Twelve sources, six different questions. A working guide for anyone who has to defend a number in front of a client.
Twelve firms sell information about local advertising, and they are routinely mistaken for one another. They are not really competitors; they are different instruments pointed at different parts of the same market. Borrell Associates and BIA Advisory Services forecast what a market could spend. Miller Kaplan and S&P Global’s Kagan unit account for what stations actually booked. MediaRadar and Vivvix, Media Monitors, and the digital trackers record which advertiser ran what, where, and for roughly how much. SalesFuel’s AdMall, Winmo and BuzzBoard work at the account level, arming a seller for one specific call. Nielsen, Comscore, Edison Research and Triton Digital count people rather than dollars. And the forecasters and trade bodies — EMARKETER, MAGNA, WPP Media, the IAB, RAB and Localogy — set the national frame everything else gets measured against.
Knowing which instrument answers which question is most of the skill. A forecast is not a receipt. An occurrence log is not a spend estimate. A national ratings service is not a small-market audience count. Each page below breaks one source down the same way: who it serves, what it intends, where its data originates, how long it stays current, why it matters, when it updates, and how it is compiled — with a closing note on what survives the trip down into a small market.