After another volatile week across eastern Australia as authorities grapple with the continued impact of Covid-19, working from home in regional Australia certainly does have its attractions.

That is a benefit for staff from Central Coast-based media agency Multi Media. Founder and managing director Meg Gossert (pictured) lives in the quiet countryside in the Yarramalong Valley, just a 10-minute commute from the office where the small team look after a mix of national brands.

It’s from there that the agency managed to dodge a few bullets too, with revenues actually up in the first half of 2020 at the IMAA-member agency.

“We are not a large company, but my team has been with me for a very long time,” Gossert told Mediaweek. “One has been with me for 18 years and we don’t have staff attrition. We have a lot of long-term clients and they value dealing with senior people who will be here tomorrow.”

Gossert started her business at the end of the 1980s. “I had been with another media agency for five years and I was one of the senior people and I could see a lot of the smaller clients got thrown to a junior who didn’t have any experience. Those clients weren’t managed with the due diligence they deserved. I thought to myself one day I would start a media shop that would specialise in looking after the smaller clients.

“When I resigned from that agency I had planned to take three months leave and decide on what I would do next. I was approached by an accredited agency to go and work for them three days a week. That grew into a situation where they wanted to develop a more solid media arm. I had the name Multi Media registered for when I started a business.

“That agency I was associated with hit hard times and eventually closed, but Multi Media kept trading and we took over their clients.”

Gossert said they buy much of their own media, but it hasn’t always been the case. “When I first started we didn’t have accreditation and we placed through Initiative. In those days it was Merchant and Partners and I dealt with Dennis Merchant and Alan Robertson.

“After that we went into [former Aegis Media Australia CEO] Richard Halmarick’s operation and we were placing through Carat and using their resources for our back end. We still use them for the television bookings and other larger bookings we place.”

Gossert has seen the rise of digital, the decline of print and TV’s challenges against new video competition. “The writing was on the wall for print as soon as digital platforms started growing. With the pace of life these days people just don’t have the time to use a newspaper like they used to.”

Multi Media still uses print to some extent for clients in the agricultural space who want to reach farmers. “Some of the weekly print titles that service that sector are still quite strong.”

She also noted that audiences in regional areas are also quite digitally savvy. “I hope a lot of those regional titles manage to survive as the digital products grow for them.”

Multi Media hasn’t had as tough a time as some agencies have this year. “We had a strong six months to start the calendar year,” said Gossert. “We didn’t have the downturn in spend that a lot of agencies did. In fact we had an increase in billings year-on-year up to June 30. It has hit us now though. July and August will be a lot slimmer, but I feel the back end of the year will return to normal levels of trading.”

The business seems ready to deal with any headwinds. “We run a lean ship,” stressed Gossert. “We couldn’t get JobKeeper because we didn’t have a decline in our revenue earlier this year.”

While Multi Media does have space in North Sydney, the team work mainly out of Tuggerah on the NSW Central Coast. “It is very convenient for all of us because we live close by. Many of us moved from the North Sydney office to the Central Coast around 15 years ago and it saves us a lot of travel and a lot of time and we are far more productive.”

Gossert has partnered with clients who have grown over the years. She tells a story of how they had Mirvac many years ago when the property group was spending in the region of $80,000 on media. “When they finally left us they were billing something like $15m.”

As to how Multi Media is enjoying its membership of the IMAA (Independent Media Agencies of Australia), Gossert said:

“Sometimes we independents feel like we are an island in a large sea. It has been fantastic to get support, and to be able to share knowledge and information that is regularly passed through. We are finding it very beneficial.”

Catch up radio podcasts continue to be on trend with a total of 3.2 million* downloads recorded at the end of June, this is a 49%* year on year increase across SCA’s Hit and Triple M Network shows.

SCA digital key highlights – June 2020:

• 8.9 million active live radio streams, up 52% year on year, with 9.7 million total listening hours, up 38% year on year*
• Live radio streaming on smart speakers is up 58%* year on year accounting for 20% of total listening hours*
• Mobile & tablet listening recorded more than 3.8M total listening hours, up 48% year on year*
• Listeners have loved the return of their NRL fix on Triple M, with active live radio streams of Triple M NRL up 40%** year on year, and total listening hours (54,000) up 46%** year on year
• PodcastOne Australia listening over the COVID-19 period, March 1 to June 30 has increased 100%*

“Following a huge month for live steaming and radio podcast listening in May we expected to see huge growth when compared to the same time last year,” said SCA chief sales officer Brian Gallagher.

“There is a huge demand for news and entertainment across all digital listening devices and in particular this period has shown that Triple M really does rock footy! The season restart has seen an increase of fans tuning into NRL games via the live radio stream and they are doing so more frequently and listening for longer.”

—

Sources

*AudioMetrix | June 2019 v. June 2020, OMNY | June 2019 v. June 2020
** AudioMetrix | 30/05/2019- 27/06/2019  v. 28/05/2020 – 28/06/2020

Landmarks ID enables SWM to integrate its technology directly into the 7plus app to collect, analyse and provide rich audience profiles on 7plus app users.

The new partnership improves SWM’s ability to understand 7plus audiences’ ‘real world’ behaviours, brand affinities and more importantly, where they spend their time. Information is based on real-world consumer movement data driven from the growing audiences of 7plus which routinely break viewership records and is currently in its third consecutive month of market leadership.

SWM has created an extensive point of interest (POI) network which includes all key advertisers’ locations or points of distribution via use of a ‘geo-fence’ network. These also include significant landmarks like sports stadiums, train stations, airports, shopping centres and more.

SWM’s director of audience intelligence Andrew Brain said: “Our ongoing desire to understand our audiences’ behaviour both online and offline enables us to make smarter programming decisions, deliver deeper strategic insights and better experiences for both audiences and brands.

“Our new partnership with Landmarks ID demonstrates our commitment to audience intelligence. It’s the first of many affiliations within our eco-system that seek to ensure our key partners are able to better plan, buy and measure our high value audiences with precision, delivering proven results.”

Landmarks ID’s founder James Fogelberg said: “Partnering with Seven and powering their real-world audience intelligence will enable advertisers to target 7plus users based on empirical real-world brand affinities, behaviours, loyalty and more. As an example, advertisers will be able to target in-market purchase intenders and communicate with audiences who visit their competitors’ locations.

“Landmarks ID develops rich first-party customer profiles for clients based on the businesses, locations and brands their customers visit in the real world and engage with on their mobile devices.

“We look forward to delivering rich audience intelligence for SWM and their advertising partners.”

The new partnership came into effect on July 1.

The series is the first German-language series by Netflix with season one released on December 1, 2017, the third season of the show was released on June 27 which has helped its surge up the charts. The series explores the implications of time in the aftermath of a child’s disappearance which exposes the secrets and hidden connections of four estranged families.

The 100 has maintained its spot at #1 on the Overall TV chart in Australia and New Zealand while The Mandalorian is still #1 on the Digital Original chart in NZ.

A new entry on the Digital Original charts in both Australia and New Zealand is Doom Patrol after the show’s second season premiered on June 25, 2020, on both DC Universe and its new home HBO Max. The show is based on the DC comics of the same name, with the characters introduced to TV audiences through a backdoor pilot in the first season of DC’s Titans. The show stars Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Joivan Wade, Matt Bomer, Brendan Fraser, and Timothy Dalton.

America’s Got Talent has entered the overall TV chart after moving from FOX8 in Australia to Channel Seven. The show features returning judges Howie Mandel and Simon Cowell as well as Heidi Klum who returns after missing season 14, and new judge Sofía Vergara. Klum and Vergara replace Gabrielle Union and Julianne Hough as judges. Terry Crews returned as the host for his second season on the show.

Seven News 1,193,000/1,155,000
Nine News 1,098,000/1,005,000
ABC News 846,000
A Current Affair 782,000
7.30 623,000
The Project 323,000/538,000
10 News 464,000/283,000
Sunrise 268,000
The Drum 217,000
Today 202,000
News Breakfast 201,000
SBS World News 193,000

Tuesday TV

Seven: Home and Away lifted from 639,000 to 669,000 for its second episode of the week.
Big Brother went close to toppling The Voice all people – the gap between the two shows narrowed to just 8,000. Big Brother had the edge 16-39 and 25-54.
Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back then did 253,000.

Nine: A Current Affair was just under 800,000 for the second consecutive time this week. It was part of the programming combo that saw Nine win all people for the third consecutive time this week. Nine won Tuesday all people for the first time in five weeks.
The Voice slipped to 703,000, it’s smallest audience this year and possible the smallest ever for the franchise in Australia. It was an important episode though with the final Playoffs and then the distribution of the wildcards.
Nine then launched another singing competition – series 18 of American Idol with Ryan Seacrest hosting and judges Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie. It was all pre-Covid with the series launching in June 2019 in the US. The first night audience was 278,000.

10: On MasterChef each dish from Callum, Reynold and Laura looked stunning as they delivered them to the judges at the end of the final immunity cook as Back to Win heads to finals week.
“This dish is a game changer,” said Melissa as she enjoyed Reynold’s dessert inspired by Harry Potter and called the Golden Snitch. “Inspired cooking, first class, the best dish he’s ever made in the MasterChef kitchen,” added Jock. It was going to be hard for Laura and Callum to compete, but both their dishes also looked great, and tasted good too according to the judges. “Now we are going to have a very difficult decision as to who will go into the top four,” said Melissa.
All the recent episodes have been close 1m and this one was too with 949,000 watching Reynold get immunity and a place in the final four.
A Montreal Comedy Festival special followed with Becky Lucas, Tommy Little, Ronnie Chieng, Jim Jeffries and more. Earlier in the night Pete Helliar joked with Jeffries on The Project that he introduced Little to the Montreal audience as “Australia’s favourite dickhead.” The special had 319,000 watching.

ABC: Foreign Correspondent was on 408,000 followed by Joanna Lumley’s Hidden Caribbean on 381,000 after launching last week with 452,000.

SBS: The final episode already of Who Do You Think You Are? featured country music singer Troy Cassar-Daley with 472,000 watching which was a series high.
Marc Fennell was again hosting Insight with a big audience of  298,000.