Nine has used its 2020 Upfront to announce that it will continue to grow 9Now as Australia’s leading commercial premium video provider and will compete more aggressively in the billion-dollar Australian online video market introducing cost per completed view on its short form and long form video products.
“We will offer to price and trade all our BVOD and short form video based on a cost per completed view. You will only pay for views that have a 100 percent completion rate,” said Michael Stephenson Nine’s Chief Sales Officer.
“A movement to a cost per completed view metric will create a level playing field and allow marketers to compare the real cost of advertising on Nine, Facebook and YouTube.
“Why is this so important? Advertising that is being seen for one second or sometimes not at all is not as valuable as advertising that is full screen has a 100 percent completion rate and is seen 100 percent of the time.”
Stephenson urged marketers and agencies to question the metrics of how they judge the effectiveness of their video advertising.
“It’s a complex and difficult landscape to navigate with each platform having vastly different metrics for what constitutes an ad being seeing, but at Nine advertisers who buy on a cost per completed view basis will only pay for ads that are viewed to completion.”
“The more of an ad that you see and the longer that you see it, the better the results. Advertising on BVOD is full screen, you see the whole ad, the sound is on and you can’t skip it,” said Stephenson.
“Our video inventory performs better than content surfaced in the crowded social environment. Our audience is highly engaged in premium, professionally created content and as a result, the completion rates are significantly higher than social video.”
“A move to a cost per completed view metric will allow Nine to compete aggressively in the billion-dollar Australian online video market with Facebook and Google”, said Stephenson.
Nine has led the way in simplifying the buying of its inventory across television and digital using its market leading proprietary technology 9Galaxy. Earlier this year, Nine was the first free-to-air Australian broadcaster to allow media buyers to buy both television and 9Now inventory from the one platform.
Nine also used its Upfront 2020 to unveil its new advertising effectiveness offering, designed to ensure marketers can demonstrate a return on investment from marketing across their total video spend on the Nine ecosystem.
The new offering, which has been built out as part of the client solutions division Nine Powered, offers marketers a number of key products including the benefits of econometric modelling; real-time measurement of audience response through partnerships with leading media analytics firms Adgile Media and TVSquared; and brand health studies to track the impact of advertising on key brand perceptions.
“At Nine Powered we aim to be the home of Big Ideas that drive real results for the brands we work with,” said Liana Dubois, Nine’s Director of Powered. “Over the past 12 months we have built out an effectiveness product which is unrivalled by our commercial TV counterparts and which highlights why both television and content integration is unmatched in building brands and driving long-term sustainable business growth.”
Nine began building its effectiveness pillar within Powered in 2018, with the appointment of Jonathan Fox as Director of Effectiveness. Fox previously played a key role in Ebiquity’s landmark Payback Australia Study, which comprehensively examined the effectiveness of different media channels, serving as its Head of Effectiveness.
Among the effectiveness case studies showcased at the Nine 2020 Upfront was the return that Peter’s Ice Cream achieved with their festival of the Australian Open activation, and HiPages through an integration in The Block. In partnership with Powered studios, they were able to drive a proven ROI of $2.98, well above the expected $1.59 benchmark based on media mix that would normally be provided, according to the Payback Australia/Think TV FMCG benchmark.
Nine also confirmed that its partnerships with Adgile Media and TVSquared would be extended to measure the impact across the brand’s total video spend within Nine’s channels.
“At Nine we are now better equipped than ever to demonstrate the effectiveness of a marketer’s campaign in delivering real business results, because we have built out a true effectiveness discipline within Nine Powered,” said Dubois.
“We understand that proof of effectiveness is critical, because while efficiency is no doubt important, efficient doesn’t equal effective and effective is what sells a brand’s products.”
Nine has also announced the unification of data assets across its whole enterprise including 9Now, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, Domain, Pedestrian Group and CarAdvice, to create the most powerful data ecosystem of any Australian media company.
The move sees Nine create Australia’s largest addressable marketplace, with more than 11 million IDs, aimed at providing marketers with the ability to target specific audiences at scale within a premium brand-safe environment, powered by the Adobe Audience Manager Platform.
“At Nine we have been on a journey to build the most powerful data asset of any Australian media company,” said Michael Stephenson, Nine’s Chief Sales Officer.
“In bringing together this collection of assets, we are giving the market a powerful data offering that will drive results for our clients.
“This move gives marketers the ability to target Nine’s audience segments across the most diverse range of digital media assets in Australia, and reach audiences via short-form video, long-form video and display.”
As part of this announcement Nine has rebuilt 9Tribes, its leading customer segmentation offering, which allows advertisers to target 54 unique audiences across all of Nine’s verticals and properties.
Nine has added five new verticals consisting of food, travel, automotive, luxury and property to its existing verticals of news, sport, entertainment and lifestyle.
“9Tribes has been an important part of our data offering for a number of years and we are excited to see it extending across all media assets, with clear verticals that will help marketers reach the scale of our audiences,” Stephenson said.
Nine recently deployed a new data partnership with Quantium, providing marketers with access to grocery segments across 9Now, and all of its digital media properties. This data partnership complements its existing partnerships with Equifax Marketing Services and Red Planet, which have now been rolled across the metropolitan publishing mastheads.