Nine Entertainment Co has built Australia’s biggest media business with a diverse range of assets across many media sectors. The one job nearly as challenging as running the group is perhaps that with the task of monetising all the different arms.
That person is Nine’s chief sales officer Michael Stephenson. After Nine’s full-year results were released last week, Stephenson took Mediaweek through the different divisions, looking at successes and challenges.
See also: Nine’s Mike Sneesby on results across broadcasting & publishing
Michael Stephenson on Nine’s new TV affiliate partner
On July 1 the WIN TV network started retransmitting the Nine signal again in a new affiliation deal. The company is also looking at making buying the national audience easier. “We are aligning the WIN regional sales team alongside our existing team,” Stephenson told Mediaweek.
“We have co-located the teams in the five metro markets into our offices. They are now all under the leadership of Ash Earnshaw, our director of sales for regional television.
“We have invested more resources into Powered, to ensure all of the big ideas that we create within Powered can be amplified across regional Australia as well.
“We’ll do that through all our sports and entertainment properties.
“We will start focusing on creating big ideas for brands, for regional advertisers in a way that nobody has ever done before.
“By aligning the regional team alongside the metro team, there’s a whole range of benefits that we think we can deliver to advertisers by just creating a more seamless whole of country, sales proposition.
“In the past, the regional affiliate has been a separate team, in a separate office doing completely separate things. And to me, that doesn’t make that much sense.”
Re-shaping OzTAM ratings reports
Michael Stephenson is one of Nine’s reps on the OzTAM board. The broadcaster is as keen as Seven to reshape the way TV ratings data is shared. Overnights are only a piece of the story, with a focus now on total television bringing together metro, regional, BVOD and catch-up viewing.
“The notion of just looking at linear television in isolation is an old fashioned way to view the world,” said Stephenson.
“Consumption habits have changed how people view content. They view it via a live stream, and they view it on demand. This is not about measurement, it’s about the report. The agencies and marketers and, and the press should get access to the real story and the real story is there are people watching our content in multiple ways. That’s how we’re going to report it.”
Stephenson noted for those that are really interested in linear television in isolation, then they can deep dive into that as well. “I don’t trivialise that because linear television is a massive part of the television ecosystem.”
Nine’s 2021 ratings performance
All people is one ratings measure, but there is now more focus on demos for all commercial FTAs.
“We’ve been focused on only the demos for as long as I can remember – certainly the last six or seven years – and we’re leading all of those demos, again,” said Stephenson.
“We’ll lead throughout the rest of the year, where we’re leading at this point, and in 25-54 in particular, which is the key demographic where most advertisers spend their money. And we are growing that share of audience.
“Not only do we want to do lead the linear television audience, we also want to have maximum streaming minutes and maximum daily active users. The real winners will be the ones that can that deliver a total television audience across all of those platforms. We are really well-positioned to continue to lead that.”
Building integrated revenue
Powered is Nine’s marketing solutions team that works with advertisers across TV, radio, digital and print.
Michael Stephenson: “In our results, we pointed to the fact that our integrated revenue has grown by 18% in the financial year. For me, that’s a key metric of success. We’ve got a fairly significant investment in people.
“There are over 100 people now in Powered and Powered is designed to create big ideas for brands that help build their business in a way that you couldn’t do with anybody else.
“The real measure of success is to ask: Is it creating a real and measurable difference to advertisers? And the answer – it is.
“The vast majority of those big ideas include television, they include digital, they include publishing, and they include radio.
“They always include an element of data so we can be more targeted, and they’re driven by insight, and creativity. That is a point of differentiation for us. It differentiates us from all of the traditional competitors and the new ones. Traditional competitors aren’t really doing it, or certainly not as much as we are. And the new competitors can’t do it, because they don’t have content. We’re very unique and very lucky. And can we be better? Yes, we can.”
2GB’s Ben Fordham
Improving agency dollars on radio
“Further to my point around creating cross-platform solutions, radio is a really important part of that. Tom Malone [Nine Radio MD], has done a great job in resetting that business.
“There has been a focus on content, focus on talent, and focus on that 25-54 demo, which is so important to getting the ad product, getting the team right. As a result of that, we have increased our share out of the major agencies, which was a big focus of ours.”
Michael Stephenson did admit to not getting the direct sales piece of the business right initially.
“We’ve rebalanced that now and we’ve employed more resources into the direct sales part of our business with direct sales experts. We did that in March and April and we’re starting to see the fruits of that investment.
“What I love about radio is its immediacy, we produce over 1000 radio ads a year, through Powered, and where we’ve got a creative team working on those and we can turn it around very, very quickly and get it live.”
3AW’s Ross and Russel
Marketing man turned broadcaster Russel Howcroft
Nine is getting good mileage out of the 3AW breakfast co-host on air and in some presentations to clients.
“First and foremost, Russel is a breakfast host in Melbourne, and he’s doing an unbelievable job,” said Stephenson. “Alongside Ross, their dominance in Melbourne is quite something.
“We get the added benefit that he is a marketing expert with really interesting, provocative opinions. I’ve known him for a long time. It’s always been a pleasure being a part of any conversation that he’s in and we’re lucky that we’ve got him with us.”
The Block: Still a long way to go
The monster renovating franchise now in its 17th season has delivered another financial win for Nine. Some onlookers have again tried to write off the format early in the piece. Stephenson urged caution.
“The Block is 12 beautiful weeks long.
“It’s an unbelievable format. It’s the most advertiser-friendly easily integrated cross-platform format, and this year will be no different.
“We’ve got the same number of brands in The Block this year, and as we did last year, each of them own their part of The Block story.
“It sometimes starts a bit slower and builds beautifully, and I suspect this year will be no different. We’re a few weeks in now and there’s a long way to go. Any brand that partners with us makes a commitment to being fully integrated into our formats.
“We will deliver everything [to them] that we’ve always said we would and this year will be no different. Absolutely not.”
Publishing opportunities for advertisers
Michael Stephenson: “As Mike Sneesby [Nine CEO] said in our results we are at a really interesting inflection point because we’ve got this beautiful mix between print and digital, and subscription and advertising. How those four things coexist will shape how that business and what it looks like into the future.
“My focus in the last 12 months has been on increasing and diversifying the number of clients and the number of categories that we’re talking to around that product.
“It was so dominated by travel, and of course, that category is the one category that hasn’t recovered through the last 12 months yet. It will, but not quite yet. Our focus has been how do other categories use premium to deliver the same value and advantage that travel enjoyed.
“We’re seeing really good traction with brands like the Commonwealth Bank, as an example, or NRMA, using our printed products to launch pretty amazing campaigns.”