Ninemsn brand set to disappear as Nine renames site
One of Australia’s most popular online news destinations is set to disappear with the Nine Network planning to rechristen Ninemsn as Nine.com.au from June.
The move has been anticipated since the media company ended its joint venture with Microsoft at the end of 2014, but was put on hold as it embarked on a now defunct joint-venture with British publisher Daily Mail.
Last year Nine unveiled a new visual identity aligning its suite of assets towards the core Nine brand, such as digital channels 9Go and 9Gem.
Parsons: “We looked at how we could unify the Nine brand family further”
Alex Parsons, Nine’s chief digital and marketing officer, said in a statement: “We started a branding process late last year which looked at how we could unify the Nine brand family further. In doing so, we have created a family of brands which consumers both know and trust.”
While Ninemsn used to dominate the monthly Nilsen online news rankings the loss of traffic from being the sign-out page for Hotmail meant is has been slipping down the rankings.
In March it fell to fifth place behind former stablemate Daily Mail Australia, with a unique audience of 3.3m users.
Ninemsn editor-in-chief Hal Crawford is set to depart the masthead at the end of the month for a role in New Zealand, with managing editor Emma Chamberlain set to take charge of the editorial side of the business.
Nine still acts as the sales house for Microsoft’s digital assets in Australia as part of a separate agreement.
Not to mention when Microsoft web browsers started defaulting to MSN.com.au instead of the NineMSN portal.
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Kind of sad. When we developed the JV between PBL and Microsoft back in 1997 (19 years ago!!!!) there was this big argument between whether it should be MSN9 or 9MSN/Ninemsn..Obviously 9 was a bigger brand in Aus than MSN so that logic won the day… All the best to the new nine.com.au…..I guess 19 years as sep online media brand was not a bad run!
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