Peter Wiltshire joins finance startup
Former Nine Entertainment Co chief revenue officer Peter Wiltshire has resurfaced on the advisory board of financial advice startup Echofied. Wiltshire left Nine earlier this year and replaced by Michael Stephenson.
Wiltshire had been at Nine for 10 years and upon his departure said he would take a break after 27 years in the industry.
Echofied is a B2C business that started in January this year. Headed by Paul Ryan, co-founder of Wizard Home Loans, it offers online and banking advice, financial planning, real estate, superannuation, personal finance and legal.
Henry Tajer says media reforms too ‘conservative’
IPG Mediabrands global chief executive Henry Tajer has declared proposed reform changes “conservative”, stating the government needs to be more ambitious with its deregulation agenda to allow the sector to grow.
Tajer, who moved from the Australian office to IPG Mediabrands global HQ in New York last year, told Fairfax Media that one of the biggest issues in this market is having too many “mouths to feed”.
“There are just too many operators. That means there are a lot of mouths to feed and consumers and consuming at their will," Tajer said.
He believes the government should go beyond removing the reach rule that prevents networks from broadcasting to more than 75% of the population and the two-out-of-three-rule, preventing media companies from owning a TV network, newspaper and radio station.
"There are global players now operating in local markets, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat ... that's just the big platforms that we know ... over the next five years there will be two more platforms that will be created by some smart people somewhere, hopefully in Australia, that will change the dynamics of the market place and the government needs to be thinking about those in terms of how you regulate and legislate."
Tajer said a consolidated market would give media companies better capacity to invest in growth.
Could TV ad-spending be getting a revival?
It’s no secret TV has been challenged by the SVODs and YouTubes of the world, but that could be set to change, with the three main commercial broadcasters poised for a strong performance in 2017, The Australian reports.
Seven, Nine and Ten have begun talks over annual agency volume deals for next year with four of the big media agency holding groups - IPG Mediabrands, Dentsu Aegis, Vivaki and Omnicom Media Group.
Earlier estimates suggest deals could increase in the low-single digit range as networks present their plans and advertising strategies. The move follows big brands, such as Procter & Gamble, shifting back to TV after being disappointing by digital results.
The chief executive of new marketing and research body Think TV Kim Portrate said TV ad spending was showing signs of a revival. “In conversations I’m having with people, there is a more much receptive view to the power ¬television offers advertisers,” she said.
Dentsu boss says Facebook, Google duopoly will burst start-up bubble
A technology bubble burst is coming, warns Dentsu Aegis boss Simon Ryan. He has expressed concern the online advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook will halt start-up investment as more money will shift towards the digital giants poised to earn 85 cents of every new ad dollar in 2017.
Ryan believes that start-up investments are cooling off because they have failed to “grasp the power of global media giants”. In an interview with The Australian, he said Facebook and Google's dominance will result in another 'dotcom' bust, as investors pull ouf of advertising-driven start-ups.
“We are now evolving into a space of a post digital start-up age; the race for scale will soon be over,” he said.
“Digital start-ups are often vying for only the 20 per cent growth of the digital spend that is not fed into the global media companies.”
21st Century Fox sues Netflix
21st Century Fox filed a lawsuit against Netflix over the weekend, accusing the SVOD service of illegally hiring two of its executives who were under contract.
The suit, filed in California Superior Court in Los Angeles, alleges Netflix has run a “brazen campaign to unlawfully target, recruit and poach Fox executives by illegally inducing them to break their employment contracts to work at Netflix, according to The Australian.
In both cases, Fox said it warned Netflix that it was illegally tampering with executives under contract, but the streaming company went ahead and hired the pair and indemnified them against potential charges of breach of contract, according to the suit. Fox is seeking a permanent injunction prohibiting Netflix from interfering with executives under contract as well as compensatory and punitive damages.
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