Canvas Worldwide taps into offline data with TransUnion partnership

Dive Brief:

Media agency Canvas Worldwide has partnered with global insights company TransUnion, according to a press release.
Partnering with TransUnion allows Canvas, reportedly the second largest independent media agency in the world, to tap into the company’s plethora of anonymized offline consumer data in an effort to deliver clients more relevant messaging.
The partnership signifies Canvas’ efforts to strengthen its data-gathering muscle and represents a major play by TransUnion to scale its consumer insight findings as marketers search for alternative means of gathering data.

Dive Insight:

Canvas’ partnership with TransUnion follows a growing push for alternative forms of data gathering to continue delivering relevant messaging in a post-cookie world. The tie-up boasts advanced lookalike modeling, custom audience creation and omnichannel activation that could lend a competitive edge.

TransUnion, which has roots in credit reporting and spans 30 countries, collects offline data and anonymizes it, providing actionable insights while maintaining consumer privacy — a growing priority as 63% of consumers report they have concerns when it comes to data sharing. Using its audience building technology, Canvas can better visualize the actions of people, households and devices in various customer journey stages that could be used in multiple agency cases, per details of the release.

“We’re tuned into new developments in the world of marketing technology and focused on making those innovations accessible to our clients – rather than retrofitting legacy solutions,” said Canvas Worldwide Chief Product Officer Greg Johns, in the release.

The move by TransUnion to partner with such a large agency signifies the growing popularity of alternative data-collecting means and how consumer insight companies like it could stand to profit. In June, TransUnion and Publicis’ Epsilon division announced a partnership in which TransUnion clients could gain access to Epsilon’s streaming and connected-media audience insight data. TransUnion also partnered with Horizon Media in 2020 to expand the agency’s identity capabilities.