Nine’s programmatic platform 9Galaxy is making the need for media buyers to chase media owners for “make goods” – re-run credits when a commercial doesn’t deliver its intended audience – non-existent and allowing them to focus on client needs rather than being stuck in TV schedules, some of Australia’s top media traders say.

‘Essential’ for future of industry: UM
Automation has allowed media agencies to refocus on results for their clients, Dave Fowler, UM Australia’s Sydney partnerships director said.

“TV has been trading the same way for decades. It was a system designed for three stations – now it’s 14, meaning four times the amount of inventory, which resulted in traders spending 80 per cent of their time buying spots and dots which really only account for a small percentage of the reach,” said Fowler.

“Automation offers an opportunity to remove that and refocus agencies attention, to get their focus out of the schedules and into what can actually help clients.”

9Galaxy allows media agencies to remove about 80 per cent of the workload associated with trading TV, Fowler said.

“9Galaxy allows agencies to focus on the client’s needs and what’s important to them by getting our heads out of schedules and focusing on reach-building, activity and client solutions.”

9Galaxy also offers agencies audience forecasting technology which more accurately predicts how programming will rate by using rating data from the last five years, as well as weather information, to estimate an audience number.

“It removes the need for make goods, allowing us to talk to clients with confidence about campaigns in this volatile TV market place,” Fowler said.

For Fowler, 9Galaxy is “essential for the future of the industry” because it creates a “link between machine intelligence and efficiency”.

“It is the benchmark for trading TV in Australia and we can see the future of it in how we trade, not only across demographics but also across biographics and even across client first-party data.”

‘Nine is far ahead of the pack in automation’: PHD
For PHD, the experience of using 9Galaxy has been “seamless and so easy”, Lucy Formosa Morgan, chief investment officer at the media agency said. “We couldn’t fault the process at all,” she said.

“We’ve had a project manager on our side working really closely with the 9Galaxy automation team. We’ve done a lot of non-financial testing while running concurrently live buys, same brief, so we could compare the results, and from there we were able to tweak the briefing process and ensure there were no bugs or hiccups along the way.

“That non-financial testing for us has been brilliant, the linchpin in driving the take-up across the agency.”

9Galaxy has saved traders at PHD a lot of time, Formosa Morgan said.

“In terms of how valuable it is to have guaranteed audience, I cannot begin to tell you the benefits to the agency. The amount of time the guys waste having to go back and forth chasing make goods is ridiculous, so having the guaranteed audience, the guaranteed CPMs on 9Galaxy, saves us so much time on the digital channels.”

PHD has had no issues using 9Galaxy and Formosa Morgan said it is delivering what they need from a reach perspective. “We’re hitting goals,” she said.

Formosa Morgan is confident that automation will become more significant for PHD in 2019.

“I don’t believe it will be for every single client, but for those clients where it does work, yes, we’ll be rolling it out across the agency more and more over the next year,” she said.

“I believe Nine, for a free-to-air network, is far ahead of the pack with an automation process.”

‘Delivering an audience without the need of make goods is a dream’: Avenue C
“9Galaxy has given Avenue C peace of mind when buying,” says Daniel Cutrone, Avenue C director.

“It gives us the confidence to deliver to our clients’ objectives. Never before have we been able to deliver against an audience in a week and this platform enables us to do just that.

“Audiences can be quite volatile, and this gives us the ease to be able to lock in the audiences in that week and deliver in full.”

Cutrone says the 9Galaxy platform gives media buyers “all the quality programming for our business you would expect out of a major network”.

“Delivering on audience without the need for make goods is an absolute dream through 9Galaxy,” he says.

“Time and time again I can remember sitting there going through make goods and short forms with all my managers, and today we can actually deliver against those promises that the TV networks have been harping on about for years and years.

“On this platform we can deliver on those audiences, completely saving all of time, so we can focus on the more important issues like business metrics and outcomes.”