dentsu to Use VideoAmp Data for Ad Currency

dentsu has announced agreements with seven media partners who will use the global marcoms group's own proprietary system for ad buying and placement. The system taps subsidiary firm Merkle's Merkury database and M1 audience profiles, and gets its audience estimates from VideoAmp.

Brad Stockton, SVP Video Innovation, dentsu Media US told an audience at the ARF's CIMM (Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement) in New York City last week, that the partners include NBC Universal, FOX, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery as well as smaller businesses Hallmark and A+E networks. The new system, development of which began in 2020, will allow dentsu to plan and allocate linear TV ad buying using the Merkle profiles, guarantee schedules and transact based on the VideoAmp estimates.

The firm has plans to add CTV advertising buys next year, using streaming data as currency. Last month the group launched a cookieless solution called Contextual Intelligence for Connected Television (CI for CTV), pinpointing where clients' ads are being placed within CTV inventory, and offering keyword targeting at the video level.

The new allocation system is known as DELTA (Data Enabled Linear TV Activation) and will become DELTA+ with the advent of CTV data in 2024. It can be supplemented on request with clients' own first-party audience data or input from third-party sources.

According to Stockton: 'This is our latest effort to drive adoption of alternative currencies as we seek to build out a unified investment approach rooted in the same source of truth through DELTA'. VideoAmp co-founder and CEO Ross McCray (pictured) comments: 'The growth that we've been able to achieve since we first engaged with dentsu on currency in 2021 is incredible. Moving past testing to this kind of scale is a testament to the DELTA team and their commitment to providing clients with the benefits of using an advanced currency. This is just the start and we look forward to collectively helping advertisers make their media investments work harder and smarter to achieve the business outcomes that matter most to them'.

Web sites: www.dentsu.com and www.videoamp.com .