Monday, September 24, 2012 – ninemsn today took the wraps off a new look Nine News, unveiling a faster, social and mobile-optimised news platform. The beta site goes live today ahead of the official news service switchover from mid-October.
Nine News is already Australia’s number one online news source attracting over 3.5m Australians each month, the new site has been developed based on four key foundation principles;
Social – an increased emphasis on social integration and sharing that ‘puts the audience at the heart of the story’;
Video – huge growth in easily digestible video news with Australia’s leading TV news service, Nine News;
Speed – an up-weighted focus on breaking news faster;
Devices – a new ‘tap friendly’ format which works seamlessly across both mobile and tablet
“We believe our audience knows best and gone are the days of one way communication. Insights about their preferences and behaviours, coupled with their ability to be part of the story through social are now dictating how we will create and curate news,” said ninemsn’s Managing Director Alex Parsons.
“Consumer distribution via social media already drives huge traffic to the site and we expect this will account for a third of all traffic as the new site further enables social referrals,” says Parsons.
The new Nine News features social signals embedded throughout the site, with increased comment and share functionality. A key driver for the ninemsn audience is the need to stay up with the news for social reasons – to know and understand the basis of conversation, or to be able to initiate conversation with fresh news stories that others are not yet aware of.
Video is becoming a mainstream mode of news consumption with more than 30 million video streams on the ninemsn network in August 2012 alone. The new Nine News site is designed to be video centric and enables stories to be told with video more easily.
“As the market leader in online news and video, we understand the benefits video has to telling the news story. Whether it be chopper footage delivered directly, live to site or raw footage from cameramen at the scene, video is the way of the future and is fundamental to our consumer news experience,” said Parsons.
“Consumers want to know about news it as it happens and have it available to them across all devices,” says Parsons.
Mobile consumption is also increasing with mobile forecast to become the first screen for consumers by 2014. The new technology platform that powers Nine News enables a flexible environment for authoring, producing and publishing content across multiple platforms simultaneously. Reducing the need to have separate PC and mobile sites and dramatically cutting the time it takes to publish news across the ninemsn network.
The new Nine News launches with advertising partner BMW, who are running their BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe campaign in a range of premium ad placements across the fresh new site.
“Advertisers were asking for a cleaner, less cluttered site. The new Nine News presents a premium environment with higher-impact opportunities for brands to connect with their consumers and it’s great to have an imaginative and premium brand in BMW on board as our launch partner,” said Parsons.
New commercial opportunities include:
Gallery Ad: Working with partners to create imaginative, creative ad experiences with minimum pixel quality so they are easy to view on mobile devices. The super-size gallery provides a visually rich environment to tell a single brand story reaching over half a million unique browsers per month.
A new scrolling ad unit: affectionately known as ‘Scrolley’ pins to the browser and stays with the reader as they scroll down the page, doubling time spent with the ad unit.
Video: As video continues to grow on the site, so too will pre-roll video opportunities.
Mobile: A premium format 300 x 250 mobile medium rectangle ad unit will be available on the new mobile site when it launches in mid October.
/ENDS
For further information please contact:
Ebony Beaton
Mi9 Coommunications Manager
02 8001 4202
0438 724 048
ebony.beaton@mi9.com.au
