How streaming services like 9Now, Kayo could swing the election

From 12.01am this morning, Australians can legally no longer be subjected to election ads when they watch television or listen to radio. But the 33-year-old rule requiring traditional media observe three-day pre-election blackouts has never been more redundant thanks to the internet.

The media blackout predates Australia’s adoption of the internet and has never been updated to include it. Websites, social media platforms, instant messaging services and other tech platforms and mediums are not included.

It also doesn’t apply to the closest digital analogue to traditional broadcast media: video- and audio-on-demand services.

These services have emerged as major players in Australian election advertising thanks to their combination of huge viewership and sophisticated targeting capabilities. And there’s very little transparency about how they’re being used to win elections.

“The audience for [Australian online video] advertising has exploded,” Foad Fadaghi, managing director and principal analyst at Australian technology consulting firm Telsyte, told Crikey.

A Donald Trump-aligned political a boasted that it was able to target “streaming persuadables” who were undecided voters in groups more likely to consume these online services (the young and diverse) during the 2024 presidential election. This allowed the super PAC to speak to the people it wanted to, without wasting money to show ads to people it didn’t want to during traditional television advertising.

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“So I don’t care how much more money you have than us to spend, you’re wasting 85% of your money,” Make America Great Again Inc pollster David Lee told The New York Times.

There’s a handful of porous and overlapping categories of video-on-demand (VOD) that are used by analysts: streaming video on demand (SVOD), broadcast video on demand (BVOD) and user-generated content (UGC).

What these refer to are subscription streaming platforms like Netflix, free-to-air (FTA) channels’ catch-up services like ABC iview, and social media platforms like YouTube or TikTok. Similarly, radio has streaming services competitors like Spotify and podcasting.

A lot of attention has been paid to the role of platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s video platforms in politics and elections. Comparatively little has been paid to the other VOD platforms, despite them being exceedingly popular with their millions of viewers who consume content on everything from mobile phones to televisions. Little wonder they’re similarly popular with election advertisers.

“During election time, there’s a lot of [streaming political advertising]particularly by those who think they’re forward-thinking,” Fadaghi said.

These services are rapidly cannibalising traditional broadcast media. According to data from Australia’s media regulator, in June 2017, 70% of Australian adults said they’d watched FTA TV in the past week, compared with 18% who had watched FTA streaming services. By June 2024, 47% of adults had watched FTA TV in the past week, compared with 43% who had watched FTA streaming viewers.

Assuming the near-decade-long trend of falling FTA television numbers and growing streaming audiences has continued, we may have already passed the tipping point where more people watch video from the free-to-air television at their leisure.

On top of that, there’s the paid streaming platforms. In 2024, 69% of Australians surveyed said they’d watched a paid service in the past week — the most popular of all types of video. Major international streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime do not allow political advertising but their domestic counterparts like the Foxtel-owned Kayo do.

These services combine a familiar format — television-style advertisements — with the sophisticated advertising capabilities that most people associate with the tech giants. Fadaghi said the sophistication of Australian VOD advertising targeting is much like what is offered by Meta or Google.

He gave an example about how it might work in an election: “You’d imagine there’d be more advertising concentration around marginal seats, and there might be more specific targeting to certain demographics. So say Albanese is not doing as well with young men, so maybe they target advertising to them.”

These platforms know more about each user because of the requirement to create an account. Plus, companies like Foxtel and Nine both have access to enormous troves of data including information, like where you shop and travel, or if you’re a renter, young mum or gamer.

Combined with the ability to specifically micro-target advertisements, electoral advertisers are given an unprecedented ability to contact people with customised messages.

But despite all this information at advertisers’ disposal, the public knows very little about political parties, groups and candidates using VOD advertising. Perhaps surprisingly, these services are actually less transparent than the big tech companies. Anyone can go and look at the political advertisements being run on Meta or YouTube, including details about how they’re being targeted and how much has been spent. But the same ads on 10Play or Stan Sport are completely opaque.

Australian advertising data firm Adgile Media founder Shaun Lohan described VOD advertising as a “black hole”.

According to Fadaghi, while election advertisers might have some of the most developed advertising technologies at their fingertips, their skill at using them doesn’t quite meet that level of sophistication.

“While you have heat maps and all kinds of clever advertising tech that’s being used by fast-moving consumables or other industries, I’ve got the feeling that maybe our politicians aren’t quite at that level of deep marketing.”