Advertisers are promised access to more psychographic data and boosted cross-device capabilities following a partnership between Fairfax Media and the parent company of Ticketek.

The deal sees Fairfax's D&A (Data & Audiences) unit team with TEG Analytics to create what they say will be one of the largest addressable datasets available to advertisers in Australia.

TEGA is owned by TEG, a company which also owns sports and live entertainment 'box office' Ticketek, which claims more than 12 million members. The partnership makes the TEGA data available to advertisers in the Australian market for the first time, and in combination with Fairfax's own data, allows more powerful and targeted addressable advertising. It will strengthen Fairfax Media's audience targeting capabilities by providing advertisers access to benefits such as more psychographic data, boosted cross-device capabilities and tailored segments created from nimble data collected through custom surveys.

TEGA will benefit from marketing insights into the media and content preferences of members.

• Fairfax has also signed up to use Playground XYZ's mobile ad format platform. Clients of the creative ad tech company - which launched last November - include MCN, Nine Entertainment, SBS, Ticketek, Daily Mail, Mamamia and Bauer Media.

"We set out to fill a gap in the market which was creating a new suite of new, hardworking mobile ad formats and to let brands use them at scale. That means signing up and certifying publishers that they can buy off directly," says chief executive Rob Hall. "Having arguably Australia's biggest publisher sign on is a great result and we're ecstatic to be partnering."

Hall, chief operating officer Scot Liddell and chief technology officer Jono Mullins were all at Big Mobile for eight years before setting up Playground XYZ, Mullins also having worked as a software engineer at NASA.

Hall says mobile had a "fairly two tiered system of types of ads" - at one end, the IAB formats which gave brands peace of mind to run say, the same one MREC creative across your media buy, but were failing to deliver key metrics for brands. The alternative was publishers' proprietary formats which were excellent but locked to that particular site.

"Now, there's a third tier: We've carved out a position in between the IAB and a publisher's own formats, producing never-done-before ad products and letting one build scale across this incredible list of certified partners. In that sense we've created a new marketplace for custom advertising," he says.