What you need to know:

• Nine’s move to create a streamer segment in which current and lapsed Stan subscribers could be targeted across its broader online assets appeased most media buyers except the biggest – Omnicom Media Group investment boss Kristiaan Kroon told Mi3 no Stan ads was a “decision they will regret”. 
• Kroon gave Nine top marks for everything else, including its new retailer media unit RTLX - but delivered an ominous warning to media companies with less size and scale – they face a swing by advertisers to “relationship rationalisation” in which the biggest and most diversified will gain marketshare in 2024.
• GroupM’s Chief Investment Officer Mel Hey said Nine’s full throttle launch last night of its world first Olympics rights deal, in which it acquired the rights and has bundled every media channel (except OOH )into its Olympics partnership deals would make it far easier and more impactful for advertisers to sign up for one of two $10.5m or $12.5m packages. The cross-channel bundle from the same media company ensures there is “no ambushing by competitors”.
• Mediabrands’ Magna boss Lucy Formosa Morgan said Nine had been focused on “expanding its ecosystem” to dilute its reliance on the troubled free-to-air TV business and “that was evident tonight”.
• OMD Co-CEO Sian Whitnall said Nine’s move last night to unlock audience data “out of its verticals” to a full network play “is really progressive”. It’s Olympics launch was “compelling”.
• Zenith investment boss Elizabeth Baker said Nine’s move into retailer media with RTLX “was a smart move” to access “largely untapped budgets”.
• Wavemaker CEO Peter Vogel noted the launch of a self-serve, AI-laced platform for small and medium businesses, Nine Ad Manager, was a shrewd move to appeal to “all marketers, no matter how big they are” to access its audiences in a “very easy way”.
• PHD’s investment chief Joanna Barnes also nodded to the RTLX launch as a new “full-funnel proposition which was really strong”.
• A more detailed breakdown on Nine’s key announcements last night is here. 

Wizardy and frothing 

AI wizardry at the Paris Olympics, and for a self-serve ad platform designed to lure small and medium sized business away from the global tech giants, captured the attention of media agency execs last night at Nine’s kick-off for the annual Upfronts season. But it was the media group’s unveiling of its first Olympics bundle, after poaching broadcast and digital rights from Seven, its move into retailer media and the wholesale lifting of ring-fenced audience data from each of its TV, online, publishing and audio assets which had the market mostly frothing. 

There were some caveats subject to more detail on the big ticket items announced last night but overall Nine enhanced its market standing with a string of polished new developments for 2024. 

Broadcast arch-rival Seven is planning a massive Upfronts counter offensive for the entire week of SxSW next month but for now Nine has plenty of airspace for its slew of initiatives to fly. 

Stan ads no more 

Although upbeat overall on the moves by Nine, OMG Chief Investment Officer Kristiaan Kroon, was blunt on a shortfall in his expectations on some fronts – namely the refusal by Nine to develop an advertising tier for subscription streaming platform Stan. 

“I am ad-centric but not putting ads in SVOD will essentially allow some of the money that leaving linear TV to go direct to competitors,” he told Mi3. “They have the opportunity to take that share but have made a decision not to do so. My view is they will regret that in time. It will allow [Foxtel’s] Binge and Netflix to build real dominance in the SVOD space and when assuming they do, allows ads [on Stan] in the future, it will take them longer and cost them more to close the gap than it would have done. When you look at Binge and Netflix, it hasn't been their data that interests advertisers, it's been the ability to reach those audiences with premium content that comes with that subscription service. It will be interesting to see whether providing data, which, to date, hasn't really featured as being particularly critical in discussions, proves to be valuable.”

Kroon’s data reference relates to Nine’s alternative to an ad play on Stan – it is allowing advertisers to target Stan’s current and lapsed subscribers across its ad-friendly digital assets, including 9Now and its audio and publishing units. 

Data delights

But Kroon’s colleague, Sian Whitnall, co-CEO at OMD, the country’s biggest media agency network, was upbeat about the Nine’s move on targeting Stan subscribers and a broader move to allow audience data to be tapped across at a network level for all its media assets, calling it “really progressive”. 

“What we've had historically is each [audience] dataset they have has been locked in its own swim lane,” Whitnall told Mi3. “So Domain data on Domain as an example and then the Nine [audience] Tribes. What they spoke about was… using data across the entire network, which means that if as advertisers we want to deliver a connected experience across the whole portfolio, we can now do that. And then that's obviously even more supercharged with the product innovation that they spoke about in taking the data out of its verticals. It’s really progressive. That's been some of the limitation holding us back because it’s always been locked into the property that the data has belonged to. We're most excited about being able to use Stan data across the network and Nine tribes across the network as well. That's also going to unlock a lot of potential.”

High upfronts bar

Lucy Formosa Morgan, Managing Director of Mediabrands investment arm, Magna, said at a high level, Nine had “clearly set the bar high… Nine’s pitch was slick and demonstrated the depth of their bench strength when it comes to the reach, multichannel offering, product and data capabilities they can offer. For the last few years now they’ve been focused on expanding their ecosystem to lessen their reliance on linear TV and that was evident tonight. Going into an Olympics year, and with the breadth of their footprint, you would have to assume they will have a strong year next year, particularly with the halo effect that always benefits the host broadcaster.”

GroupM Chief Investment Officer Mel Hey said the standout for her was the company-wide data sharing initiative, allowing advertisers to “follow the customer journey”. The Paris Olympics would be a “harder sell” because of timezones but Hey reckons the $10.5m and $12.5m partner tiers were “in the ballpark” because the Olympics is the “ultimate premium event…if they spread it out like they alluded to they will get some traction with advertisers”. 

Olympics ambushing dead 

Hey said a big upside of Nine taking out rights for all distribution channels except out-of-home – QMS has that deal – was that the complexity of negotiating with multiple media companies vanished. “It’s really good coverage because that’s one of the hardest parts, especially for IOC and AOC partners because they can get ambushed in outside areas – it’s not easy to tackle every channel when [media rights] are separated. Nine’s deal maintains coverage and ensures there’s no ambushing by competitors.”

Zenith investment lead Elizabeth Baker concurred with her peers, arguing the Olympics flip from Seven to Nine had worked and singled out Nine’s retail media unit RTLX as one to watch.   

Baker said the trade-off for the Olympics focus and Nine’s innovation pipeline was that “other entertainment content took a back seat. There wasn’t a lot of new content. But there was something for all types of advertisers – from big budgets to the small and locals,” she said. 

Retailer media counter

“They've really thought about how they can tap into that local market and those small businesses. And now there’s innovation in the retail space with a full-funnel capability for brands. RTLX is a smart move - retail media is a sector with significant growth, and largely untapped budgets. Details are a bit light on it, but no doubt we'll hear more on that in the not too distant future.”

Although grumpy about Nine’s stubbornness around ads on Stan, OMG’s Kroon said RTLX was a “clever….whether it's Commbank, David Jones, Coles 360 or Cartology, they've all talked about off-network assets they don't own that goes beyond YouTube and Meta,” he said. “It's a clever strategic move by Nine to invest in that space and potentially look to operate almost a wholesale arm for their inventory to these businesses that have direct relationships with their customers. It brings complexity, but it can also bring value and opportunity. And there's a lot to be said for first mover advantage.”

Wavemaker CEO Peter Vogel noted Nine’s smart packaging of its Paris Olympics: “I like their proposition, they've tried to curate an offer across all their platforms and also extend the period of the opportunity to be involved to perhaps six months. But it's still early days.”

Privacy concerns

PHD’s investment boss, Joanna Barnes, also singled out RLTX as “really strong” along with the new cross-network audience data initiative. But she flagged major advertisers were getting nervous on privacy and data security. “There was no detail on privacy or data security – that's a huge, huge concern. We're getting a lot of questions from clients around that. Nine is such a huge organisation I'd like to see how they execute on that. The Olympics and publishing content probably overshadowed some of the data security, privacy conversations. Overall it was a very strong show.”