In this week’s egtabite we look under the hood of ThinkTV Australia’s latest product, the Media Engine. The free planning tool empowers marketers to create better briefs by outlining the optimal media splits to generate revenue.

“Great results come from great campaigns and great campaigns begin with great briefs. The Media Engine will help you power up your revenue with all three,” said Kim Portrate, Think TV’s CEO, when the tool was launched in March.

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The Media Engine draws on sales and campaigns data from 60 Australian brands across 10 categories with collective annual advertising spend of A$ 450 million (€303 million) and turnover of A$ 23 billion (€15 billion). The robust, real-life, free tool thus democratises the data marketers need for designing campaigns. Built with Australian marketers and their agency partners in mind, the Media Engine shows how media can be used to generate significant returns.

The Media Engine is similar to the Media Mix Navigator, a tool launched by U.K.’s Thinkbox in 2019 and updated regularly since, which also helps advertisers to maximise business returns from media investments.

Ineffective briefing tackled by the Media Engine

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.

“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,” said Kim.

Ideal investment for highest revenue returns

Marketers can select from eight inputs to customise the tool’s recommendation. Based on these key variables, the Media Engine outlines the ideal media investment to generate revenue returns:

• Category
• Market approach (e.g., mass-market or niche)
• Percentage of sales that come from online
• Brand size
• Annual media spend
• Risk profile – appetite for the variability of the sale outcome
• Competitiveness of the category
• Consumer switching behaviour in the category

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.

The Media Engine is available here.