The early stages of the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the TV industry. For Nine it meant an abrupt suspension of the NRL season and road bumps in filming for some of its top shows.
But chief sales officer Michael Stephenson says the network’s ability to deliver strong content and green shoots in the ad market leave him cautiously optimistic about the rest of the year.
Starting off the year with the Australian Open, which delivered a peak audience of 2.4 million national viewers, Married at First Sight, Lego Masters and The Voice, Nine continued to hold the largest audience share for the first half of the year, capturing 27.83% of viewers, compared to Seven’s 26.5% and Ten’s 18.7%.
The network also held 28.98% of 16-39 year-olds, 30.01% of 25-54 year olds and 30.97% of grocery shoppers with children.
Stephenson says with these audience figures the network has also maintained its leading revenue share so far, and expects that to continue with Nine’s line-up for the rest of 2020 as it weathers the pandemic’s squeeze on the advertising market.
“I think Australia is doing an incredible job of managing the current situation and we are seeing improvements in the advertising market, however there's still a long way to go and the market continues to be very short,” Stephenson tells AdNews.
“But there are a range of advertisers within a range of categories that are looking at opportunities that present themselves and looking at ways to innovate and be different and those advertisers are doing incredibly well through a tough period.
“I do sense things are improving but we should be cautiously optimistic and look to those brands that are being innovative in their advertising, innovative in their marketing and innovative in their own business, because we're seeing the success that they're having.”
Stephenson says there are strength in a short-term market, but he’s also starting to have conversations with agencies and clients that are more strategic and longer term.
“They're thinking about the lead up into Christmas and the beginning of next year, so we're well and truly having conversations about that sort of mid to long term but we also have one eye on what's happening tomorrow and they're lots of opportunities for brands to be flexible and nimble and to adjust if opportunities present themselves,” he says.
The various restrictions in place to curb the spread of coronavirus means categories have significantly pulled back in advertising, particularly travel, retail and automotive.
But Stephenson says other opportunities have opened for the network, highlighting Nick Scali and Harvey Norman as brands that maintained strong spending across TV, radio and print to boost their share of voice in a quiet market, which Stephenson says will boost their share of market when things start to return to normal.
“There've been really interesting emerging categories, such as media and entertainment, technology, home-delivery services, and ecommerce, that we've been able to work and partner with to both protect existing brands and grow new and emerging categories which has allowed us to deliver the revenue outcomes that we have," he says.
Last night the fourth season of Australian Ninja Warrior kicked off, with Aldi, Sanofi and Nutri-Grain as first-time sponsors, and Nine also has The Block still to roll out. Both shows have been rating hits for Nine, pulling in 1.34 million metro viewers and 1.92 million metro viewers, respectively, in their season finales last year.
Additionally, the NRL season, modified due to COVID-19, continues to play out under a new, more “sustainable” deal for the broadcasters.
“It [the NRL] was one of the first sports in the world to return and it felt like it was a bit of a line in the sand moment for Australia. Audiences flocked back to it, it was a sense that things are starting to return to normal and the audience delivery from that point has been really consistent and inline with where we were last year so we're really happy with that,” Stephenson says.
“From an advertising perspective, there are very few places where you can cut through like you can in live sport and of course that's what the NRL does. All of our major partners and sponsors for the NRL that were there at the beginning of the season returned as soon as they could and they'll obviously get the benefit this year of having three State of Origins in a row in November.
“So, they're all really happy, it's delivering great results for them and the competition is really tight and I think the way in which we produced it, our guys deserve a massive amount of credit.”
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