New IPA survey reveals best online media owners to work with in autumn 2022

The survey, supported by True & North, which details which media owners deliver the highest levels of service and which have shown a commitment to continually improving their digital standards, shows that 95.5% of respondents agree that their overall experience of working with Azerion (including Inskin & Collective) was a good one. They were followed by GumGum (89.5%), Reach (89.4%) Blis (88.9%) and Quantcast (87.9%).

While Azerion lead overall and among Ad Networks/Exchanges, DSP and Sales Houses, Yahoo tops Online Pure Plays while Reach leads Crossover Media Owners.

Other key findings:

• Five additional companies have an overall score above 80%: Yahoo (84.6%), MiQ (84.4%), Acast (83.3%), Mail Metro Media (83.1%), and Pinterest (81.5%). The first time that ten media owners have beaten this mark in one survey.
• In addition to leading the overall rankings, Azerion tops three other categories: ‘Understanding of their own products’, ‘Provision of innovative & creative solutions’ and ‘Engenderment of a real sense of agency/ media owner partnership’.
• MiQ also lead three rankings, ‘Understanding of the context planners and buyers operate in and how best to support them in achieving their objectives’ ‘Regularity of constructive face-to-face or telephone contact with the sales team’ and ‘Professionalism in dealing with dispute resolution’.
• Quantcast is best for ‘Understanding of client objectives and strategies’ and ‘Quality of response to brief’ while three media owners top one category each: Reach in ‘Ease of contact with the sales team’, GumGum in ‘Pro-active communication of relevant new opportunities’ and Blis in ‘Successful communication of direct contact with clients’.
• Mail Metro Media leads other cross-media owners in ‘Demonstrating how cross-over media opportunities can be exploited’.
• Among those media owners that appeared in the Spring 2022 survey, Quantcast and MIQ are the most improved owners with increases of 10 percentage points or more across six categories each, while Blis, ITV Hub, Mail Metro Media and Spotify showed similar improvement across five categories.

Says Amy Lawrence, Digital Director, MediaCom and Chair of the IPA Digital Marketing Group:

"It is incredibly encouraging to see such high standards across the board, while those media owners that have slipped in recent months will know they need to pick up the pace. Congratulations to Azerion for once again topping the IPA Digital Media Owners Survey and for their remarkable result."

Says David Clayton, Founder and Managing Director, True & North:

"In a market where advertising spend is shrinking, knowing what makes the difference in how clients and agency partners perceive you is essential. The survey findings highlight that the biggest opportunity for sales teams lies in learning how to deliver more high-value constructive conversations with their agencies, while knowing their product and being easy to reach are table stakes. The high performance of many UK media owners indicates that strong relationships with agencies are keeping standards high."

The IPA Digital Media Owner Survey is released twice a year, in spring and autumn. For each survey a panel of planners, strategists, buyers and digital specialists rate only those media owners they have a working relationship with against a set of attributes on a seven-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.