Dentsu has partnered with MiQ, a New York-based marketing software and services firm, to develop what it describes as a large media model.

The neural network is part of a broader collaboration that also includes other elements. Dentsu will use Sigma, a data management platform developed by MiQ, to support the ad campaigns that it runs for some of its clients. The firms expect the partnership to provide improvements in areas such as ad performance measurement.

Dentsu is a Tokyo-based holding company that operates a global network of marketing agencies. It’s also active in certain adjacent market segments. The company’s Merkle subsidiary, for example, can help clients with product development initiatives. Dentsu says that its 71,000-plus employees generated 1.4 trillion yen in sales last year, which corresponds to about $9.6 billion at current exchange rates.

MiQ is a smaller market player that generates its revenue from two main sources. The first is a marketing services practice that helps clients with tasks such as planning ad campaigns. MiQ also sells a software platform called Sigma that aggregates customer behavior metrics, ad information from marketing tools and related data. Brands can analyze that information for clues on how their advertising campaigns can be improved. Sigma is the focus of Dentsu’s new partnership with MiQ.

The Japanese advertising giant is currently testing a customized AI model designed to predict how ads influence online customer behavior. The algorithm does so by analyzing consumer activity sourced from Sigma. Those datasets contain information about video views, purchases and other events that can factor into the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Dentsu describes the algorithm as a large media model, or LMM. “A Large Media Model (LMM) is specifically trained on extensive media and marketing data,” a company spokesperson explained to Boardroom Insight. “This specialisation makes LMMs highly effective at forecasting, optimising, and understanding media outcomes across different channels.”

One of the tasks that the algorithm can ease is determining the frequency at which an ad should be shown to buyers. According to the Dentsu spokesperson, the AI can also answer marketers’ questions about how metrics such as share of voice influence customer behavior.

“While the questions themselves are not new, the ability to answer them through a large media model represents a significant advancement,” the spokesperson explained. “This approach allows for more scalable and faster data processing, quicker insight generation leading to activation, and greater opportunities for simulation and scenario planning.”

The other focus of the Dentsu-MiQ partnership is a Sigma feature called Trading Agent. It’s a sidebar in the platform’s interface that contains a ChatGPT-like chatbot. Trading Agent uses large language models to automate tasks such as retrieving information about an ad campaign’s performance. Going forward, Dentsu and MiQ plan to use the feature in all the managed marketing campaigns that they run for joint clients. 

Image courtesy of MiQ