SQAD® is recognized as the industry standard media cost forecasting source for national TV (NetCosts™—network TV, cable and syndication), Spot TV, Hispanic Spot TV Plus, Spot Radio and the Internet (WebCosts®). SQAD provides reliable media cost data to advertising agencies, media buying companies, advertisers, television and radio stations, cable companies, program syndicators and Internet publishers.

SQAD’s basic services were reintroduced in the early 1990s when the company established SQARE, the highly reliable confidential contributor-based methodology. SQARE receives actual buys from agencies and media buying companies for spot TV and radio as well as Hispanic Spot TV buys. Data for these media are filtered through SQARE to eliminate special programming that inappropriately alters the current and future CPPs (i.e., Thanksgiving Day Parade, Super Bowl, etc.). The proprietary SQARE model processes data that is based on actual buys for the current quarter. Using this information plus historical data from 16 rolling quarters, SQARE builds estimates for the future. Using the current quarter’s actual estimates, projections for subsequent quarters are directionally based on movement seen in the current quarter. With nearly $12 billion* of spot media buys for TV, Radio and Hispanic Spot TV, SQAD creates forecasting algorithms, which allow users to budget and plan up to four quarters into the future.

In 2004 SQAD used its experience in Spot media to expand to the national media marketplace as it introduced NetCosts. With over $15 billion* of actual transactions from advertisers representing almost half the national TV marketplace, NetCosts provides instant access to unit costs as well as CPMs and CPPs by network and daypart. For the first time real cost information is now available providing accurate market level CPMs and CPPs by program category and time period.

Following its tradition of providing buyside-based media costs, SQAD’s newest service, WebCosts provides display CPMs for a growing list of specific websites and networks for an expanding array of buying criteria. Closing in on $1 billion* of Internet media buys, WebCosts will be issuing new releases providing Average, Low and High CPMs for nearly 200 websites and networks. Subsets of this total list will provide CPMs for various sized ads (medium rectangles, leaderboards, skyscrapers) as well as time frames for media buys (quarter, month and week). DATAVue is the temporary system being used by subscribers to analyze WebCosts data while SQAD’s on-line delivery service is under construction.

*As of July, 2009