Speaking at the third and final 2020 Foxtel Media Showcase event today was Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain.

He reminded guests watching online how the first showcase highlighted what the recent content deal with WarnerMedia meant to the platform, and how the second offered a deep dive into sport on the Foxtel platform.

The third event coincided with the October 23 25th anniversary of the launch of Foxtel in 1995 and highlighted the power of the Foxtel group.

“While this year marks 25 years of delivering premium content and high-value audiences, we continue to evolve our business and lead the market in creating new ways to deliver client growth,” said Frain.

“Through the haze of the pandemic, marketers and agencies need simple, effective solutions. With less money to spend, you need to make smarter decisions. You need media that works and ads that get noticed.”

To people not yet perhaps taking full advantage of what Foxtel can offer, Frain reminded them the platform is more than the fourth line item on a TV plan and more than a TV broadcaster that also does some digital.

Frain also took a pot-shot at Seven’s Upfront the day prior and its various claims about audience size. “We are #1 for live and on-demand BVOD consumption – perhaps Seven forgot that we are a commercial player yesterday?”

Foxtel also reminded the Showcase audience about its intimate relationship with audiences.

“We have always been customer-focused, and now, we know your customers more profoundly than ever,” said Frain. “Because our iQ3 and iQ4 boxes, Go, Now, Kayo and Binge apps are collecting real-time data, we can see exactly what people are watching, every second they are watching it.”

Foxtel explained that the viewing and audience data from its platforms was now all in the one place.

“Our frenemies have made big claims in this space in the last few weeks – but at the end of the day, their broadcast TV information – still the main part of their business – is reliant on panel data and inference.

“Ours are the unimpeachable second-by-second actions recorded on millions of digital set top boxes – and until smart TV’s in Australia hit critical mass, those guys will always be playing catch up.”

Introducing Foxtel Xplore

The new Foxtel Xplore data platform is the only data source in market to include both broadcast TV and streaming viewing data, from over 1.1 million iQ3/iQ4 set-top boxes and 1.2 million digital devices currently used by Foxtel Now and Foxtel Go customers.

“Foxtel Xplore is a key element in bringing the collective smarts and growing scale of the Foxtel group to advertisers, and uniting the power of all of Foxtel’s platforms into a powerful, intelligent video offering. We have unleashed the data from our 7.5 million viewers,” said Frain.

Frain said Foxtel was well ahead of the market when it launched Multiview, its panel of over 200,000 people in partnership with Quantium.

“We change the game again today, launching the only connected analytical solution across broadcast television and digital – this time, with data from 2.3m digital devices. That’s 11 times more than Multiview and a ton more than the OzTAM STV panel.

“Think TV recently reinforced the power of television to drive advertising awareness and demand metrics. It has proven to deliver twice the sales impact of the next best channel.

“At Foxtel, we’ve always known our audiences are highly engaged. Our viewers pay for their subscription, so they value the content more, and more actively choose to watch.

“It’s pretty intuitive – you attach more value to the things that cost you money.

“Coupled with less advertising clutter, deeper brand integration and multiple audience access points, our argument for highly engaged audiences simply makes sense.

“We look forward to partnering with you; inspired by the abundant opportunity before us, emboldened by the collective power of the Foxtel Group, armed with connected IQ data, and confident that, on our platforms, your ads get noticed.”

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Top Photo: Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain at this week’s Foxtel Group Showcase

Called Q.Measure TV, the partners say the solution will offer the type of reporting that advertisers have come to expect in the digital world – timely, accurate and immediately actionable.

Quantium’s executive for media & marketing, global markets, Lawrence Puang, said: “Existing solutions prove TV works. Q.Measure TV goes further in enabling advertisers to optimise their TV advertising strategies to maximise sales.

“This is a game changer in measurement and accountability for a sector that spends, on average, more than two-thirds of its advertising budget on TV.

“Never before have FMCG advertisers been able to see exactly who they reached at an anonymised level, to measure how those consumers have responded and then accurately optimise campaigns to drive customer acquisition and incremental sales for existing shoppers,” Puang said.

How Quantium works with its partners

Adgile Media creates proprietary, rich, structured data from live and on demand TV content to validate media schedules and fuel smart TV measurement and analytics. Fetch TV measures the viewing behaviour of 7% of Australian TV households, across nearly 3m hrs of viewing per day.

Fetch CEO Scott Lorson said: “Closed loop reporting, built on high quality first party data sets, and at a scale that reliably reflects the total market, is incredibly powerful. It promises to reinforce the value of free-to-air TV advertising, and enhance the ability of advertisers to optimise their investment decisions for this critical media.”

Partners in pilot study

Quantium worked with a group of six FMCG organisations to pilot the new capability, including Mars Wrigley Australia, for whom marketing insights manager, Joanna Lepore, said: “We haven’t seen anything like Q.Measure TV in the Australian market; the robustness and granularity of analysis is truly impressive. This will be an enormous value add for brands looking to innovate in advertising, both to more accurately demonstrate ROI and to better understand our audience through their reaction.

“As an evidence-based company, we were proud to be part of the product development process from the very beginning, as it allowed us to see the complexity and rigour behind bringing this innovation to market.”

How Q.Measure TV works

Advertisers will access performance data across a range of metrics delivered through the Q.Measure TV Interactive Portal which makes extracting actionable insights incredibly simple.

Key data points include conversion rates, precise demographic breakdowns on consumers reached and then converted and the advertising levers that can be pulled to drive acquisition and sales.

Q.Measure TV also enables advertisers to compare the success of their campaigns with others in their category enabling them to react in real-time to changes in category marketing dynamics.

Q.Measure TV will officially launch to the marketplace in Q2 FY21.

Your Weekend with Tim Gilbert will be heard on Friday’s 7pm-8pm across the non-NRL/AFL months, providing tips and ideas on how you can make the most of the weekend.

“Whether it’s fishing, travel, spending time in the kitchen or fixing the back deck during lockdown, Tim will have something for everyone each Friday night.” said Greg Byrnes, head of content for Nine Radio.

“Tim knows talk, our audience knows Tim and this new show is the perfect launchpad for his long-awaited return to radio.”

Gilbert has worked across Channel 9 and Sky News but began his broadcasting career at 2GN in Goulburn, before several years at 2UE.

“I’m excited returning to my first love, radio, three decades after my first gig in Goulburn. In a very heavy news cycle, we’ll be taking you down the bright side of the road for an hour each Friday night and exploring everything that’s good in the world. I can’t wait to work with some of my great mates again and chat with the Nine Radio listeners,” Gilbert said.

Ever since Big Little Lies, everyone has been trying to replicate that formula, and that includes everyone from Big Little Lies. Reese Witherspoon repeated her character for Little Fires Everywhere (Amazon Prime) and now The Undoing has Nicole Kidman playing another ill-used wife.

The Undoing is disappointing and not even the reliable Hugh Grant can save it. All of these chick lit adaptations are starting to blend into one, and they are getting less relatable with every new crime of passion.

Seven tried doing rich in Between Two Worlds (7Plus) so now they are doing the opposite with two new Aussie comedies. Housos 2020 and Regular Old Bogan (Monday on 7mate) are outrageously rude and crude. Good on Seven for supporting local comedy and proving that political correctness has not killed Aussie comedy.

Paul Fenech has been drop kicking Housos around for nearly a decade as it’s gone from SBS to cinema screens. Housos 2020 sees the residents of Sunnyvale back and looking worse than ever, all locked up together in one filthy house during coronavirus lockdown. Not for the faint-hearted. As Paul Fenech would say, it’s a bit full-on.

Regular Old Bogan is an original Aussie adult animation series. The first was Pacific Heat (Foxtel, 2014) but that Working Dog production didn’t click because it was set on Queensland’s Gold Coast but looked like Florida’s Gold Coast.

Regular Old Bogan doesn’t make that mistake and keeps everything Strayan as. The family are foul-mouthed and dodgy, but because it’s a cartoon they come across more loveable and less ugly than Housos. Looks promising.

Apparently Aussie TV only accepts bogans in comedies. We have never cracked a bogan comedy drama hybrid, like New Zealand did with Westside (9Gem) and Outrageous Fortune (why isn’t this show streaming somewhere).

Brave New World

Brave New World (Stan) is set in the future, where life is one long rave with drugs and sex. It’s the most ambitious adaptation yet of the classic Aldous Huxley novel and it’s gorgeous to look at, but the sex scenes are weirdly coy and fake.

Demi Moore is a sexy bogan in Brave New World but sadly, her role is as skimpy as her nightie. I want moore. Demi has always been underrated so let’s hope this is the start of another comeback. Just nothing dreary about rich white people doing it tough though.

Primetime News
Seven News 933,000/923,000
Nine News 847,000/836,000
ABC News 662,000
10 News First 301,000/176,000
SBS World News 149,000

Daily current affairs
A Current Affair 680,000
7.30 555,000
The Project 262,000/436,000

Breakfast TV
Sunrise 253,000
Today 237,000
News Breakfast 189,000

Late night news
The Latest 385,000
Nine News Late 140,000
ABC News Late 92,000
SBS World News Late 46,000

Thursday TV 

Seven: Home and Away wrapped its week with Luke Jacobz asking a colleague, “Are you going to charge me with stealing your wife, because that’s all you have on me at present.” The triple episode was on 484,000 after three previous nights in the mid to high 500,000s.

Seven unleashed The Front Bar Grand Final Edition to a national audience at 8.30pm on the primary channel. The audience subsequently climbed to 479,000 after 330,000 last week. However, the Sydney audience refused the invite after a bold programming move – just 27,000 in that market. In Melbourne there was 299,000 tuned in.

Highlight of a strong episode was Fitzy on location in a Sydney car park with a truck full of turf. Joining Fitzy were David Koch and the truck driver who looked very much like Nova Sydney breakfast EP Tom Ivey.

Other guests joining Mick, Sam and Andy included Andy Lee, Gil McLachlan, the Rocca Brothers Anthony and Sav plus Eddie Betts.

The Latest then did 385,000.

SAS Australia Uncensored saw the first two episodes go our back-to-back with a late-night audience of 112,000. The uncensored episodes are also available on 7plus.

Nine: A Current Affair managed to find a lawyer urging the recipients of tens of thousands of coronavirus infringements to tear them up as they may be “unenforceable”. The episode was on 680,000 after three nights well over 700,000.

Three hours of medical factual series started with Paramedics on 430,000, then Kings Cross ER on 339,000 followed by A+E After Dark with 231,000.

10: Guests on The Project included Magda Szubanski with the panel and Sacha Baron Cohen with Angela Bishop. The 7pm audience was 436,000.

The Bachelorette saw the sisters continuing trying to find the right man. The audience of 499,000 was down from 534,000 a week ago.

Gogglebox followed with 632,000 watching on the day married couple Matty and Sarah Marie and their friend Jad hosted a Foxtel Showcase event for advertisers.

ABC: Scottish Vets Down Under was on 351,000 after a launch audience of 338,000 a week ago.

The repeat first episode of Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure was on 237,000.

SBS: The penultimate episode of Michael Mosley: Queen Victoria’s Slum had 155,000 watching.

Secrets of the Tower of London followed with 131,000.