IPG Mediabrands Australia has decided to ad its data to the Standard Media Index (SMI), strengthening and creating a more precise key indicator of monthly media agency bookings.
Jane Ractliffe, SMI AU/NZ managing director, says the move will underpin confidence in Australia’s advertising market at a critical time.
Now all media stakeholders have a database representing almost all national marketer ad spend, she says.
"We are thrilled to have Mediabrands data in the Australian database and this news will be welcomed across the industry as advertisers, media companies and the finance market seek the most reliable data possible to track the market’s return to growth post COVID," she says.
"Advertisers will be able to allocate their media investment with even more confidence as they have clear benchmarks for tracking their share of voice within their product category across all major media – including all Digital media."
Ractliffe says SMI has been working with Mediabrands in Australia for many months to carefully integrate bookings into the database.
The process will be fully complete with the release of next week’s end of month February data.
"We have been progressively adding current and historic Mediabrands data into the AU database in our fortnightly data releases for many months, with the historic data ensuring all analysis remained like-for-like and the only change being the growth in the amount of ad spend captured,’’ she says .
Mark Coad, the chief executive officer of IPG Mediabrands Australia, says the SMI data is the industry benchmark.
"As a leading Australian media agency we are always keen to ensure our clients have access to the best advertising insights possible, and the data provided by SMI through its exclusive partnerships with our industry delivers information on many aspects of the media market not available elsewhere,’’ he says.
"At all times the most important issue for Mediabrands has been to ensure the ongoing privacy of all our client data and this has been achieved by slowly adding more and more data with every SMI data release."
The move by Mediabrands Australia follows the group’s decision to join the launch of SMI’s Canadian database last year.
Mediabrands will also soon be joining SMI’s US data pool. In NZ, the IPG agencies FCB and Mediabrands have been long-standing NZ data partners.
Mediabrands’ Australian move will also see Nick Durrant, the general manager of their trading group Magna Global, join the SMI Advisory Board which oversees the group’s data development.
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