Credit: Karl Abuid via Unsplash
Australian media agencies are generating more video advertising data than ever but are they are measuring it correctly?
Video advertising reached 29% of Australia's total ad market in 2025, growing 19% to $5.4 billion.
Yet IAB Australia's 2026 Video Advertising State of the Nation Report, published at the organisation's Sydney event, found a significant gap: while nine in ten agencies have a unified strategy for planning video campaigns across screens, 25% rarely or never unify effectiveness measurement across those same screens.
Casey Greig, head of strategy at Audience Group, said the volume of data available was itself part of the problem.
"Data is like crack to us. We all get addicted to it. We're fed it every single day, but it can also be extremely overwhelming," said Greig.
"It's our job as an agency to simplify it and genuinely tell you what we should be looking at and what are the early signals."
Greig said the solution was simplification, not more tools.
"Not everyone has the luxury of running market mix modelling and brand tracking longer term. It's important that we are really clear around a simplified structure and what is signalling early performance, long term and brand term," said Greig.
The measurement gap is compounded by infrastructure problems few agencies are discussing openly.
Speaking on stage at the IAB Australia event, Julia Edwards, director of programmatic at Nine Entertainment, said a single IP address in Australia could represent up to 100 households.
“Yet, so many frequency models use IP address as the main foundation for frequency management, and that's a huge problem for us in streaming," said Edwards.
Natalie Stanbury, director of research at IAB Australia, said the inconsistency of data signals across video environments was a central challenge.
"The research shows buyers are moving towards more advanced outcomes measurement, but the consistency of data signals still varies across video environments," said Stanbury.
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