Nine is betting big on data, technology and measurement heading into 2025, positioning the company as one that's more focused than ever on proving that the ad dollars flowing into the media giant are delivering effective returns on investment.
Chief sales officer Michael Stephenson said clients have always needed to understand the impact that advertising has on their results and the well-known adage of ‘I know my advertising works - I'm just not sure which half of it’ is not going to be good enough for brands in the future.
“It's been a part of our plan for quite some time to prove the efficacy of our platforms with audio and publishing, but in particular right now - total television,” he said.
“The emergence of marketing mix modelling (MMM) and the acceleration from where these technologies were to where they are today has really given us an opportunity to create relationships and to help brands understand the importance of all of our assets in demand generation and real business results.
“If we can prove the direct line between their advertising investment and their outcome, then I expect over time, we will see greater investment into our platforms.”
To support this, Nine Entertainment will be using independent third-party vendors to verify return on investment (ROI) across all its advertising channels, backed by a $30 million investment across the 9Network, 9Now, and Stan Sport.
The relationships include Analytic Partners, Mutinex, Annelect, GroupM, IPG and Publicis Groupe, all aiming to prove the power and efficacy of total television, its role in the marketing ecosystem and the importance of top of the funnel advertising.
Advertising partners will work independently of Nine with their own market mix model and attribution tools to assess the ROI and sales volume generated by campaigns on every media channel.
A collaboration with Adgile will also provide real-time insights into web traffic, app engagement, and share of search, ensuring comprehensive reporting at the campaign level, while a partnership with DataCo will integrate rich consumer profiles based on aggregated category spend via ANZ data.
Stephenson said that more effectively measuring ROI and real-time outcomes for advertisers is something that Nine has been talking about for years, but without tools to effectively measure and prove independently at scale.
“Underlying television is in a very strong space, but we need to prove the efficacy of the results that it delivers for marketers,” he told AdNews.
“Total television audiences are in growth; we reach more people today than we did 10 years ago as a standalone free to air business; we deliver a greater ROI and make every other platform work harder; we're brand and performance; we're premium, safe content; and we deliver 20 times the reach of Netflix and do it six times quicker than YouTube.
“Total television is the high-performance athlete of the advertising world, yet in the last two years, $600 million worth of investment has moved into bottom of the funnel, performance-based channels."
While guideline SMI reported advertising spend down 6.3% for August, Nine achieved a second month of Olympic-related growth with agency revenues up 32.3%, buoyed by huge numbers at both its linear TV and digital streaming assets.
Brands already committed to Nine’s MMM initiative include Aussie, KIA, Qantas, McDonald’s, NRMA Insurance, Telstra, Westpac, Trip A Deal, Lion, Fiji Airways, Colgate, Hungry Jacks, Optus and Koala.
On why the organisation opted for a stable of six partners instead of just one, Stephenson said that a lot of the brands that are lining up to be a part of the MMM rollout already have existing relationships with a number of different providers.
“It's not our role to say who you should use or how you should use them, other than the fact that by using them, you can understand the role that total television plays, and you have better access to the levers that you can use to optimise to get the best possible result,” he said.
“We've got to be okay with the fact that not every time might that answer be ‘move more to total television’. I suspect more times than not it is, and all of the data that I have access to and that I've seen suggests that, but at the end of the day, what we want is the best possible result for an advertiser and a brand.
“Our hypotheses is that those that return the investment back towards total television that's been moved away, and those that continue to accelerate their investment, will deliver better business results.”
In conjunction with this, Nine has rebuilt its data stack to create one of the most advanced audience data platforms for advertisers in Australia.
The new platform gives advertisers access to real-time insights, targeting and sales-based measurement built on Nine’s unique first party audiences to ensure return on investment for advertisers is unparalleled to deliver better business results.
Another key announcement to come out of the Upfronts was advertising coming to Stan Sport in 2025, which means advertisers for the first time will be able to plan and execute a single campaign across Nine’s entire total television platform, which includes the 9Network, 9Now and Stan Sport.
While Stephenson said that there will be no price change for consumers as a result of introducing ads, he said that adding incremental advertising opportunities within Stan Sport is the “natural progression” for the company.
He also said that sport has led the way on every platform – including the likes of competitors Foxtel, Kayo and Optus Sport - and while not ruling out the broader Stan service receiving ads down the track, it's something that continues to be discussed within the company, especially since there is advertising on every other Australian SVOD platform other than Stan.
“At the end of the day, the beauty about Nine is that our revenues are diversified, we have a neat mix of advertising and subscription and our subscribers on both Stan Sport and on Stan more generally are a huge priority," he told AdNews.
“To start with on Stan Sport, there'll be low ad loads, which drives greater engagement, plus there'll be opportunities to integrate into and around the content.
"Content and sport that's currently on Nine that's being pulled through into Stan Sport - the integration will be able to be pulled through, so the experience will be better for consumers, it'll be better for brands, and it'll ultimately deliver better results.”
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