Guideline has officially launched a significant product expansion to its SQADCosts Local solutions, introducing the Digital Extension. This new tool provides Cost-Per-Mille (CPM) benchmarks specifically for locally geo-targeted digital video and audio buys. For the first time, local-first buyers and sellers can access the same "Average / Low / High" pricing framework for digital media that has been the industry standard for linear television for decades.
Platform Scope: Covers the top 60+ publishers in the U.S. market.
Media Channels: Connected TV (CTV), ad-supported video platforms, audio streaming, and podcasting.
Core Utility: Provides pricing transparency for media that is exclusively locally geo-targeted, filling a gap left by national digital benchmarks.
Normalization Baseline: Every data point is normalized to a comparable baseline (P2+ / A18+ targeting) to allow for "apples-to-apples" comparisons across disparate publishers.
Market Context: Follows the recent launch of Guideline’s UK Digital Pricing product (February 2026), signaling a global push toward transparent digital ad valuation.
Historically, local advertisers have struggled to benchmark digital costs because national data doesn't reflect the premiums or discounts associated with specific geographic targeting. The Digital Extension addresses this by reporting only on locally geo-targeted placements.
"Guideline SQADCosts Local has long been the standard for local pricing transparency in linear, and our customers have asked us to bring that same level of clarity to digital media," said Vincent Mifsud, CEO of Guideline.
To ensure direct comparability across different publisher types and content, the solution normalizes data points based on:
Ad Length: Specific breakouts for various durations.
Content Type: Differentiation between Entertainment and Sports inventory.
Audience: Broad-audience targeting baselines (P2+, A18+).
Pricing Tiers: Monthly reports featuring Average, Low, and High CPMs at the individual publisher level.
For Agencies & Brands: Reduces guesswork during the planning and negotiation phases by providing a market-backed reference point for geo-targeted CTV and audio.
For Publishers: Offers competitive context to support pricing strategies, inventory packaging, and yield management in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.
Investment Visibility: By leveraging Guideline's proprietary data—which tracks approximately $200 billion in annual media investment—the tool offers a level of accuracy grounded in real executed transactions rather than modeled estimates.
ABOUT GUIDELINE
Guideline (formerly a combination of Standard Media Index, SQAD, and Lumina) is the world’s leading authority on advertising spend and pricing data. Their platforms power the strategy and management of media buying for enterprises across 65 countries.
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