Dentsu boosts programmatic with people-based marketing via Merkle platform

Dive Brief:

Following a brief pilot period, Dentsu Aegis Network’s U.S. media agency brands will begin using Merkle’s PII-based M1 platform for data planning and activation, according to Adexchanger. It is expected to roll out in the U.K. in Q4.
The M1 platform allows for people-based marketing using 280 million consumer IDs based on PII and Merkle’s database expertise. The platform is officially rolling out as a self-service tool for Carat, iProspect, 360i and Amnet.
The platform is integrated with Dentsu’s ATS programmatic platform and can integrate with demand-side platforms, perform matches against publisher audiences as well as trade hashed IDs with walled gardens. M1 offers a 20% increase in return on ad spend and a 25% increase in unique audience reach for users, according to M1 president John Lee in the Adexchanger report.

Dive Insight:

Programmatic buying, with use escalating quickly, is experiencing some growing pains in 2017 as marketers look to bring some control and accountability back into where their digital ads appear. A recent study from Yahoo's BrightRoll found that 96% of programmatic decision makers are concerned about fake news in their buys, for example.

In this light, Dentsu's integration of Merkle's technology could help marketers more accurately target their programmatic buys by enabling them to target known customers, thereby eliminating wasteful impressions.

An example of how M1 can be used by creative agencies was provided to Adexchanger by Doug Ray, president of product and innovation at Dentsu Aegis Network, who said a client like spirits company Diageo can give its event marketing agency MKPG insights from M1 about audiences at the location level.

The M1 platform leverages anonymized IDs on every adult in the U.S. population along with more than 1,000 data attributes and is integrated with the publisher and media ecosystem. It taps DataSource, a database of 242 million anonymized individuals based on name, address and/or email address. Users can match these IDs to their own first-party CRM data through an accredited PII on-boarding safe haven.

The Dentsu news is the latest example of how programmatic is evolving to better meet marketers' needs.

Media group Dentsu Aegis Network acquired Merkle, a performance marketing agency specializing in data-based solutions, in 2016. Havas recently launched it Client Trading Solution portal, enabling clients to track their spending across vendors and see real-time metrics while IAB Tech Lab released a tool to combat programmatic ad fraud.