IPG Mediabrands out of SMI: why did they quit and what could it mean for the industry?
Earlier this week, one of the biggest media holding groups in Australia IPG Mediabrands quit key industry metric Standard Media Index. Nic Christensen looks at what could be behind the move and what it means for the index, agencies, media owners, clients and the industry alike.
It’s probably fair to say that Monday afternoon’s announcement that IPG Mediabrands was quitting the Standard Media Index (SMI), globally, took many in the industry by surprise.
In fact, you could probably go one step further and say, four days later, the decision still perplexes many industry figures.
But let’s go back three steps and begin by talking about the position in the industry SMI has carved both locally and globally.
Any index with 40+ data contributors should not allow back calculations on any of its contributors’ revenue. The biggest mistake here is in thinking one could be competitive just by aggregating raw numbers and producing a highly transparent index (without advanced analytics). While one may think they have a product, they don’t, because all they’ve done is give their raw data away. Worse, it’s not even their data… But their contributors’. And now with their customers trained on seeing this much transparency, they expect nothing other than the raw data. This is one great reminder that data itself is not a sustainable product.