BotW: Will Trump's trade war trigger an advertising tax?; A wobbly week on the Index; and do TV debates still matter?

Apr 12, 2025

Welcome to Best of the Week, written on Saturday morning at beautiful Sisters Beach, Tasmania, after a couple of days in Sydney for the Future of TV Advertising conference. Twenty glorious days without travel to the mainland now stretch in front of me.

Today: Has the Trump slump killed the Domain deal?; Do TV debates still matter in elections?; and the EU’s big potential move on taxing the platforms.

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Has the Trump drop killed the Domain deal? Probably, but we may need to wait another 40 days to find out

What an odd few days on the Unmade Index.

As our chart of the year to date shows, Trump’s trade wars had an immediate negative effect on Australia’s listed media and marketing stocks.

Let’s take the key moments of the year. As the biggest company on the Unmade Index, the movements of Nine (60% owner of Domain) have a bigger influence than any other stock.

That first jump in the Index towards the start of February represents the moment when rumours of CoStar’s interest in buying Domain went public, with the further jump when it was confirmed on February 21.

The Unmade Index was slow to react when Trump made his tariff announcements. It only seriously chased the market down on Monday of this week when it lost 5.3% in a day. That was the second biggest one-day fall since we started the Unmade Index in 2022. The only bigger drop was in June 2022, a fall of 5.97%.

When the rest of the world’s markets jumped when Trump announced his pause, the Unmade Index did improve, but not enough to make up for the week of declines.

Logically, the CoStar bid for Domain must be in some danger now. The environment has changed in the few weeks since the bid went public. If CoStar decided that the $4.43 per share it has put on the table for Domain is now too much, it could choose to simply walk away - it has not yet made a legally binding offer.

The current share price of Domain - $4.01, down from $4.47 just over a fortnight ago - suggests the market does not think the deal will get done at the price.

It will take a little longer to play out. CoStar is only 13 days into its four-week due diligence period of looking at Domain’s books. It can then extend that by a further fortnight if it wishes.

That would be roughly 40 days from now. With Trump’s tariff pause set at 90 days, that would be a lot of uncertainty for CoStar to choose to drop $3bn.

If CoStar walks away then we’ll see big falls for Domain, Nine and the wider Unmade Index.

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Prime Minister

Albanese and Dutton debated at the Sky News forum | Pic: Sky News

I can’t recall a prime ministerial debate that had less of a sense of anticipation.

Last June, I cancelled meetings to watch CNN’s broadcast of the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

On Tuesday night, instead of watching Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton go head-to-head, I went to see the Sex Pistols. If I hadn’t needed to talk about the debate on last night’s episode of MediaLand, I wouldn’t have bothered to watch the replay.

The debate was a bloodless affair with Albo and Dutton both on their best, civilised behaviour and anchor Kieran Gilbert maintaining control throughout.

In the space of quite a short time we seem to have gone from a time when televised debates were high stakes to verging on the irrelevant.

Sky News is claiming the broadcast reached 410,000, with its pay TV audience boosted by free-to-air viewers in regional Australia. That’s a great number for Sky News, but I doubt many minds were changed.

On Wednesday comes a bigger test, with the duo heading for the ABC’s new Parramatta studio to do it all over again.

It will be a test of whether TV debates still move the needle in Australian politics.

EU contemplates an advertising levy

And sticking with politics, yesterday saw a fascinating development in Europe. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU, told the Financial Times that Trump’s trade war could be the trigger for the creation of a tax on digital advertising.

“We are developing retaliatory measures. There’s a wide range of countermeasures . . . in case the negotiations are not satisfactory.
“An example is you could put a levy on the advertising revenues of digital services.”

I suspect this is an example of the EU not letting a good crisis go to waste. With the global platforms adept at shifting their profits to low tax countries, putting a levy on the service, instead of the profits, might be a better way of stopping the tax dodging.

The key target would be the US-based platforms (plus TikTok). If you’re already at war with the US on trade, then there’s no reason not to go for it.

One fascinating side effect for me would be what this means for the global hold cos as they pile into principal media. They could find themselves blundering into a taxation minefield.

If the EU makes it work, then Australia would likely follow.

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