One year ago, GroupM announced it was establishing a preferred partnership with Canadian programmatic ad network Index Exchange as the cornerstone of its premium supply strategy. The partnership began in the U.S. and has now been expanded to the agency’s global network.

“The Premium Supply partners vary by market but are typically the best of the professionally produced editorial content from that market or region,” Axel Jonuschies, managing partner for global programmatic investment at GroupM, says. “We pursued a preferred partnership with Index Exchange in an effort to deliver a more transparent, efficient, and effective supply chain for clients when activating their media investments programmatically.”

One of the key components has been the Exchange Fee Reduction process, which reduces the transactional cost of the supply chain for preferred buyers like GroupM. Since implementing, the media buying agency has seen a reduction of over $1.5 million USD in supply chain costs that clients were able to immediately reinvest into active campaigns.

As part of the partnership, Index Exchange built a suite of buyer and publisher-centric products that include tools that help package different components of a publisher’s inventory or across publishers into a single deal ID, reducing the buy-side complexity in activation.

As a result, more brands have also leveraged Index Exchange’s Matched Audiences Identity solution to target people-based audiences, which uses first party data from clients and publishers and helps GroupM be prepared for a cookie-less future. GroupM in Canada has been using the system since Spring 2020.