What you need to know:

• Nine spent a chunk of its upfronts claiming young people have never been easier to reach across its total TV assets: one in three of signed in users are millennials, per Nine, and 14 per cent are gen Z.
• But that hasn’t stopped the media giant from starting to rethink the way it captures and curates content to better suit the tastes of younger audiences.
• Vertical video and a mobile-first strategy is front and centre in 2025, and the first content area it’ll be focused on is news.
• Six new fast channels are also on their way via a new deal with BBC – arguably another play for younger demos.
• Nine hasn’t ruled out working with third party platforms either. While the use case is initially a marketing one, distribution and new formats specifically across non-owned platforms could be part of the long-term plan.
• The intersection of data, product and technology is also a critical driver and information source for how this new content diversification, formatting and approach plays out.

Social media platforms claim they’re the place to find today’s youth, but Nine wants you to know it’s never been easier to reach younger audiences through its total TV platform and logged in spaces. To make sure it stays that way, there’s a new content format and diversification approach in the works, starting with vertical video and a fresh take on shorter news formats to reel in more of those younger cohorts in 2025.

It's on and off platform, director of 9Now and programming, Hamish Turner, revealed during a media briefing. “You’ve got to go fishing where the fish are”.

“Part of this strategy and the first stop is creating the environment for that audience, utilising the huge journalistic machine we’ve got here to deliver that content,” Turner said. “But it’s also going to be how we work with third parties as well to amplify that. I don’t think it’s as straightforward as going we’re just going to build, own and operate it. I think there has to be a broader view of how we actually get that content out.”

Nine’s audience right now

Nine talked up its current younger demo reach, noting 34 per cent of signed in users across its increasingly integrated audience platforms are millennials, 24 per cent are gen X and 14 per cent are Gen Z. During the recent Paris Olympic Games coverage, which saw 5,000 hours of content chalked up across owned platforms versus just 300 hours for London back in 2012, 6 million of the total 20 million reached nationally also fit into the 16 to 39-year-old demographic. Overall, 20 per cent of total audiences for the Games were delivered via its BVOD platform, 9Now.

“These younger audiences have never been easier to reach,” said Nine commercial director, Nick Young, to the thousands attending last week’s Upfronts. Where the game’s changing, according to Young, is in how brands work with the media company, its content offering and its growing pool of data insights, to better cut through to them.

“Increasingly, clients are focused on sponsorships and integrations to stand out. It used to be how do we get them [younger demographics]; now it’s how do we stand out,” Young told Mi3. “These are traditional advertisers that have been very focused on spots, dots and reach now going into sponsorship and engagement metrics like never before.

“That’s a definite change we’re seeing in the briefing process.”

The intersection of content, tech and data

What’s clear from Turner is there’s a lot more Nine can be doing with content and programming to attract and retain more of those younger eyeballs. A big play coming in 2025 is vertical video.

“It’s very much how people consume content on social platforms,” Turner said. “It’s fair to say we’ve done a really good job in terms of building out our connected TV experience. The cherry on the cake was the Olympics, and it’s worth noting the Winter Olympics is not that far away, at the beginning of 2026. But in the interim, we’re going to build out mobile experiences and vertical video is the beginning of the journey.”

Complementing the fresh framing approach will be a deliberate attempt at younger content formats, starting with news. It’s the obvious place, said Turner, given how core news is to the schedule. Plus it’s owned IP, providing greater utility – and  full of locally oriented content.

“If you think about short-form content and how we deliver our news, an intuitive, personalised stream within those genres is where we’re thinking and delivering it on a vertical mobile experience is where we’ll be spending the time and effort,” Turner continued. “A lot of the work we’re doing in news is around how you diversify the offering from being really focused on a broadcast, linear experience, to one that leads into that digital experience. Thinking about those younger generations and how they’re now consuming, it’s really a strategy to engage them.

“It’s pivoting from where we’ve been, especially within the news space, which I would say has been very much of a broadcast focus – and broadcast as a big screen, long form content – to one which is diversifying in terms of both medium types of content and therefore audience as well. With that is also going to be technology, data and how you personalise that kind of experience in our platforms.”

According to Nine CMO Liana Dubois, next-generation audiences have demonstrated strong interest in news.

“They’re getting it from a multitude of platforms today, some of which are not good platforms to get it from, because it’s misinformation, fake news and all those things,” she said. “But we do understand the societal construct built when 6pm news was born has changed, and these audiences do want to consume it in a different way… next-generation audiences are typically citizens of the world and do have a genuine interest in what’s going on in the world around them. We just need to give it to them in the way they want it.”

Capturing and curating for younger audiences

Speaking to Mi3 post-event, Turner described this as Nine changing the “methodology of curation and capturing”. It goes beyond ‘TV’ too.

“We have a huge news team from a broadcast perspective, but if you think across the Nine group, it’s even bigger. How do we actually point all the guns in the one direction? But also, how do we think about the audience that's going to be consuming that content?” he asked. “When you're in the field and when you're capturing that content, how can we think about different environments where our divergent audiences may want to consume that content, and how they might want to consume it? That's the real pivotal shift in how we're thinking.”

Not having a “world-class mobile experience” is clearly one of Turner’s specific bugbears, hence Nine’s effort to shift towards vertical video, mobile, and distributing content specifically for that environment.

“It’s also looking at all the avenues to try and push audiences through into that environment as well. It's about providing greater utility,” Turner said. “But if you think about where you capture that content, you're really thinking about the end product when you're doing that. It’s making sure we're capturing content in a way that makes sense to that audience who you know may not be watching on a connected TV or that may be watching via mobile or that second screen experience.”

Where the third-party platforms can come in is firstly from a marketing perspective, although Turner didn’t rule out distribution of content through another lens.

“Nine can build it, but will they come without the right kind of catalyst? I'd say you've got to be doing all things at once to drive the most optimal experience, but also let them know you’re there”, he said. “That is where we are thinking in terms of those third-party platforms. We may distribute content off platforms… I'd say that will play out over the next 12 months.”

Given Meta’s threat to exit the Australian market after pulling out from the News Media Bargaining Code, Turner said it would “be remiss not to mention the loss of the Meta deal, and how that plays into the strategic thinking of where we take this moving forward”.

“I haven't got a live example for you in terms of where we're thinking, but it is this crossroad between content, product and tech all coming together to deliver the right engagement and the right environment for that audience to engage,” he added.

Harnessing data and insight in the content play

Turner agreed Nine’s CDP,  and the volume of information it’s getting on audiences, behaviours, interests, preferences,  transactions and other psychographic data sets across TV through to publishing, Domain and Drive is a critical information source feeding. A number of new data partnerships feed into this including latest partner, DataCo, which has ANZ data sets.

“The data absolutely underpins that strategy,” he said. “If you push things forward, and you go righto, we're going to build a vertical video platform, we're going to be creating and curating content at the outset with a very clear target of delivering it on that platform, then you overlay that with, let's call it, personalisation that is informed by data – and that could be, as you say, driven by the CDP – it’s a beautiful mosaic of all these things coming together at one point.”

Turner is all too aware content consumption is habitual and winning over younger audiences isn’t necessarily just having that audience coming in and watching a program like Love Island.

“It's about getting that repeat drive, in terms of audience into owned and operated. You don't do it with one piece of content. It's got to be something that you build over time, it becomes habitual, then you start becoming that destination where people turn for local and through this lens right now, local news,” he said. “How we think about that youth audience and the type of content they want to watch will be informed by everything we’ve actually just articulated. How our journalists capture that content is going to be pivotal in terms of this strategy playing out.

“It is far, far away from the broadcast world where you create it, you push it out, and it goes out to everyone. This is far more personalised, a far more intimate experience.”

Voracious content consumption

Outside of news and vertical video, Nine is building out its fast channel arsenal, another content format that arguably speaks more to younger demos. In 2025, six new fast channels in partnership with BBC will debut on 9Now: Two singular channels, Top Gear and Antiques Roadshow, plus four genre channels: BBC Earth, BBC Food, BBC Comedy and BBC Lifestyle.

Broadly, Turner described younger audiences as having “a pretty voracious appetite for consumption”. 

“They're quite happy to jump from one medium to the next, from one platform to the next, whether it be short form or long form. I think they're just huge, super consumers,” he said. “And if they don't like something, they're quite happy to jump into the next thing quite quickly. We've just got to be better in terms of understanding how people consume, use the data to understand better insights into that consumer, where they're watching. And look, we're going to test and learn as we go as well.”

So does that mean we'll actually start to see Nine building out content genres off the back of some of these insights as well and flipping the who notion of how broadcast programming is conducted? Not quite.

“When we're commissioning content, we're definitely thinking about the audience that it's targeted at and the type of platform it will be consumed on. In terms of those big, broad shows we're talking about ostensibly at the Upfronts, that is still very much targeted at a big broadcast audience. That is the unique part of our DNA to target a big, broad family audience at one point in time and have that shared experience. I don't think that goes away. That is one of our advantages,” Turner said. 

“It's how that strategy is nuanced from that point on. But do we in the future look at something like Love Island and delivering a long form version of that then other formats in the same way we do with sports, where you get a 20-minute version or a five-minute version? Is that how we start thinking about our entertainment slate through that lens? Or is the short form our way to drive audiences back into the long form?

“I think it is a very different case per brand, and depends on where that content is being commissioned for. That's why news is the poster child, really, because we create it here, we own the journalism, we've got greater utility around the rights. And it is very much local and regional. That is why news is the space we’re looking to execute the kind of short form strategy to begin with.”

Generational versus lifestyle-led

But an even bigger question Turner is playing with is whether content consumption is generational at all, or more lifestyle-led.

“Does it evolve as they [younger audiences] go through their lives? A prime example: As a 20-year-old or as an 18-year-old, 16-year-old, you're watching different content in different environments. When you've got three kids and you get them to bed at nine o'clock, does that then change your consumption, and you go, okay, I've got an hour, I want to watch a long form piece of content on the couch because I want to lie down?” Turner asked. 

“It's fine for a certain generation to reflect on how they consume at a certain point in their life, but as life evolves and as you go through different stages of life, I think we know that consumption and the type of content they consume changes as well.

“But I do fundamentally believe Australians are looking for Australian content that reflects their lives, that talks to them and their disposition.”