Ad Data Company SMI Is Sold To Private Equity Firm GTCR

Last week, Standard Media Index (SMI), a top provider of advertising data and insights on the media marketplace, was acquired by GTCR, a private equity company. There were no financial details disclosed. GTCR was founded in 1980 and has since invested over $20 billion in over 250 companies. The SMI acquisition was completed via Dreamscape, a portfolio company of GTGT
CR. Dreamscape was created in May 2020 by Scott Knoll, David Hahn and Michael Iantosca, all three have decades of experience in marketing technology. Dreamscape has headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

SMI was founded in 2009 in Australia by Sue Fennessy and Jane Schulze. The company headquarters moved to New York two years later. Sue Fennessy served as SMI’s CEO until 2016 when James Fennessy replaced her. With the acquisition, Scott Knoll assumed the CEO position with James Fennessy joining the Board of Directors of Dreamscape and becoming a company consultant.

SMI has made agreements with many of the world’s largest ad agency holding companies becoming a prominent source for ad intelligence in the media industry. SMI’s data enables subscribers to look at actual ad spend data, ad revenue, media costs and a look ahead to future advertising bookings. SMI data also enables users to measure upfront and scatter ad market commitments. Besides New York, SMI now has offices in London, Madrid, Sydney and Toronto. They provide services and data in 34 global markets.

At present, SMI now tracks more than $250 billion in global ad spend each year. In the U.S. market, SMI captures 95% of ad spend and ad pricing among national brands. In addition, SMI has the ability to provide the industry with more accurate ad spend data. For example, for Super Bowl LVI last February, an NBCU executive said a :30 ad rate was $6.5 million with some last-minute buys reaching $7 million. Meanwhile, SMI data found the average :30 ad for preliminary ad bookings of Super Bowl LVI was $4.8 million, marking a 5% increase from the previous year.

Besides providing more accurate ad rates, SMI can measure the ad dollars being allocated to newer digital media outlets such as podcasting, CTV and AVOVO
D which syndicated ad spend providers such as Kantar and Nielsen do not estimate. This is an important element as advertiser opportunities continue to proliferate in the years ahead.

SMI also provides clients with the ad spend intelligence needed for media mix modeling, measuring share of ad spend, developing pricing benchmarks and cost-per-thousand (CPM) comparisons. SMI also provides the industry with ad spend trends by medium, ad revenue by media companies, program types and by product categories among other data points.

Scott Knoll said, “With the proliferation of media channels and ad types, the insights that SMI can help provide are now an essential driver of media strategy. The company’s deep relationships with clients and agency partners are underpinned by its customer-centric approach and its commitment to innovation.” James Fennessy notes, “The agreement is an important milestone for the entire SMI team, our partners and our clients, as we look toward our next stage of growth,”

Dreamscape has been focusing on acquiring ad tech companies to their portfolio. In April they made a strategic investment in SQAD which has provided advertising cost intelligence, analytics and media planning software for over forty years. As part of their investment, Scott Knoll became the CEO of SQAD.

When asked if SMI and SQAD will merge, Scott Knoll answered, “Not at this time. Dreamscape is the holding company under which SMI and SQAD operate, and we expect to run the businesses separately for the foreseeable future. Our eventual goal is to find strategic ways in which we can leverage both companies to provide media companies, agencies and brands with more valuable solutions.”

The acquisition of SMI highlights the importance of accurate data driven analytics in the advertising and media industries in recent years. Scott Knoll says, “Michael Iantosca, David Hahn and I have spent most of our careers in the intersection of technology and advertising. We spent eight years together taking Integral Ad Science from a start up to the global leader in ad verification. After selling the company to Vista Equity Partners in 2018, we have been looking for other opportunities where we can help improve the effectiveness of advertising for both buyers and sellers.”

Knoll continues, “We came across SQAD and SMI earlier this year and quickly realized a few things. First, the ad planning process for brands is incredibly important as this is where the biggest and most impactful decisions are being made. Second, despite the importance of ad planning, there has been relatively little investment in this area over the past few decades and the technology being leveraged today is less sophisticated than in other areas of martech and adtech. Third, the combination of SQAD and SMI gives Dreamscape the critical ingredients and client relationships with the biggest media companies, agencies, and brands to reinvent the way advertising is planned, bought, and managed.

Knoll expects further acquisitions of martech and adtech companies in the future, “We are passionate about helping both the buyers and sellers of advertising and feel that we can make a difference by greatly improving the technology and data used to effectively plan and manage advertising budgets. We feel that the combination of SQAD and SMI is a great start, but will continue to look optimistically for other companies and teams that can help us to accomplish our mission.”