Australia – Following its successful Australian launch in late 2021, and off the back of a period of rapid growth, ad-spec business ‘The Spec Sheet’ has expanded into New Zealand.
Leading the New Zealand office is The Spec Sheet’s Head of Media and Sales, Nick Howie. Howie has extensive knowledge of the New Zealand media and marketing landscape with more than 17 years of industry experience. Prior to joining The Spec Sheet, Howie was TVNZ’s Head of Trading for more than five years.
The Spec Sheet launches in New Zealand with the support of a vast network of local and global media partners, including TVNZ, NZME, Go Media, JCDecaux, Lumo, Stuff, and Mediaworks to name a few.
Founded by former Special Group talent Sharon Gray and Jesse McLallen, The Spec Sheet was built to help media owners, media agencies and creative agencies solve a problem that has plagued the industry for decades. Gray, a former digital producer, and McLallen, a former digital creative, created the platform to eliminate errors, cut out the unnecessary wasted time and increase collaboration during the ad spec and material instruction process.
In less than two years, The Spec Sheet has expanded to a client base of over 256 media owners – including Foxtel, Nine, Ten, Nova, SBS, ARN, and QMS – and now has over 44,000 ad specs, making it the largest verified ad spec database globally.
Sharon Gray, the co-founder, said, “We started The Spec Sheet out of sheer frustration. We knew there had to be a more effective, less laborious, and more accurate way of creating, sharing, maintaining and documenting ad specs. And so, The Spec Sheet was born. With the mission of making life easier for media planners, we’ve since onboarded almost every major media owner in Australia, taken our tech to the next level, and hired more than 20 incredibly talented people.”
“It’s been a massive journey, but we’ve got real talent in our team, and now a robust and polished product. As we’ve started to work with more and more media owners and agencies who do trans-Tasman planning, we knew that launching in New Zealand was the obvious next step in our journey.”
The Spec Sheet is already working with several clients in Australia who plan across markets, with interest from agencies on the ground in New Zealand rapidly increasing.
Jesse McLallen, also co-founder, said, “Since we launched at the end of December 2021, the product has totally reinvented itself. The Spec Sheet is now a fully collaborative, living document that is powered by a library of media owner verified ad specs. It can be shared between all partners. Simply put, we connect media owners, media agencies, creatives and clients, providing an end-to-end solution, saving our customers up to 70% of time when they create and share spec sheets.”
“Aligning with global media industry players, The Spec Sheet is rapidly scaling and expanding our product suite. We are now proud to include Material Instructions as part of our offering, and we can’t wait to get started in New Zealand. This is just the beginning.”
