Havas will enhance its marketing capabilities by working with Samba TV, a San Francisco-based data startup, to deliver more compelling ads to consumers.

Havas is one of the world’s largest advertising and public relations firms. It’s owned by a Paris-based holding company, Vivendi, that also counts Dailymotion among its subsidiaries. 

The new partnership that Havas has signed with Samba TV will involve its Havas Media Group (HMG) subsidiary, which creates and runs ad campaigns for major brands. The U.S. division of HMG is responsible for managing the Samba TV partnership. 

According to HMG and Samba TV, their collaboration will focus on the latter company’s TV viewership analytics software. 

Samba TV operates a software platform that gathers data from 46 million TVs worldwide to understand what consumers are watching, on what channels and when. In exchange for sharing viewership data, which is done on an opt-in basis, consumers receive access to an application that provides customized watching recommendations.

HMG will stream TV viewership information from Samba TV into an internal data processing platform called Converged. According to HMG, its ad professionals will consult the viewership information from Samba TV to find ways of creating more effective ad campaigns for clients.

“With the integration of Samba’s TV data, Havas will understand the linear and streaming TV viewing behaviors of their clients’ most valuable customer prospects,” commented Samba TV executive Kris Magel.

HMG’s Converged platform also enables the agency to process other types of data besides TV viewership metrics. A brand that hires HMG to manage its marketing operations can supply the agency with internal marketing data, like customer purchase logs, to support the development of new ad campaigns.

The HMG-Samba TV partnership marks the first time that a major ad agency holding company has fully integrated Samba TV’s data into its marketing operations. It’s a high-profile vote of confidence in Samba TV that could make it easier for the startup to win business from other major ad agencies.

“Samba TV’s direct relationship with the consumer and the accuracy of their data – which we have found to be the most representative TV data set in the U.S. – will provide our clients with powerful new tools and insights needed to find difficult to reach audiences and engage consumers today across every screen,” said HMG North America Chief Data Officer Mike Bregman.

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