Background: Nine Entertainment is one of Australia’s largest media groups. It owns Channel Nine, home of the Australian Open and 60 minutes as well as major mastheads like the AFR, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Add Stan and a portfolio of major AM radio stations, and you’ve got a media heavyweight built largely through its merger with Fairfax.

What happened: Nine has been pruning its portfolio lately. It sold its majority stakein Domain to US-based Costar and now it's pruning even more. Nine has announced it will sell its radio arm, including 2GB, 3AW and 4BC, for around $56 million. It’s also offloading its regional TV network to WIN Corporation.

What else: At the same time, Nine is buying outdoor advertising company QMS Media from Quadrant Private Equity for an enterprise value of $850 million. This is all part of Nine's plan to reshape its business for future-facing ad channels.

What's the key learning?

💡Not all media ads are equal. A TV ad, a billboard and an Instagram ad all deliver very different outcomes per dollar of spend. As a result, advertisers have become much more deliberate about where spend actually delivers returns.

💡As a result, media companies are much more intentional about what media inventory they have in their portfolio. Outdoor advertising is one of the strongest performers. Digital out-of-home (OOH) in particular has been growing fast, with OOH revenue up more than 8% year on year.

💡On the other hand, radio ad revenue fell 4% in the September quarter, while regional media continues to decline so clearly Nine is pruning parts of its portfolio that no longer align with where growth is heading.