Mark Frain appointed CEO of Multi Channel Network (MCN)
- 18 July, 2018 10:24
Multi-Channel Network’s (MCN) chief sales and marketing officer, Mark Frain, has been appointed as the company’s new chief executive officer, effective immediately.
Frain replaces outgoing CEO, Anthony Fitzgerald, who is leaving the organisation after 15 years at the helm.
MCN chair, Stacey Brown, congratulated Frain and thanked Fitzgerald for his contribution to MCN. She said Frain’s appointment heralded a new era for MCN, as it continues to strengthen its market leading position.
“Mark has diverse global experience across sales, strategic planning and commercial development and is ideally suited to lead the next generation for MCN,” Brown said.
“He is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most respected sales executives and has the vision, expertise and leadership skills to drive MCN’s future growth as it remains at the forefront of multi-screen trading.
“On behalf of MCN’s shareholders, Foxtel, FOX SPORTS Australia and Network Ten, I’d like to thank Anthony for his contribution as CEO for the last 15 years and wish him well for the future.”
Frain said he was thrilled to take on the new challenge.
“I’m proud to be offered this opportunity and have absolute confidence in the MCN team and the strong future we can build together for this business,” he said.
Frain joined MCN in 2005, heading up the Strategic & Brand Integration team for several years before taking on the role of Sydney sales director in 2010, then moving to national sales & marketing director in 2011 taking on responsibility for sales and revenue growth across all MCN divisions: TV, digital, mobile and sport.
In 15 years, MCN has grown to a $1.2 billion operation representing a 45 per cent commercial audience share of television and the largest broadcast-quality digital video network in Australia.
Last year, MCN brought its audience-based programmatic trading capabilities to Network Ten. The decision to launch the Dynamic Trading model across the commercial TV network came after a trial in the latter part of 2016, as well as the rollout of the Landmark system at Network Ten in May last year. Under the model, select advertisers can trade audiences rather than just airtime.
According to MCN, proof of the effectiveness of the real-time, audience-based trading platform was demonstrated in 2016 when the group delivered 60 per cent of all Foxtel advertising campaigns through Dynamic Trading.
Also last year, MCN struck a deal with analytics vendor, SAS, to develop what the pair claimed was Australia’s first data platform providing advertisers with a single consumer view across linear TV and digital platforms.
Named SIA, the data management solution aimed to unite all of MCN’s different media data sources, including TV, online, mobile, location and out-of-home, with data from agencies and advertisers.
