ThinkTV Launches Planning Tool The Media Engine

In Australia, ThinkTV has launched a free planning tool called the Media Engine which draws on sales and campaign data from 60 Australian brands across ten categories, to help demonstrate media return on investment.

ThinkTV, which is part of the Premium Content Alliance and is funded by the Australian commercial television industry, helps understand how audiences engage with television, and investigates the impact it has on business results. Its new Media Engine will provide data to enable econometric modelling for brands, and detail the optimal media splits to generate revenue. The launch follows research conducted by the BetterBriefs Project ,which found 90 per cent of marketers fail to brief agencies effectively with a third of marketing budgets being wasted by bad briefs, equating to more than $200 billion in global ad spend.

Marketers can select from eight inputs to customise the free tool's recommendations, such as market approach, brand size, competitiveness of the category, and consumer switching behaviour in the category. Using these variables, the Media Engine promises to determine the ideal media investment to generate revenue returns. The engine is fuelled by analysed data from The Payback Series research, conducted by ThinkTV in conjunction with Professor Peter Danaher, Head of the Monash University Department of Marketing and Professor of Marketing and Econometrics; GroupM; and global marketing effectiveness consultancy Gain Theory.

ThinkTV CEO Kim Portrate (pictured) comments: 'There's nothing more powerful than econometric modelling to demonstrate how media investment can generate business results. But not all brands have access to wide-scale modelling. We reckon everyone should have this information at their fingertips to help grow their business. So, we built the Media Engine to level the playing field'.

Web site: www.thinktv.com.au .