach their audiences.

It enables brands to fuse their own data with SWM’s first-party and partner data, to activate it across Seven platforms including 7plus and 7NEWS.com.au, and then measure their results. We call this Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) Built to allow Seven to deliver on its goal of being an audience-centric business, 7REDiQ fast-tracks audience understanding across all of SWM’s touchpoints. It enables understanding of who is engaging with Seven’s content and overlays it with lifestyle trends, sentiment, location and purchase insights from Australia’s leading data partners. The result is a comprehensive and actionable picture of the viewer.

Kurt Burnette, SWM Chief Revenue Officer, said: “Data and insights that can be actioned are more important than ever before. For brands to reach their target audiences, it’s crucial that they understand where those audiences are and what drives them.

“The combination of 7REDiQ, SWMID and our data partnerships, all activated by 7RED across our market-leading content offering, delivers an end-to-end solution for brands to plan, buy and measure their way to successful campaigns. “We’ve invested in the infrastructure and partnerships to enable brands to reach exactly their target audiences, enhancing their ability to plan their campaigns, buy in line with their goals, and easily quantify their success.

“7REDiQ visualises audiences, allowing brands to identify them by what and when they watch, read, buy and do, and where they live, work, shop and play. This makes it simple for brands to plan, buy and measure high value audiences and to have an intimate understanding of them, enhancing the effectiveness of their campaigns. Importantly, 7REDiQ allows partners to own the relationship ecosystem with their customers, unlike competing offerings from tech giants. 7REDiQ’s focus is on offering relevant, dynamic, up to the minute audience intelligence that will bring campaigns to life. Brands will be able to easily leverage the new insights offered through 7REDiQ and SWMID by seamlessly engaging with 7RED, Seven’s cohesive strategic cross-media unit. 7RED is responsible for many successful campaigns in 2020 alone and is the best way to integrate with Seven’s market leading content.”

Burnette concluded: “Being able to act on data and insights is key to the success of our business and the success of brands who partner with us. With 7REDiQ’s data partnerships, brands will know how, where and when to reach their target audiences. “Brands can now take those insights and with 7RED, execute a campaign that integrates deeply across our broadcast, BVOD and online. It’s an unmatched, end to end offering for brands, and we can’t wait to work with them on it. “One seamless pathway to success for your brand – all with Seven.”

home of Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022

The Seven Network today announced at its 2021 Upfront presentation that it is the exclusive Australian media rights holder for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, to be held in Beijing, China from 4 – 20 February 2022.

Seven will offer Australians a comprehensive, multi-platform experience for Beijing 2022, building on the experience set to be delivered during Tokyo 2020, in July 2021. This announcement builds on Seven’s long-term partnership with the International Olympic Committee and will mark the third Olympic Games in a row hosted in a favourable time zone for Australia, after PyeongChang 2018 and Tokyo 2020.

James Warburton, Seven West Media Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, said: “We’re thrilled to announce this continuation of our partnership with the International Olympic Committee, to be the home of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. The Olympic Games are part of our DNA at Seven, so we can’t wait to work with our partners at the IOC to deliver another incredible experience for Australian audiences.”

IOC President Thomas Bach said: “The IOC is delighted to announce an extension to our agreement with Seven in Australia. We have a partnership that dates back to the Olympic Games in Melbourne 1956 and Australian sports fans will be able to count on Seven’s sports broadcast expertise and passion for at least another edition of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2022. In addition, as the IOC redistributes over 90 percent of its revenues, the financial support of our long-term commercial partners benefits the athletes, including the Australian Olympic Team for Beijing 2022, and the entire Olympic Movement. This solidarity is more important now than ever.”

Kurt Burnette, Seven West Media Chief Revenue Officer and Director of Olympics, said: “Today’s announcement solidifies Seven as the destination for the biggest events. In the space of seven months, we will be the exclusive broadcaster of Tokyo 2020 and now Beijing 2022. Both events are set to deliver unparalleled audiences, amplified by Beijing 2022 being the third consecutive Olympic Games we’ve broadcast in a favourable time zone for Australian audiences, just two hours’ difference from Australia’s east coast.

“PyeongChang 2018 broke records on broadcast and digital, and we know Beijing 2022 will set new records again.”

Lewis Martin, Managing Director Seven Melbourne and Network Head of Sport, said: “In July next year, we’ll bring Australian audiences Tokyo 2020 with a level of coverage never before available for free in Australia for an Olympic Games. Multiple broadcast channels, dozens of digital streams on 7plus, all available on any device a viewer might chose – it’s going to be an exceptional experience.

“Just seven months later, we’ll build on that coverage with Beijing 2022, giving Australian audiences a new level of coverage for an Olympic Winter Games. We can’t wait.”

Beijing 2022 will also represent an opportunity for brands to connect with audiences at scale, leveraging the massive audiences generated by the Olympic Winter Games to reach niche audiences, at scale. During the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, 16 million broadcast viewers were reached across the screens of Seven.

The Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates says Seven’s exceptional Olympic coverage has given Australia’s Olympic winter sports a significant boost.

“Seven’s coverage of the 2018 Games in PyeongChang set a new benchmark for winter sport in Australia. Our athletes are really looking forward to the Beijing Games in February 2022 and the chance to represent their country before a huge television audience back home. Right now, with 15 months to the Beijing Games, we have Australian athletes preparing themselves in Europe and North America, while our freestyle skiers are currently training at our new Olympic Winter Training Centre in Brisbane.”

Burnette added: “With Tokyo 2020 we’re delivering not just massive audiences, but niche audiences at a scale never before achievable. We’ll do exactly that again just seven months after Tokyo 2020 with Beijing 2022, offering brands a series of opportunities to reach exactly their targets in ways never previously possible. Plus, it’ll enable brands to start their 2022 in a big way with what will be the biggest cultural and sporting event of the year across broadcast and digital. It’s an unbeatable opportunity.”