Nine has renewed its partnership with AI-driven brand safety and contextual advertising company Mantis.
This expansion of contract came following a series of campaigns that delivered strong commercial outcomes for advertisers across Nine’s digital publishing network.
The renewed agreement will see Nine continue to deploy Mantis’s technology across its news, lifestyle, sport and entertainment environments, while expanding its use into Nine’s growing suite of apps, including the recently launched GoodFood app.
Tackling over-blocking and unlocking premium inventory
A key focus of the partnership has been addressing the issue of over-blocking caused by traditional keyword-based brand safety tools.
Analysis across 498 Nine URLs found that agency blocklists flagged 285 pages as “not brand safe”, while Mantis’s bespoke AI technology identified just 47 pages as genuinely unsafe.
By applying contextual understanding tailored to Nine’s editorial content, Mantis enabled Nine to surface more than 120% additional brand-safe inventory and unlock a 219% increase in brand-safe pages.
Daniel Roman, national data commercialisation manager at Nine, said the technology has helped the publisher strike a better balance between advertiser confidence and commercial outcomes.
“Mantis offers a unique advantage because it was designed and built by a publisher,” Roman said. “We are fully confident that Mantis has a deep, innate understanding of the daily challenges we face as a publisher, especially the issue of imprecise and overly cautious buy-side blocking that often affects premium inventory and delivery.
“By leveraging Mantis, we can provide our advertisers with the utmost confidence that their ads will be brand-safe, while simultaneously unlocking a significant amount of premium inventory that would have been blocked by less sophisticated brand safety and contextual tools.”
Contextual campaigns deliver sales uplift
Beyond brand safety, Mantis has delivered measurable performance results for Nine’s advertisers.
A recent campaign on GoodFood targeted relevant food and lifestyle content for a grocery brand, placing ads alongside recipes and dining articles to reach high-intent shoppers.
Using the brand’s attribution reporting, the campaign delivered a 34% uplift in sales among poultry buyers and close to a 50% uplift among fresh food buyers, highlighting the effectiveness of contextual relevance combined with brand suitability.
Supporting major moments like the Olympics
The partnership has also supported Nine during high-stakes broadcast moments. As Australia’s Olympic broadcaster, Nine faced complex advertiser restrictions imposed by both the IOC and AOC.
Mantis enabled Nine to navigate those requirements while maintaining brand safety and contextual relevance, setting a precedent ahead of the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026.
Ben Pheloung, general manager at Mantis, said the partnership has proven the commercial value of publisher-built brand safety solutions.
“We’re extremely pleased about our partnership with Nine to date, delivering successful brand safety and suitability solutions, which have translated into sales lift results for its advertisers,” Pheloung said.
“We’re excited to continue working with the team there and look forward to further expanding this to prove what we can deliver in the app environment.”
The renewed partnership supports Nine’s wider strategic priorities, including growing Total Publishing data revenue, improving ad yield and sell-through rates, and embedding AI across operational and targeting practices.