Ninemsn Rocked By Another Departure

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday May 29, 2008

Paul McIntyre

THE third senior executive in as many months has quit ninemsn, Australia's biggest online portal. The PBL Media-Microsoft joint venture has lost nearly 400,000 users in the past year.

Ninemsn's widely regarded commercial director, Jason Scott, told staff yesterday he would leave the company in late July.

Mr Scott was a leading candidate for the role of chief executive at ninemsn before that job went to Tony Faure, the one-time Australian head of Yahoo! Mr Scott denied his exit was linked to Mr Faure's appointment last year.

According to the latest Nielsen Online figures, ninemsn's audience fell from 8.2 million unique users in April 2007 to 7.8 million last month, although its key rivals such as Yahoo!7, Fairfax Digital and Sensis also experienced declines. News Digital Media was the only top five publisher to increase its audience base on a year ago, as a result of rapid growth from MySpace.

Despite its audience losses, ninemsn remains the clear online leader, having 2.9 million users more than Yahoo!7.

After yesterday's announcement PBL Media moved quickly to extend its secondment of Jo Pollard, PBL's group sales and marketing director, to ninemsn until at least the end of July.

Mr Scott's departure follows those of two other senior staff. The head of content and network innovation, Jane O'Connell, has moved to Singapore to take a regional role with Microsoft, and ninemsn's marketing director, Tony Thomas, has also left.

Mr Faure could not be contacted yesterday but ninemsn's corporate affairs manager, Amanda Millar, rejected suggestions that the departures were linked and that ninemsn was set for a restructure.

Online industry executives said Mr Scott's departure was a blow for ninemsn and there was still tension between PBL and Microsoft over the joint venture, a point Mr Faure recently rejected.

There were also suggestions this week that Mr Scott was about to join Microsoft as it continues to push aggressively into the global digital media and online advertising business.

After receiving regulatory approval to acquire the US-based Avenue A/Razorfish, Microsoft is a global player in online ad serving technology and providing usage data. As part of the Avenue A/Razorfish deal, Microsoft owns creative and online buying agencies.

In Australia, Microsoft now owns the full service creative and media buying group Amnesia, the Atlas ad serving platform, online performance advertising network DrivePM and a 50 per cent stake in ninemsn.

Asked whether he was in talks with Microsoft, Mr Scott said: "It's a great company. Of course, I would be talking to them. Ninemsn has been tremendous but the big thing for me is this is five years. It's time to have a crack at something else. I'm taking this opportunity to have a good look in the market."

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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