About

Key executives

Chief executive officer

Mark Britt took the helm of Mi9 in September 2011. As Group CEO, Mark runs all Mi9 activities across Australia and New Zealand including; ninemsn, Windows Live, Bing, Cudo and investments in iSelect and RateCity. Before being appointed CEO Mark sat on the Mi9 Board of Directors.

Mark has a wealth of executive and commercial experience in online, advertising and consumer technology fields and the Australian, European and Asia-Pacific markets. He is an established leader and has an impressive track record in identifying breakthrough business opportunities, executing high profile joint ventures and pioneering transformational partnerships in digital.

Mark returned to Australia after spending four years with Microsoft, most recently as General Manager for Consumer and Online. In his time at Microsoft, Mark built the first integrated consumer team in Asia Pacific, bringing together MSFT's consumer software, advertising and marketing assets for the first time.

Mark is passionate about the vision of combining old and new media, and is a true believer in the opportunity for data and technology to create amazing new content experiences and deliver effective advertising results for clients and users.

Chief executive officer

Matt James joined Mi9 as the MD of Media in June 2012, bringing with him 21 years of global media communications experience.

Prior to that, Matt was MD at Starcom Mediavest Group (Publicis) London, and prior to that role was MD of OMD International London, for a 12 year stint - during which, at age 27, he was named one of the youngest MDs of a UK top ten media agency.

Matt's well accustomed to presenting on the global stage and has worked on some of the world's most renowned super brands; Microsoft, X-Box, General Motors, Apple, Virgin, Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Wrigleys and Nissan. He has also tutored in media at Cambridge.

At Mi9, his remit is to spearhead Mi9 Media, including;
Mi9 advertising, MMN, the Ad Exchange and Bing Ads.

Matt, his wife and three children moved from the UK to Australia for his role at Mi9, following career stints in each Paris, New York and LA.

General Manager, MMN & Microsoft Advertising Exchange

Marc Barnett is responsible for driving Mi9's overall commercial and trading strategy, pricing, yield and ad product roadmap. He also oversees the Microsoft Media Network and Microsoft Advertising Exchange and is responsible for driving the strategic direction of programmatic trading, performance media and third party networks.

Marc re-joined Mi9 in December 2011, after spending time with Microsoft Advertising in Singapore. As the Director of Specialist Sales for Asia Pacific, he was responsible for driving advertising revenue for Microsoft's full suite of online advertising products across the region.

Previously, Marc spent four years with ninemsn in a variety of commercial roles, mostly recently as the Director of Commercial Operations and Performance Media. In this role, he was responsible for launching and managing MSDR, the Performance Media business and managing the display Ad Operations team.

He first commenced his digital media career as a member of the start-up team that launched Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing) in the Australian market. As Sales Manager, he led a team responsible for developing search marketing demand and driving revenue across direct and agency clients.

Chief Technology Officer

Richard was appointed Mi9's chief technology officer in November 2010 and his role was recently expanded to chief data and technology. In this role, Richard takes ownership of ninemsn's advertising technologies, including behavioural targeting and the advertising exchange, as he leads a team empowered by data driven intelligence to better connect the company's advertising and audience businesses.

With a wealth of IT experience spanning across financial services, online media, telecommunications, oil and retail, Richard has worked as an independent consultant, offering IT strategy and interim CIO services to clients in Australia and abroad.

Prior to this, Richard held roles as division director at Macquarie Group, interim IT director at MoneySupermarket.com in the UK, and managing director of ThoughtWorks, London. Richard was also founder and director at Open Mobile Payments and head of business financial services strategy at Westpac.

Commercial director

Hal Crawford oversees the entire ninemsn content division, encompassing all 80+ content sites across the web portal, Bing, and MSN products.

Hal has been at the forefront of digital news and content creation in Australia since he joined ninemsn in 2006 as news editor. In 2010 he was appointed Head of News and in 2011 he became Editor in Chief.

Hal believes the audience knows best and his team is driving the ninemsn strategy to "put users at the heart of the story". Deep insight into user preferences and behaviours are dictating how ninemsn creates and curates content.

He began his journalism career at The West Australian newspaper, working as a general, police and political reporter before specialising in technology journalism. After leaving The West he travelled and wrote as a freelancer for magazines, newspapers and websites. Hal lived in The Netherlands for three years, working for Radio Netherlands before returning to teach journalism at La Trobe University in Melbourne. He now lives in Sydney with his wife and three daughters.

Rebecca Haagsma, Director of Convergence

CFO and strategy director

Rebecca Haagsma's role highlights the commitment of both Mi9 and Channel Nine to harmonising and leveraging shared assets. She has particular focus on second-screen experience "Jump-in" and bringing TV and digital even closer together.

Before being appointed to her current role, Rebecca was Director of Product Innovation, responsible for publishing an exciting, challenging and innovative roadmap of products across the ninemsn network and across devices. Prior to that she spent two years as Head of Lifestyle and Mobile Audience for ninemsn, overseeing the ACP masthead digital properties along with ninemsn food, health and beauty products, as well as running the tablet and smartphone audience strategies and implementations.

Prior to joining ninemsn, her previous roles include but are not limited to: Digital Director at ACP Magazines, Project Director of the global online directory Hotfrog, Group Publisher print and digital of the marketing and media titles (including B&T) at Reed Business Information and Publishing Manager for the Historic Houses Trust of NSW. Rebecca is also a mother of many (including an 19 year old currently living in Argentina).