Dive Brief:

• Annalect, the data and analytics unit of ad holding group Omnicom, has partnered with identity startup InfoSum to expand its capabilities around data clean rooms, according to a news release.
• InfoSum's solutions will be integrated into Omni, Omnicom's data and insights platform, to assist brands with new data-sharing approaches and onboarding processes. Clients can "seamlessly" access InfoSum's offering through Omni, per the release.
• Formed in 2017, Annalect is focused on privacy-safe data technology, a category that is experiencing surging demand with the deprecation of third-party cookies and other changes to key identifiers.

Dive Insight:

Omnicom is fortifying its capabilities around data clean rooms with the InfoSum collaboration. The ad holding group joins others in the agency space that are ramping up investments in new methods of data acquisition and sharing as marketers scramble to find alternatives to the third-party cookie and adjust to Apple making its mobile Identifier for Advertisers an opt-in feature. Many Madison Avenue shops are turning to outside partnerships to round out their expertise in complex technical fields.

With the InfoSum integration, clients using Omni can pair their first-party assets with a greater number of other data sources, including those from media and commerce platforms. Omnicom claims that this will create deeper and more actionable insights for brands while keeping privacy considerations in mind.

Clean rooms have steadily gained traction with marketers amid a proliferation of more stringent data-privacy laws and with the pending death of cookies. Typically offered by vendors and platforms, they feed data from multiple sources into a single environment to be amalgamated and analyzed in a manner that safeguards both user privacy and data ownership. Gartner last year forecast that 80% of marketers with media budgets of $1 billion or more will adopt clean rooms by 2023.

Marketers are growing more aggressive with their first-party data acquisition strategies, but deploying millions or tens of millions of consumer IDs can be complicated. Agencies like Omnicom clearly see an opportunity to assist brands in realizing their data-oriented goals as they try and kickstart growth.

WPP, an Omnicom rival, recently formed a new unit called Choreograph dedicated to first-party data strategies, including private identity solutions, audience insights and planning, media optimization and predictive analytics. Publicis Groupe in April partnered with demand-side platform The Trade Desk, pairing the identity solution of its data-marketing arm Epsilon with Unified ID 2.0, a third-party cookie alternative.

Omnicom deepening its clean room tech follows a sluggish period for growth. The company reported that organic revenue, a key measure of health for agencies, decreased 1.8% in the first quarter, contrasting with peers that saw a return to growth over the period following a brutal pandemic year.