Fairfax takeover: advertisers to gain ‘data, scale and ability’

Nine’s chief sales officer said the merger helped to build a data-driven marketplace for tele­vision and digital video advertising.

Nine Entertainment chief sales officer Michael Stephenson. Picture: Britta Campion.

Nine’s chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson, says the broadcaster is chasing its $2.1 billion takeover of Fairfax as part of a strategy to build a data-driven marketplace for tele­vision and digital video ­advertising, and give it more ­firepower against Google and Facebook.

In an interview with Media, Stephenson said the company’s ambition was not just to help boost ad revenue from its own content but to create a platform with ­greater scale that also connected ­advertisers with audiences across television and digital video.

“The great benefit for us outside of scale is that Nine and Fairfax are both content businesses focused on producing great Australian content,” he said.

“The combination of our assets means we have data, scale and the ability to help advertisers target more ­effectively.

‘‘Video inventory is in really high demand. The more we can create, the more advantageous that will be.”

Senior media buyers, including John Steedman, gave a thumbs up to the deal after Thursday’s announcement, predicting the combined $4bn annual ad sales operation could offer them more choices in the digital ad market.

“The response from media buyers and advertisers has been ­incredibly positive,” Stephenson said.

“They’re excited about us continuing our focus on creating marketing platforms for brands using content and audience at greater scale. You can’t build a brand on Facebook. If you’re an advertiser, you should have an expectation that your ad is viewable, and in a brand-safe environment.”

He refused to be drawn on whether Nine would roll over Fairfax’s ad sales representation with Google to the free-to-air network’s sales operation, but Nine chief executive Hugh Marks downplayed the idea.

“The Google sales deal at the moment applies to the Fairfax ­titles,” he said.

“At this point in time, we’ve got some limited knowledge of it, but nothing ­beyond that and no current intent to roll that into the Nine side of the business.”

Fairfax signed a deal with ­Google in December in a major shake-up of its advertising sales arrange­ments that will see the search giant sell the publisher’s digital ads. The deal with Fairfax’s Australian Metro Publishing business unit, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, also includeS a partnership in tech­nology and product development.

Rival media executives raised questions over the deal, claiming Fairfax was surrendering to a rival and losing autonomy over a major source of income.

By combining user data on 6.5 million 9Now users with customer data on 283,000 digital ­subscribers to Fairfax’s news­papers and one million subscribers to streaming service Stan, Stephenson is planning to build ­sophisticated ad targeting solutions for brands to take on Facebook and Google.

“It allows us to deliver addressable advertising at scale for brands. Addressable advertising is a significant focus for advertisers right now — the ability to target more effectively.

“To do that in a people-based world, you need people signed in as subscribers. We will now have that at scale. That allows you to compete effectively with Facebook and Google in an ­environment that is rich in local content, brand safe, viewable and measurable.”

Google took a 31.7 per cent share of the $232.27bn spent ­globally on digital advertising last year, eMarketer figures show. Facebook took a 17.9 per cent share.

Stephenson also sees more ­potential to cross-promote brands across both Nine and Fairfax in verticals where the two companies share assets including food, lifestyle, finance, travel, automotive and events.

“The opportunity gets even greater for the combined brands that we have in the new merged entity,” Stephenson said.