The first season of Love Island Australia has set a new bar for cross-platform for television and digital performance on a major Australian free-to-air program.

The joint 9Go!/9Now commission saw the show’s cross-platform audience nationally average 511,000 across television and digital driven by Nine’s audience first approach.

• Consolidated 28 – 265,000
• LIVE VPM – 16,000
• VPM – 230,000

TOTAL EXPOSURE = 511,000

Source: OzTAM Consolidated 28 Data. As at 9/7/18. Love Island Australia Season 1. 27 May – 05 July 2018. Total People. 5 City Metro & Combined Agg Markets. OzTAM LIVE + VOD VPM Data. 27 May – 9 July 2018. 

Love Island Australia has driven significant growth in the key demographic of 16-39s with the number of viewers in this demographic rising more than 160 percent, compared with the week before launch.

P16-39 (Average Audience)

• Prelaunch – 48,425
• Series Average – 127,659
• Change – +164%

P25-54 (Average Audience)

• Prelaunch – 94,811
• Series Average – 161,685
• Change – +71%

GB + Child (Average Audience)

• Prelaunch – 24,571
• Series Average – 47,241
• Change – +90%

Total Individuals (Average Audience)

• Prelaunch – 175,011
• Series Average – 265,815
• Change – +52%

Source: OzTam and Regional Tam combined. 28 day consolidated data as at 9/7/18. Series Average of Love Island Australia against Pre Launch (20:30-21:30) timeslot.

In digital Love Island Australia also smashed previous records for digital with episode one today passing the 300,000 mark on 9Now. There were also more than 20 episodes with 200,000 viewers on 9Now and some episodes recorded more than 60 percent of their combined overnight/BVOD  (broadcast video on demand) audience come via digital. The program also smashed records for live streaming numbers, in some instances exceeding 10 percent of the linear TV audience.

“Love Island has redefined the traditional view of what television in Australia is,” said Hamish Turner, Nine’s Program Director. “The show broke all the rules, with an audience first approach, which saw the viewing on 9Now smash records but most importantly Love Island has provided a blueprint for what the future of television looks like.”

“In early 2018 Married at First Sight set new digital records, but Love Island Australia is unlike anything we’ve seen on Australian free-to-air television to date, in that it targeted an audience of millennials and gave them the choice about when and what platform they wanted to watch it on.”

The success of Love Island Australia has also grown the 9Now subscriber base by hundreds of thousands over the course of six weeks while the Love Island Australia app had more than 225,000 downloads.

Love Island Australia has used an innovative social media strategy to reach a younger audience and engage them with its content. With a focus on Instagram, the show drew the highest engagement and most new followers for any Nine TV series account in a single season to date, while the Islanders’ accounts grew 1.48m followers over the course of the series.

Nine also experimented with YouTube posting short videos on the video platform which over the course of the series built a subscriber base of 180,000 and generated 150m views.

Whilst beneficial at reaching an extended audience and driving interest both here and abroad, YouTube does not currently provide a commercialisation opportunity that recognizes the value of our premium content.

“When we announced Love Island Australia at our 2018 Upfronts we promised we would build a whole new franchise for the Australian market that would engage an audience of 16-39s at scale,” said Michael Stephenson, Nine’s Chief Sales Officer.

“By any measure Love Island Australia has delivered on all metrics in spades. Despite the myths around reaching millennial audiences on television Love Island Australia has proved that television – be it terrestrial TV or BVOD – is still the most powerful way of reaching them at scale in a cost-effective way.”

For more information:
Nic Christensen
Head of Trade and Internal Communications
nchristensen@nine.com.au