Canvas Worldwide, the world’s second largest independent media agency, will use data from TransUnion to optimize the ad campaigns that it plans and runs for major brands.

TransUnion is best known as a credit agency: it’s one of the credit ratings industry’s Big Three, along with Experian and Equifax. A few years ago, the company made a big move into the marketing technology market by acquiring TruSignal, Signal and Tru Optik, a trio of firms that enable advertisers to understand their target audiences’ buying preferences.

TransUnion used the technology that it bought through those deals to build a marketing data platform under the TruAudience brand. That platform, which is at the heart of the firm’s new alliance with Canvas Worldwide, gives marketers access to data about consumers that they can use to craft more convincing ads.

TransUnion is taking a “privacy-first approach” to managing consumer data, the credit agency and Canvas Worldwide emphasized. That’s a key detail amid the increasing pressure the tech industry is facing in capitals worldwide to improve consumer privacy controls.

The deal with Canvas Worldwide is a big win for TransUnion’s marketing data platform. Canvas Worldwide’s client rosters includes brands like Hyundai, Stars and McDonald’s that spend billions of dollars a year on marketing every year.

Partnering with the media agency gives Transunion indirect access to the marketing dollars of some of the world’s largest advertisers.

The two firms didn’t go into too much detail about exactly how they plan to work together. But Canvas Worldwide did note that the partnership will place an emphasis on lookalike modeling, a marketing industry practice that brands use to find consumers with similar buying preferences as their existing customers.

Canvas Worldwide, it’s worth pointing out, has connections not only to heavyweight advertisers like McDonald’s but also other media agencies. The firm was formed in 2015 as a joint venture between Horizon Media, another mammoth media services agency that ranks as the largest in its category, and a business unit of car manufacturer Hyundai.

The alliance with Canvas Worldwide will make it that much easier for TransUnion to get more media agencies’ attention and position itself as a supplier to know in the multibillion-dollar marketing tech market.

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