Josh Simons. Credit: Vinyl Group
Vinyl Group claims to reach 55% of Australians online, putting it alongside Nine and the ABC, and CEO Josh Simons said the acquisition strategy behind that number is far from finished.
Simons told a public investor webinar this week the audience figure, measured by Ipsos Iris, was assembled through three acquisitions in roughly three months, lifting online audience to 55% from 51%.
In the news category, Vinyl claims 54%, behind only News Corp at 63%, and level with Nine and the ABC at 55% each.
The portfolio has come together cheaply, by Simons' own account.
Pedestrian Group was acquired from Channel Nine for nominal consideration this week before Time Out Australia followed as a franchise agreement with Time Out International, which retains a revenue royalty.
Simons told investors the price amounted to "less than the cost of your morning latte." Both came on the back of the Val Morgan Digital acquisition in March.
Vinyl is acquiring subscale cultural assets that carry established audiences advertisers want but lack the scale to monetise alone. Simons argues Vinyl's technology infrastructure unlocks the value those types of operators could not access independently, a case yet to be proven at the consolidated level.
Vinyl now controls editorial across a cluster of youth and urban culture titles, Pedestrian, Junkee, Vice Australia, Concrete Playground and Time Out, that collectively deliver an audience agencies have historically chased across multiple buys.
The commercial proposition centres on what Vinyl calls 'adaptive media', embedding brands within cultural content across multiple channels, rather than placing ads alongside it.
The model is similar in principle to branded content, though Simons argues the distinction is scale and distribution, adaptive media, as Vinyl defines it, spans owned editorial, live events, social and emerging channels simultaneously rather than sitting within a single content piece or platform.
Legacy media delivers reach but is losing audiences under 40, Simons told investors. Social delivers targeting but formats are interruptive and privacy regulation is tightening.
Adaptive media, he claims, delivers both, plus what he calls "meaningful brand connection", the missing piece neither channel provides.
Simons told investors Vinyl ran more than 300 such campaigns last year. The common case study is a Mentos activation spanning live events, editorial, creator partnerships and video across its network of titles.
"This isn't just theory anymore. This is working in practice," Simons said.
The push comes as the ad market softens. Simons told investors buyer hesitancy is real, driven by geopolitical uncertainty and fewer briefs coming through.
"There's hesitancy while these macro conditions persist," he said.
Vinyl forecasts revenue to rise to $40 million in FY27 from $20 million in FY26, and its first EBITDA-positive result at $3.5 million.
Simons acknowledged some revenue duplication across the combined portfolio would need to be addressed.
"We are now viewed as a large, fast-growing media organisation with national audience reach. This is difficult to replicate," he said.
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