Dive Brief:

• Following a trial period, Dentsu is expanding its generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities through the use of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) tools across the company’s entire global network, according to a company announcement.
• Dentsu’s adoption of Amazon Bedrock is intended to provide foundation models from leading AI companies through a single API. The use of Amazon SageMaker is expected to enable data scientists and developers to quickly build, train and deploy machine learning models at scale.
• The news builds on Dentsu’s use of AI tools and services from a variety of providers, including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and Adobe as it looks to drive efficiency and creativity.

Dive Insight:

Dentsu has been developing multiple AI solutions on AWS. Using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker specifically will help Dentsu more easily and more quickly develop and deploy third-party and open-source models across its product and engineering teams, according to the holding company. It will also give its more than 72,000 global employees access to a range of cutting-edge technologies from the external global technology community.

Dentsu’s adoption of Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker products comes after a successful trial of the tools by Dentsu Digital in Japan, made possible from a private preview program Dentsu has with AWS. The test enabled the agency to improve productivity through combining technology with local teams’ knowledge to customize advertising use cases in a secure way with their own data.

Gen AI is still in its relative infancy, holding companies and agencies are looking to work with a variety of technology providers as they experiment and find the solutions that are right for them. Last year, Dentsu struck a deal with Microsoft to gain access to the latter’s Azure OpenAI. That partnership yielded a new tool, Merkle GenCX, to use AI for customer experience management. Dentsu has also struck AI partnerships with Google and Salesforce.

Unsurprisingly, other holding companies are following suit. Publicis Groupe recently announced it would invest more than $300 million over the next three years to support its in-house CoreAI data platform. WPP last year struck a pact with Nvidia around the development of an AI-powered content engine.