The online advertising sector grew 11.6 per cent to $8.8 billion in calendar 2018, accounting for a record 54 per cent of the total Australian advertising sector, the latest Online Advertising Expenditure report from the IAB and PwC shows.

But ad spend data from Standard Media Index (SMI), which tracks $7.2 billion in annual advertising investment from media agencies, tells a different story. Media agencies control most of the media budgets for large brand owners.

According to SMI, blue chip advertisers increased their online spending through media agencies at half the growth rate (5.8 per cent) of the 11.6 per cent increase in the IAB-PwC report. Large advertisers spent $2.07 billion in online channels in 2018 but their 5.8 per cent increase last year is a near halving of their online spending through media agencies in 2017 (up 10.1 per cent).

According to SMI, blue chip advertisers are allocating 28.5 per cent of their total advertising budgets to online channels, compared to online’s 54 per cent marketshare in the IAB-PwC figures.

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Rowland, who addressed the Sydney Institute last night, described Australia’s current media regulatory framework as “siloed” in an “analogue era of last century” and backed calls for digital platforms and their algorithms to be examined to manage anti-competitive behaviour.

She criticised the Coalition government’s approach to the media sector as being “piecemeal” and lacking coherence.

“The communications portfolio is feeling the weight of six years of stop-start policymaking, of no coherent reform agenda, in everything from spectrum reform that has been under way for over four years with no end in sight; the stalled report of the Australian and Children’s Screen Content Review; lack of implementation into recommendations on Australia’s video game development industry; and leaving the recommendations of the Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism unaddressed.”

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While a number of local and international parties have been in the data room set up by Nine, another player is considering a run.

AUA Private Equity Partners, which has about $US275 million of assets under management, is understood to have shown some late interest in Nine’s events business.

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The outage knocked out its service entirely for some users, and severely limited them for others, meaning there was no news feed to scroll through and no Instagram to show everyone how fabulous the morning cup of coffee looked on the table in front of them.

Facebook’s Australian media relations team were left clutching on to a brief statement written by their US office, essentially saying that it wasn’t due to a co-ordinated hacker attack and that they were still working on getting things back up online.

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The company blamed a change it had made to its system for the outage. Facebook (FB) said the issue had been resolved and that it’s systems were recovering.

“Yesterday, we made a server configuration change that triggered a cascading series of issues. As a result, many people had difficulty accessing our apps and services,” a Facebook spokesperson said Thursday.

A Facebook spokesperson told CNN Business that despite some online rumours, the issue was not caused by a hack or an attack, adding that the company was focused on resolving the issue and hoped to eventually share details about what caused the problem.

The interruption, which also extended to Facebook-owned services like Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, is believed to be the biggest ever suffered by the social media giant.

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BIG4 said the collaboration will allow The Wiggles to share the BIG4 experience with a new generation of families where they can enjoy a fun, safe, and memorable break connecting with loved ones.

The Wiggles’ Anthony Field said that BIG4 Holiday Parks was the perfect fit for the popular entertainment group owing to its emphasis on promoting active, fun, family- focused breaks.

“We really love the type of experiences BIG4 are able to offer young familes.”

BIG4 Holiday Parks general manager sales & marketing, Mo Bhargava, said the relationship with The Wiggles offers huge opportunities for its business.

“While BIG4 remains strong, and we continue to welcome hundreds and thousands of families each year, we recognise that the market is always changing. And so is the composition of this segment, with a lot of young parents in Australia not having grown up visiting holiday parks,” Bhargava said.

“The Wiggles is the perfect platform to reach and inspire young families to visit BIG4 holiday parks.”

As part of the agreement, The Wiggles and BIG4 will be offering The Wiggles audience a range of benefits and opportunities that will be rolled out in the coming months.

Sound Relief, which took place at the MCG 10 years ago this week, raised more than $8 million for the victims of Black Saturday.

“The music industry is renowned for getting behind charity and helping out. And it’s really the greatest thing for me, to be able to give back and pull something like that together,” music promoter Gudinski said.

“If you think that I’m not thinking about doing it again, doing something for all the farmers in Victoria, well watch this space.

“I’m not going to try and repeat Sound Relief, but there’s something I’m working on at the moment with a few people.”

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Online trolls exacted their revenge by flooding the website with thousands of audience reviews trashing the superhero pic once it opened March 8.

But the play didn’t work. Captain Marvel is a blockbuster, opening to US$154.3 million domestically and more than $455 million globally over the March 8-10 weekend, the sixth-biggest launch of all time. And by Tuesday, it was zooming past the $500 million mark worldwide.

A rep for the website now tells The Hollywood Reporter that additional measures are being considered in terms of audience reviews. Namely, a user may be asked to verify that he or she has seen the film in question before being allowed to post a critique. (It is unclear what that prompt would look like in practice.)

“We are disappointed that there was a group of people who were obviously very passionate and who had a negative opinion of the movie, whether they saw it or not,” says Dana Benson, VP communications for Fandango, parent of Rotten Tomatoes.

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The claim, which a Voice spokesperson dismissed as “ridiculous”, suggests the celebrity coaches are told who to turn their chairs for in the blind auditions.

Singer Thom Phillips, who works as a producer on the Mix 102.3 breakfast show in Adelaide, told radio hosts Jodie (Oddy) and Soda (Mark Soderstrom) that he was approached to appear on last year’s season of The Voice.

“Early last year they found my online profiles and my music and then they reached out to me via email to ask if I wanted go on the show,” he said.

Phillips told the radio hosts that after turning down the offer, he was contacted by a senior producer who told him he’d definitely make it through to the second round of the talent show.

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After the non-stop saga of ousted co-host Karl Stefanovic, Today hoped to regain some of its lost audience in 2019 with a new look and refresh panel but it all seems to have been to no avail.

Not only has the gap between Today and Channel 7 rival Sunrise widened dramatically, but now Channel 9 has slumped to third place.

On Wednesday, ABC News Breakfast drew in more viewers nationally than Today for the first time ever.

The public broadcaster’s morning show attracted 265,000 pairs of eyeballs from across Australia, just 1000 ahead of the Georgie Gardner and Deborah Knight-fronted Today.

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But this season, with its verbal and physical abuse, bedhopping contestants and liberal use of the C word, has crossed a line for many viewers.

The non-stop controversy has made for sky-high ratings – each episode pulls in more than 1.2 million viewers – but MAFS executive producer John Walsh is not happy with how things played out and hopes he doesn’t see a repeat of this year’s “cheating and drama” when the show’s seventh season airs next year.

“I wouldn’t like things to play out the same, I wouldn’t like people to see a repeat of what they saw this year,” Walsh tells news.com.au.

“It would just be absolute chaos if it was all cheating and all drama. While it’s fun to watch and it’s great to promo, I don’t think people will watch if that’s all it is.”

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Agency sales manager Angela Mackenzie has been promoted to the newly created role of head of radio – direct and Brenton Clarke has been promoted to the position of head of radio – agency.

“Ange has been an amazing leader for our agency radio business for the past two years and will lead a large group of sales people into 2019 and beyond,” Iannazzo said.

“The direct market in Adelaide is a buoyant and competitive one and Ange is the perfect person to lead the team.

“With Ange moving across to direct sales, I’m equally as pleased to announce that Brenton will be moving to head up our agency radio business. He has done an incredible job working with agencies and clients with our sport and sponsorship products. Having worked in the Adelaide agency landscape for a long time as both an account manager and sales manager; he is the perfect fit to keep driving the team forward.”

Mackenzie and Clarke will commence their new roles with immediate effect.

Toyota’s new deal beats the $16m the car manufacturer has been paying the league since 2015, and once again takes the AFL past Tennis Australia in terms of having the biggest sporting sponsorship in the country.

Korean carmaker Kia’s latest deal for the naming rights to the Australian Open is for slightly more than $16m per year, as part of a contact signed last year, while Tennis Australia clinched an associate sponsorship deal with Chinese premium liquor company Luzhou Laojiao in January at a similar level.

AFL general manager commercial, Kylie Rogers, told The Australian the deal was “pleasing considering the environment we are operating in” and that “it is getting harder and harder to retain partners”.

Rogers said the AFL had 43 commercial partners, with several deals up for renewal later this year.

The AFL’s revenue from commercial operations, including sponsorship deals and corporate hospitality and ticket sales, topped the $200m mark for the first time in 2018, according to the league’s latest financial report.

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An inevitable change to a historic twilight match finishing under lights was rejected by the AFL Commission for a third straight year. The grand final will start at the same time as last year – 2.30pm.

The grand final remains one of the very few major world team sporting championship events still played during daylight hours.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire made no secret of his preference. “If you want to be the No 1 rating show in Australia, you’ve got to be on in prime time,” he said. “It’s a no-brainer to me, the sooner we do it the better.”

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Fox Footy’s Neroli Meadows has signed on to co-host the much-talked about revamped version of the once iconic AFL show.

After weeks of boardroom back-and-forth the two networks have finally agreed Meadows can “do an Eddie” by appearing on both stations.

Several years ago Eddie McGuire pulled off the shared arrangement by hosting Nine’s popular game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and calling games on Fox Footy.

Ironically, McGuire’s production company, Jam TV, is the team behind the reworking of The Footy Show.

The delay in getting Meadows, who has been holidaying overseas, across the line has caused a lot of angst for the new Footy Show team given it’s scheduled to debut on Wednesday and the hosts have yet to even be in the same room.

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