Blis tops IPA Digital Media Owners Spring survey

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 84.9% of respondents agree that their overall experience of working with Blis was a good one. They were followed by Pinterest (83.1%) and GumGum (81.9%).

While Blis leads overall and Ad Networks/Exchanges, DSP and Sales Houses, Pinterest leads Online Pure Plays and Mail Metro Media leads Crossover Media Owners.

Other key findings:

• Six additional media owners have an overall score above 75%: Reddit (79.5%), Captify (78.8%), Mail Metro Media (77.3%), Snap/Snapchat (76.7%) MiQ (76.3%), and Quantcast (75.8.%).
• While they lead the overall ranking, Blis are not top of any one specific category. Instead, Blis performed consistently well in all areas including six top three finishes.
• GumGum lead eight individual rankings and were named the top media owner for ‘Quality of Response to Brief, Understanding of Own Products’, ‘Provision of Innovative and Creative Solutions’, ‘Proactive Communication of Relevant New Opportunities’, ‘Ease of Contact’, ‘Regularity of Face-to-Face or Telephone Contact’, ‘Engendering a Sense of Agency/Media Owner Partnership’ and ‘Understanding of the Context the Agency Operates in’.
• Four other media owners lead one category each. MIQ tops ‘Understanding of Client Strategies and Objectives’ while Captify leads for ‘Professionalism in Dispute Resolution’ and Pinterest were named best for ‘Communication of Direct Client Contact’. Mail Metro Media leads other cross-media owners in ‘Understanding of How Cross-Media Opportunities can be exploited’.
• Among those media owners that also appeared in the Autumn 2022 survey Facebook/Meta is the most improved media owner with increases of 10 percentage points or more across ten categories.

Says Amy Lawrence, Digital Director, MediaCom and Chair of the IPA Digital Marketing Group: "It is encouraging to see so many media owners maintain high standards across the board, and those that have struggled recently know where they must raise their game.

Says David Clayton, Founder and Managing Director, True & North: "The advertising market is becoming increasingly complex and right now there’s a huge focus on growth. To cope, agencies and digital media owners need to work more closely together and become strong allies. The survey shows that the biggest opportunity for media owner sales teams lies in learning how to deliver more constructive, high-value conversations. They also need to continuously nurture and build relationships with agencies and brands based on empathy and trust.

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.