Nine chief sales officer Michael Stephenson resigns
Nine has announced the resignation of chief sales officer, Michael Stephenson, with experienced executive and Nine Melbourne managing director, Matt James, to replace him on an interim basis.
The media giant confirmed Stephenson’s departure on Wednesday.
As CSO for almost a decade, Stephenson was accountable for the company’s advertising revenue across its Total Television, Total Publishing and Total Audio assets.
“Since Michael joined as Director of Sales for ninemsn almost two decades ago, Nine has successfully responded to the changing industry dynamics and consistently performed strongly in the advertising market,” Nine’s acting CEO, Matt Stanton, said.
“During his tenure, Nine has developed the television trading platform 9Galaxy, launched self-serve advertising platform 9AdManager and rapidly grown our BVOD revenue share to 47% in FY24.
“We are fortunate that high-calibre media executive Matt James is stepping in to lead the Sales team to ensure continuity for Nine’s key partners and sales team.
“With experience on both the media and agency sides, a strong background in digital, and extensive knowledge of Nine, Matt is well placed to ensure he hits the ground running with the Sales team during 2025.”
Michael Stephenson
Nine says a recruitment process for a permanent CSO “is expected to be finalised in the New Year”.
The news comes only weeks after James – who has previously worked as the CEO of global media agency, Zenith, and inaugural group CEO of Publicis Media – was confirmed to be moving into a senior strategy role across the wide Nine Group.
Meanwhile, Stephenson appeared on Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast series this past September, where he said the team is “focused” despite the allegations that have rocked the media giant in recent months.
“I think to be in and around media generally, but certainly to be in advertising and advertise in the commercial part of our business, you need to be highly competitive,” he said.
“Bill Shankly very famously once said, ‘First is first and second is nothing.’ And that’s kind of my mantra. So, I’m fiercely, fiercely competitive with humility and integrity [and] fiercely competitive. And I think in anything, life’s not perfect and nor is business. It’s how you deal with life’s imperfections that will determine how successful you’ll be.”
Listen to the full episode here.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Surely he’s going over to Google now to run YouTubes Sales division.
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