Vincent Misfud. Credit: Guideline
Guideline SMI (Standard Media Index) has added more independents and Accenture Song to its media agency booking database as it builds an ad pricing product for Australia and New Zealand, AdNews can reveal.
The move is part of a broader international expansion by Guideline, a US-founded company, which acquired SMI in 2022.
The expansion is changing the makeup of Guideline SMI's underlying data. The company started with data from holding companies but has been adding large independent and mid-market agencies to create a broader view of advertising spend.
Guideline CEO Vince Mifsud told AdNews SMI's data now covers about $200 billion in annual media spend.
“We see large independents and mid-market advertising as well. So we're getting a better cross-section of the entire market,” he said.
Guideline SMI has a team focused on adding data contributors, maintaining existing relationships and expanding its coverage in the mid-market.
The company had added a significant number of independent Australian agencies to the SMI dataset over recent months, expanding its view of the market beyond the major holding companies.
And the company is building a pricing product for Australia and New Zealand, revealing what advertisers are paying.
The product tracks what advertisers pay for individual ad units, including CPMs. In the US and Canada, the company already combines that pricing data with its ad spend data.
Australia currently has Guideline SMI's spend data but not ad pricing. The ANZ launch will bring the two datasets together, giving customers visibility into both how much is being spent and what advertisers are paying for individual ad units.
Mifsud said the company's competitive advantage was the accuracy and completeness of its data, which is sourced through relationships with contributors rather than modelling and extrapolation.
“It's actual spend,” he said.
Guideline SMI's data is showing growth in retail media, digital out-of-home and connected TV, while sport remains a significant source of advertising spend.
Mifsud said linear television was more nuanced than the broader narrative of decline suggested, with sport advertising remaining important.
“Most of linear TV, people say, ‘Oh, there's less ads on linear TV.’ But our data shows that for the sporting events and the leagues, there is a lot of spend and it's still very material,” he said.
Digital out-of-home is another area where Guideline SMI is seeing growth, including new digital inventory appearing in locations such as petrol stations.
Retail media is also expanding the number of businesses generating advertising revenue, with companies such as Uber and retailers adding media operations alongside their core businesses.
The company is also beginning to see advertising spend appear on emerging platforms, with Mifsud saying money being spent on advertising on OpenAI was now appearing as a new category in Guideline SMI's data.
“It is showing up in the market,” he said.
Mostafa said Australia's advertising market was following the same broad trends as the US, but with a delay.
“What surprised me and astonished me, actually, is how closely they match the US trends, but with a lag,” Mostafa told AdNews.
The comparison is part of Guideline's broader international data strategy, with trends visible in one market providing an indication of what may happen in another.
The company is also expanding the business that sits behind the data: media plan management.
Mostafa said his recent visit to Australia had highlighted how much media planning and management remained dependent on documents, Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs.
He said Guideline SMI's media plan management platforms could automate parts of the workflow, connect media planning with financial systems, procurement and purchasing, and provide earlier detection of errors.
“We're talking about millions and millions of dollars. One mistake could be a million dollars or more,” Mostafa said.
The media planning business is also another source of data for Guideline.
Mostafa said the company's media plan management platforms were used by large agencies and brands, with the data held within those systems close to $350 billion.
That $350 billion figure is separate from the roughly $200 billion in annual media spend covered by Guideline SMI's advertising intelligence operation. The $350 billion relates to data held within its media planning platforms, while the $200 billion refers to annual media spend covered by its ad-spend intelligence.
The company is using both datasets as it develops its position around AI in advertising.
Mifsud said Guideline is not trying to become an AI company. Instead, it wants its advertising data to become the foundation on which AI tools can operate.
“We're the data layer within the AI world. We're not an AI company per se. We're the data that powers it,” he said.
The company has built AI tools that allow customers to ask natural-language questions of its data and has added Model Context Protocol servers so the data can connect with external AI systems.
Mifsud said the technology could be used in media planning and modelling, as well as financial modelling, market analysis and pricing strategies.
He said the quality of the underlying data would become more important as AI was used to make decisions.
“AI without data is nothing. You will not get anything reasonable or of value out of it,” Mostafa said.
Guideline is also using AI inside its own business, with Mifsud saying its engineering team had built agents that work alongside employees through internal channels.
The company has just over 200 employees, according to Mifsud.
“The talent, the overall talent of the company is way above the size of the company,” he said.
The company does not see AI as a replacement for media planning work commissioned by agencies. Mifsud said the main opportunity was to make the data already contained within media plans more accessible to AI systems.
“It's more about the data than it is reducing input or things like that,” he said.
Mostafa said brands were demanding more analytics, real-time reporting and access to data, with AI giving them more ability to analyse information themselves.
He said brands were also becoming more focused on protecting their own data and historical performance as a competitive advantage.
“They are more in charge now of their own destiny,” he said.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.