Mark Britt, group CEO of nineMSN, today announced the new nineMSN trade and corporate brand, mi9, at the brand’s annual digital media summit.

The announcement came alongside the official launch of the Microsoft Advertising Exchange. The exchange is the second in Australia, following Google’s launch. The exchange allows advertisers to bid in real-time against one-another based on a range of parameters and using both their own and publisher’s data to reach their most valuable customer at the optimum time in the purchase funnel.

mi9 claims that last year 5% of all US trading was performed in real-time, which has grown to represent 68% of all US-based purchases.

Britt explains the need for the new advertising model in terms of wide-industry digital reach trends: from reaching everyone in the early-to-mid 2000s, to reaching anyone at the right price, to now reaching your most valuable customer at the right time.

In relation to nineMSN properties and partners, Britt claims mi9 now effectively reaches 100% of the Australian online audience. Formerly it allowed advertisers to target by 40 segments, but as of the announcement the granularity of that targeting has increased to 16,000 and is planned to reach 100,000 segments in the new year.

Questioned on the effect ad exchanges will have on the pricing of publishers’ inventory, Britt argues it would only negatively affect those misrepresenting their demographic’s value on a wide-scale. Britt also believes the growth of real-time media trading will bring efficiency benefits to both media agencies and publishers.

All major media agency groups are plugged into the exchange with demand-side platforms as of today: STW, OMD, Group M, Cadreon, Aegis, Criteo, PHD and Vivaki.

On the magazine brands, David Gyngell, nine CEO, says he is, “Rooting for Rupert[‘s paid media model], because it’s good for business, but my feeling is it won’t [succeed].” mi9’s position remains that mass-market content wants to be free.

The official mi9 launch will be in early 2012.