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Omnicom signs data-centric adtech partnership with Criteo

Omnicom, the New York-headquartered advertising behemoth, has signed a partnership with a French company called Criteo to make targeted ads more relevant for online shoppers.

Omnicom is one of the world’s largest marketing agencies when measured by revenue. It has more than 5,000 clients, including many Fortune 500 firms, in 70-plus countries.

Criteo, the French firm with which Omnicom is teaming up, sells so-called retargeting software. Its software can detect when consumers visit an e-commerce site but don’t buy anything and then shows them ads inviting them to return to the site.

Because of its work in the e-commerce space, Criteo has a lot of data about consumers’ online buying behavior. The firm says it has “shopping intent” data on more than 750 million daily active users worldwide.

Through its partnership with Criteo, Omnicom will gain access to that data trove. It will use the information to gain a better understanding of what products people are buying online and customize its ads to each user’s preferences.

“Simply stated, this partnership enables us to reach consumers in the places they shop, and see who’s who’s buying what and where they’re buying it,” remarked Omnicom executive Megan Pagliuca.

Omnicom says it’s the first major marketing agency to receive access to Criteo’s dataset. That’s a big win for the firm, though it’s likely other major agencies will sign up in the future unless Omnicom and Criteo have some sort of exclusivity deal in place.

At any rate, customer intent data is not the only focus of the partnership.

Criteo has contracts with more than 1,000 site operators that allow it to run ads on their webpages. That webpage ad space will be made available to Omnicom, which will offer it to clients for use in their marketing campaigns.

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