Australia's Nine Network to offer new programmatic mobile ad formats
Australia's Nine Network has announced the launch of a programmatic partnership with Playground XYZ to create a new mobile programmatic advertising system. With the proposed system, advertisers will be able to access Nine’s existing six million Australian monthly users with a single ad execution to work across all of the brand’s platforms. Nine has already made three mobile ad formats available: Super Skin, Side Push, and Top and Tail.

Nine today announced it will make it easier for agencies and brands to buy custom high-impact mobile advertising products with the launch of a new programmatic partnership.

The deal sees Nine extending its strategic partnership with local creative ad-tech player Playground XYZ to provide a new mobile programmatic offering, which allows advertisers to reach more than six million Australians who access Nine’s digital properties on their smartphone every month.

Ben Gunn, Nine’s director of sales, digital, said, “Mobile advertising success in 2016 is as much about delivering an engaging mobile user experience as it is about providing a compelling, measureable outcome for the advertiser.

“This new mobile programmatic offering provides both unique targeting efficiencies and creative excellence on what is the fastest growing marketing platform.”

The partnership allows marketers to drive a deeper connection with consumers on mobile through high-impact creative, while minimising campaign implementation time through Nine’s programmatic marketplace.

Among the mobile ad formats now available programmatically are the Super Skin, Side Push and Top and Tail.

Rob Hall, CEO of Playground XYZ, said, “When we show people these highly customised ad formats the assumption is that they’d be a pain to trade. We’ve worked tirelessly on making scale and ease part of the offering.

“On the creative front that means building one ad execution that works seamlessly across all certified sites. Now, on the trading front, we’ve enabled the delivery of these ads through Nine’s programmatic marketplace.

“This is a real milestone in our journey to create a new ecosystem around custom advertising. Site skins, bespoke shapes and sizes, new and different ad types – these are the things people often say can’t be automated, but here it is. Nine were one of our first publishing partners and we’re thrilled to be continuing to innovate with them.”

Effective immediately, buyers can access the new mobile ad units through Nine’s programmatic marketplace. This includes inventory across Nine’s flagship brands nine.com.au, 9Now, 9News, Wide World of Sports, 9Honey, 9Coach, 9Pickle, 9Elsewhere and the recently launched food and cooking site 9Kitchen, plus Microsoft’s MSN.