Nine has launched its seventh vertical on nine.com.au in the last 18 months. The company unveiled 9Mums this morning, a new parenting website, and labelled its network of women-focused verticals as 9Honey. This was previously the name of Nine’s fashion and beauty site, which has been rebranded as 9Style.
This is Nine’s head of lifestyle Helen McCabe’s first major announcement since joining the company in July 2016, following her departure as editor-in-chief of Bauer Media’s The Australian Women’s Weekly.
“9Mums was really the missing piece of the puzzle. We wanted to have a conversation with women around children, family, relationships and parenting and we are confident that this will help us do that,” McCabe said.
“9Honey will be allowed to evolve. Today’s announcement is stage one. But our intention is to produce a quality mass-market site for the millions of women who watch our TV shows.”
The 9Honey network now includes: celebrity news site 9TheFix, cooking and recipe site 9Kitchen, interior design site 9Homes, fashion and beauty site 9Style, travel site 9Elsewhere, fitness website 9Coach and parenting destination 9Mums. Together these websites have a unique audience of 1.3m, according to the Nielsen figures.
McCabe says she is more than happy to focus on the women’s market at this stage.
“They are pretty big market,” McCabe told Mediaweek during a visit to Nine offices in Australia Square, Sydney. “They are looking for something a little bit different from their media sources. I know this from a magazine background.
“It’s funny when it comes up internally, ‘What about a lifestyle website for men?’ I have laughed at that. But the more I think about it, the more I think that there is an opportunity in that at some point. If a lifestyle for women works, then why not look at a lifestyle site for men? I don’t know whether I am the best editor of that, but at the moment this is the area where we think there is the most opportunity.”
9Honey will be edited by the former supervising producer of A Current Affair Kerri Elstub.
Following the launch of 9Mums, McCabe said her next job will be to go back to the drawing board and analyse each of the verticals again with Elstub to recognise the biggest growth opportunity for them.
McCabe will be using Nine journalists and on-air talents to drive 9Honey’s content appeal. The company is looking to get into podcasting some time in the future. However, the planning of this is in its primary stages.