SCA announces new media research and insights service SCA iQ

Abi Wallis & Jasmine Beech

Southern Cross Austereo has announced SCA iQ, a new media research and insights division, set up to be one of Australia’s largest offerings of its kind.

The radio network revealed that its award-winning Research & Insights and Strategy & Insights divisions have come together to form SCA iQ, set up to power solutions for SCA’s Sales and Content teams and advertising partners.

SCA iQ fuses SCA’s research, insights and strategy functions together, housing the Asia Pacific’s largest entertainment insight community with more than 300,000 members in metro and regional areas providing first party data.

Announcing the new division today, SCA said it will now give its audience a voice at the table for both content and sales decision. The new offering also offers behavioural insights to help shape insight-led content strategies and partner solutions by The Studio at SCA, along with demonstrating ROI and brand perception measures for advertisers.

Abi Wallis has been announced as the national head of strategy & insights for SCA iQ. She’ll lead the Strategy & Insights team to provide solutions for partners using SCA’s local and national platforms.

Jasmine Beech will serve as head of sales research and insights, with her role to see her overseeing the SCA iQ team and ensuring it has has a comprehensive understanding of the latest consumer behaviour and attitude insights to develop solutions that engage brands and their target audiences.

Beech will work alongside Wallis and report fo SCA iQ head of research and insights John Musgrove.

“The entire strategy for national and local sales is insight led ideation,” said SCA chief sales officer Brian Gallagher.

“The more we can know about our consumers and the more we can know about the challenges we’re trying to solve for our advertising partners, the more successful they are. This is where SCA iQ is invaluable.”

SCA also noted that it is is the only media owner to invest in all three Nielsen tools at SCA iQ, including Commspoint Journey, Commspoint Influence and Consumer & Media View (CMV).

These tools are set to enable SCA iQ to plan and pressure test solutions across the most effective channels to influence consumers at different stages of the path to purchase.  

“We engage with 95% of Australians every day and we want to continue to deliver value to our audience and our advertising partners,” said SCA national head of sales Nikki Rooke.

“Bringing our research and strategy insights teams together to form SCA iQ propels our content and sales insights to a new level, especially as the way audio is consumed changes and areas such as live streaming, podcasting and on demand grow exponentially.

“Our insight communities sit within the centre of the business and it’s those insights that drive the business and our client solutions forward.”