• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 27, 2014

Madison Avenue ad spending market tracker Standard Media Index is staffing up as part of an overall expansion, naming Scott Grunther head of its media sales and servicing operations.

Grunther, a long-time media research executive, most recently was senior vice president-media at Ipsos MediaCT, and prior to that, was with IAG Research (ultimately acquired by Nielsen) and then Nielsen, where he was senior vice president of Nielsen Ad Solutions.

At SMI, Grunther will serve as executive vice president-media and will focus on helping media companies get the most leverage out of SMI's data, which pools actual media-buying data directly from the data processing systems of agencies currently representing about 80% of Madison Avenue's media-buying power.

SMI Chief Commercial Officer James Fennessy explained that the role will focus on helping media companies "go beyond the scorecard" aspect of the market share data and make it more "decision-grade data."