How Nine made the most of Married at First Sight's big ratings

On Sunday night Nine aired its finale of Married at First Sight which capped off a successful season for the show after dominating its timeslot and key demographics. On the night of the show's finale Nine had the largest primary and network shares of the year. The episode was the most watched program of the year with a metro audience of just under 1.4m metro and a national audience of 1.816m.

Mediaweek spoke with the director of sales for television and radio at Nine, Richard Hunwick about the commercial success of the broadcaster’s flagship show.

“It dominated in its time slot it was a 60%+ share in all its demos and the average audience across a season was 1.5m across linear TV but then another nearly 450,000 watching per episode via live stream or on-demand as well pushing those numbers up to the 2 million mark, which I think is pretty unique compared to what is out there at the moment.”

Richard Hunwick

Hunwick said that MAFS did incredibly well commercially with a record number of sponsors.

"Our goal was to grow our sponsor numbers from a full broadcast cross-platform perspective year on year, and to introduce a number of new sponsors which we did."

The show’s sponsors included returning brands KFC, Suzuki, BUPA, Youfoodz, LION and Tradie. Plus new sponsors Specsavers, Disney+, Snooze, Menulog and MyPayNow.

“We wanted to see advertisers use our platform in a way that integrated their assets into the show more as well. Specsavers and MyPayNow for instance made specific creative to include MAFS in their commercial inventory and delivered a great outcome.

“The Specsavers TVC which Powered built as part of a broader conversation was fantastic and provided it with a great brand alignment and then allowed the ratings to do the rest.

“MyPayNow was a bit cheeky and a bit different introducing their new mascot but did it in a way that was very MAFS and utilised the show to do that within billboards which was great.

“Youfoodz managed to demonstrate how you could integrate right across the show, with products in show but also used branded playouts and using MAFS social platforms to drive some of those outcomes."

Another goal for Nine was helping Nine’s BVOD platform 9Now generate its own commercial outcomes.

“We also wanted to make the most of the digital audience with over 25 millions screens and over a billion minutes screened. It is really nice to see guys like Menulog, Estée Lauder, Ebay, and Schweppes all get involved from a digital-only level. We have got a property that allows you to get mass reach in that digital space. As well as having those guys who were sitting on television or cross-platform we are starting to have advertisers come in and activate in that digital-only space.

“Menulog utilised talent alignment with Martha Kalifatidis who is a past contestant with Martha’s Red Win Moments which was a bit of fun and created some new content. It is really important to leverage these campaigns in an intelligent and additive fashion, we don’t want to interrupt the viewers but we want to give them a little bit more.”

Starting strong with MAFS

Hunwick said that the strong lead in provided by MAFS was vital in kicking off the rest of the year starting with Lego Masters which launched the following night.

“We always want to get off to a fast start, we have started a bit later this year due to the delay of the Australian Open, but what it has done is A) monetise strongly that front period of the year to do some good deals early and strengthen our quarter 2 results and B) Give us a platform to promote our other shows like Lego Masters.

“No one has been watching anything but MAFS for the last three weeks so it’s a great opportunity to get out there and talk about what we have coming out, while the other guys have products that they are launching but haven’t had the benefit of that bedrock.”