Tag Archives: jack matthews

Gillard crushes Rudd, online records

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Julia Gillard’s ascension to Prime Minister has smashed online records for Fairfax Digital properties, as well as nineMSN.

Fairfax Digital reported the Gillard traffic blew away both the Black Saturday Bushfires and Michael Jackson’s death. According to the media owner, smh.com.au recorded more than one million page impressions per hour for two consecutive hours between 9am and 11am.

smh.com.au saw 46% higher page impressions and 66% higher hourly unique browsers than on Black Saturday. Comparatively, TheAge.com.au saw 8% higher page impressions and 61% higher hourly unique browsers.

nineMSN is expecting four million unique hits by day’s end, which would break the previous record of 3.7 million achieved when Barack Obama won the US presidential election in 2008. The network served 300,000 live video streams, setting a record for its highest number in a single 24 hour period.

Jack Matthews, CEO of Fairfax Digital, believes today’s traffic indicates Australians now demand multimedia delivery of political information.

Memery, owned by Matt Granfield, Marketingmag.com.au guru blogger and Marketing magazine writer, leapt on the opportunity for a client’s promotional tour.

Fairfax signs video content deal with Ten

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Fairfax Media has announced a partnership with Network Ten to gain access to the television broadcaster’s national news content.

The content deal will also provide additional opportunities for online advertisers through the Fairfax Digital network. Pre-roll and consumer-choice product Ad Selector will both be available to be used in conjunction with additional video content.

According to Fairfax, video content will be available through the digital news mastheads and will provide users with coverage from Ten to ‘further enhance the editorial content online’.

Fairfax production teams will also be able to cut and create their own stories using live raw footage from the Ten newsroom or file footage from its archives.

“This deal is the first in a significant shift for us as we look to expand video capabilities throughout our network of sites and create new opportunities for advertisers across our inventory,” said Jack Matthews, chief executive of Fairfax Digital.

Fairfax Digital’s head of video, Ricky Sutton, indicated access to news footage should extend the existing production capabilities of the company by an estimated 20%.

“We conducted a survey of our members, and more than 10,000 respondents sent a very clear message that they wanted to see more video across our websites. The relationship we’ve started with Network Ten is just the beginning of us really ramping up our online video offerings this year,” explained Sutton.

Fairfax relaunch National Times

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Fairfax Media has announced the relaunch of past-masthead National Times as an online version only.

Set for an August unveiling, nationaltimes.com.au will present Fairfax’s major political, policy and current affairs discussions in one place. Fairfax said it represented a significant journalistic expansion by the company.

In an effort to enable readers to participate, nationaltimes.com.au will include many interactive features. Fairfax Digital CEO, Jack Matthews, elaborated:

“We are committed to developing a dynamic and intelligent site that gives people a platform to participate in and enrich the national discussion.”

Matthews continued, saying The National Times was synonymous with thought provoking and intelligent journalism. He said that it informed and encouraged debate on important issues of the day and that that will be the commitment of the site.

The masthead has a significant pedigree; the print version (1971-1986) prompted several Royal Commissions. The paper published documents from the Costigan Royal Commission, accusing Kerry Packer of involvement in drug trafficking, pornography, fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. In a nod to this reputation, the online incarnation will feature a “Goanna” column, Kerry Packer’s codename in the paper.

In addition, nationaltimes.com.au will be published on smh.com.au, brisbanetimes.com.au and watoday.com.au.

Fairfax Digital snaps up The Weather Company

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You take your pick of meteorological puns on this one, but its another example of Fairfax Digital focusing on one of their key business areas – online news and weather.

Fairfax Digital has taken a 75 per cent stake in The Weather Company and with it weatherzone.com.au. Mark Hardy, the founder of The Weather Company, holds the remaining share, and is being retained in the role of managing director.

The Weather Company provides weather content to organisations in the energy, insurance, telecommunications, retail, rural/ agricultural and media sectors, with clients including Network Ten, ABC, Elders, Ninemsn and AGL. Using data from a range of providers including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the company produces bespoke forecasting services for larger clients and repackages weather and related content into simple feeds for smaller clients.

In addition to providing free content, The Weather Company’s weatherzone.com.au site provides detailed information to thousands of subscribers in the agriculture and marine professions, as well as outdoor enthusiasts.

Fairfax Digital CEO Jack Matthews said, Fairfax Digital is all about breaking news, and providing current weather information is the ultimate in breaking news.

Fairfax Digitals news sites and leading agricultural site farmonline.com.au currently provide weather forecasts from weatherzone.com.au and will continue to, as we constantly look to augment the service we provide our viewers and in particular, to rural and regional audiences. Weatherzone.com.au also provides services to a number of other companies throughout Australia and we would expect that to continue.

The Weather Company Managing Director Mark Hardy said, Fairfax Digitals experience and deep resources will allow us to further invest in our meteorological services and continue to deliver excellence in the presentation of credible weather content across a broad range of clients and industries.

The Weather Company was founded in 1998 with the goal of providing services to improve the presentation of weather in the Australian media. Full commercial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

Fairfax Digital and Melbourne IT launch service providing marketing services to SMEs

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Fairfax Digital and Melbourne IT today announced a new joint venture called Advantate, designed to give the extensive SME market in Australia and New Zealand simple, cost-effective access to search engine marketing services. The service is expected in Australia in May 2008.

According to IAB Australia’s Online Advertising Expenditure Report
released in February 2008 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising
in Australia for the 12 months to December 2007 was worth almost $1.3b,
with year on year growth of 34.5%. Search marketing and directories
advertising experienced more than 56% growth for the same period, to
$622m.

Mr Theo Hnarakis, Melbourne IT CEO and managing director said:

Small business owners have embraced the internet as a key business
tool, but the number of online marketing options available to them is
huge. Search engine marketing is a compelling alternative to
traditional advertising as businesses can create, track and update
their campaigns in real time. Were excited to give them the help of an
expert provider like Advantate.

Advantate will provide SMEs with a single point of access to search engine marketing services from a range of leading providers including Google, Yahoo Search Marketing, Ninemsn and Fairfax Digital networks. The company will initially focus on reselling pay per click (PPC) advertising, and will manage these PPC campaigns on behalf of its SME customers.

Jack Matthews, CEO of Fairfax Digital said:

Advantate gives Fairfax Digital a sound commercial opportunity to extend our offering into the area of search – a large part of the Australian online landscape. This initiative gives SMEs access to pay-as-you-go search facilities, to support their business.