Mail Metro Media named the best media owner to work with

In the survey, which details which media owners deliver the highest levels of service and which have shown a commitment to continually improving their digital standards, 87.8% of respondents said that their overall experience of working with Mail Metro Media was a good one. They were closely followed by Spring survey leaders Blis (87.3%) and Reddit (84.6%).

While Mail Metro Media leads overall and among Crossover Media Owners, Reddit is the best performing Online Pure Play and Blis tops Ad Networks/Exchanges, DSPs and Sales Houses.

Other key findings:

• Seven other media owners have an overall score of 80% or above: Blis (87.3%), Reddit (84.6%), MiQ (82.2%), GumGum (81.4.%), Quantcast (81.1%), Reach (80.6%) and Pinterest (80.0%)
• In addition to leading the overall ranking, Mail Metro Media was named the best media owner for ‘Ease of contact with the sales team’.
• Four media owners lead two individual categories each: GumGum (‘Quality of response to brief’ and ‘Delivery of innovative, creative solutions’), Pinterest (‘Understanding of client strategies and objectives’ and ‘Communication of relevant new opportunities’), MiQ (‘Engenderment of a real sense of agency/media owner partnership’ and ‘Understanding of the context the agency operates in’), and Reddit (‘Professionalism in dealing with dispute resolution’ and ‘Communicating direct contact with clients’).
• Three media owners top one individual category each: Blis (‘Regularity of face-to-face or telephone contact’), Quantcast (‘Understanding of own products’) and The Guardian (‘Exploitation of cross-over media opportunities’).
• Reach plc is the most broadly improved media owner with increases of 10 percentage points or more across seven categories from the Spring 2023 survey.

Says Amy Lawrence, Digital Partner – UK & Global, EssenceMediacom & Chair of the IPA Digital Marketing Group: "It is vital that agencies know which media owners provide a consistently excellent service and how they can work together as true partners for clients."

Says David Clayton, Founder and Managing Director, True & North: "It has been a challenging year for the advertising industry, yet it is encouraging to see improvements in some of the most strategic parts of the relationship, such as having regular constructive contact with the sales team and showing more transparency. Further efforts need to be made to close the gap in these areas, solidify the partnership and unlock more value and mutual growth opportunities."

Join the IPA and True & North at The Gift of Collaboration event on Wednesday 6 December for an exclusive look at the results of the IPA Digital Media Owners Survey and discussion about how media owners and agencies can become stronger allies and better understand the value of building long-term partnerships with each other.

The IPA Digital Media Owner Survey is released twice a year, in spring and autumn. Every January, agency members of the IPA Digital Media Group are asked to provide a list of their top trading partners from the previous year – no sensitive revenue data is shared. These individual lists are then aggregated to form a survey of the top 25 media owners for both the Spring and Autumn surveys of that year. Each year there is a degree of churn in which vendors appear on the questionnaire and others, therefore, drop off. Featuring on the survey questionnaire is therefore a factor of scale, especially relative scale, rather than service levels.