Nine has delivered “extremely impressive” strategies and propositions in place for 2020, says one top media buyer.

Barry O’Brien, founder and Chairman of Atomic 212, is impressed with Nine’s decision to keep a consistent slate for the year ahead, saying “to be a good network you need good consistency in terms of programming, and Nine have got that”.

O’Brien also pointed to the success of one of Atomic 212’s initiatives, where it worked Tourism NT onto its “Win a Top End Wedding” competition which launched on Today. The campaign was designed to leverage interest in the new Australian movie, Top End Wedding and drive holiday visitors to the Northern Territory by giving away a dream wedding in the Top End.

“We had good stuff this year with Top End Wedding and we did that with the Today show. The results that came out of that were pretty awesome and it was a good story across the board,” O’Brien said.

Turning to the data announcements, a key topic of the Upfront night, Michael Stephenson, Nine’s Chief Sales Officer, told the room that Nine will continue to grow 9Now as Australia’s leading provider of premium commercial video.

“From today, 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,” Stephenson said.

“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.”

O’Brien said this announcement was important: “The program is one thing, but then outselling it is really good. Michael Stephenson’s offering of the data platform to compete against Facebook and YouTube was very impressive.”

Nine’s 2020 Upfront was “quite spectacular and went to a different level that I didn’t think it could”, O’Brien added.