Nine's sales boss works on the upside

The strongest is the marked uplift in the $2.7 billion metropolitan TV advertising market.

Wiltshire estimates for the six months to June this will outpace the same period last year by at least 2.5 per cent, despite an estimated $50 million in revenue booked into the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The other bright spot is the cross-media deals of parent company PBL Media that have been announced since last year.

Wiltshire says when the network is a participant these are delivering revenue returns well above what it would have made on a more traditional advertising deal.
The newest cross-media deals will centre on real estate website myhome.com.

au, a PBL Media joint venture with Microsoft. Nine has created a half-hour 40-week TV show aligned with the site, which contains local and network program segments and advertising focused on the selling of houses.
Wiltshire says that if the TV advertising sales business has changed in the past two years, it has changed by the 10 per cent of Nine's revenue that is now tied up in cross-media deals with other parts of the PBL Media family.

In every case we see an incremental gain for us, Wiltshire says. That's the beauty of having the right advertising idea.
There is a third bright spot, decidedly dimmer than the other two, in the flickering form of Nine's ratings performance so far this year.

Rival network Seven is streets ahead in prime time for the first three weeks of the year with 38.7per cent of all viewers, more than four share points ahead of Nine, on 34.5.

That said, Nine lost the week that ended last Saturday by the lesser margin of 2.2 points and kicked off the fourth week of the ratings season with a win on Sunday night, defeating Seven's Ugly Betty/Grey's Anatomy pairing with a CSI double-header of its own.
The problem with Nine's ratings performance is that while media buyers acknowledge the network is holding up slightly better than expected, most suspect it is a supernova, where the light is visible long after the star has collapsed and burned out.

The networks ended last year with Nine on 35.8 per cent of the prime-time commercial audience compared with Seven's 35.7 per cent, but Seven edged ahead with 36.

1 per cent of the metropolitan revenue compared with Nine's 35.1 per cent.
Wiltshire's challenge is to reduce the size of the $70 million black hole in Nine's 2006 metropolitan network TV revenue caused by falling ratings, a hole that made Seven the biggest revenue earner for the first time in a non-Olympic Games year.

This year, with Nine widely expected to lose the ratings battle to Seven, it is looking down the barrel of a similar revenue decline. That could be exacerbated by the expected loss of its dominant position in Melbourne, where Nine is understood to have attracted 40 per cent of revenue last year, far higher than its ratings position deserved.
Wiltshire declines to discuss his revenue goals for the year, but he sees his job a little differently, of course.

My brief was to come in and create a bit of change and look at how we set Nine up for the future in a revenue sense, he says.
Nine is learning to engage earlier in the sales process so we can provide more than the 30-second spot. Last year we went through a phase of adjustment.

We're a network of stability in 2007, he says.
As part of that adjustment, Wiltshire restructured Nine's three-city sales team in the eastern states, installing Ian Paterson as sales director in Melbourne, and appointing centralised network specialists in areas such as direct-to-client sales, headed by Ian Sheppard, and research, led by Peter Pynta.
An integration team works on sales deals where advertisers are integrated into TV programs, as well as those that have a broader PBL Media relationship.

Wiltshire will have a role to play in standardising sales for PBL Media's expected new acquisition, the Nine station in Perth, but says it's too early to talk specifics.
Media buyers say Wiltshire has made a good impression because he is realistic about Nine's ratings position.
But according to the head of at least one big media agency, realistic has equated to a 50per cent discount off the rate card given to big advertisers in client deals this year.

Wiltshire says the claim is definitely an exaggeration , and there has been no reduction in the price advertisers will pay to reach every thousand viewers.
While some buyers say Nine is holding firm on price, others say the network is compromising on advertising volume and yield.
One interesting battle this year will be the outcome of the Group M rate negotiations, which work on a financial-year basis.

Group M's trading director, James Parkinson, has suggested the metropolitan TV market, which declined by about 1per cent last year, suffered because of a refusal from all the networks to deal on its terms.
Wiltshire rejects that view, but with Group M sniffing the wind for its second joint rate negotiation, due to kick off within weeks, he says Nine is here to work with everybody .