Dentsu and Quantcast team up to boost predictive audiences for advertisers

Dentsu has partnered with the AI-driven Quantcast Advertising Platform to enhance targeted campaigns without needing third-party cookies.

The deal will see Dentsu integrate its global data and insights platform, Merkury, with Quantcast’s next-gen programmatic ad platform to provide predictive audiences to its advertisers in a privacy-safe way.

Through this data integration, clients can now access more than 10,000 custom consumer data attributes to build audience profiles and apply scaled AI to identify the most relevant consumers based on millions of online data signals across CTV, desktop, and mobile devices.

The fully automated technology is integrated across key Dentsu clients and is now available in five markets, including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and Sweden. Plans are to scale to additional markets in the coming months.

Gerry Bavaro, chief strategy officer, Merkury at Dentsu, said: “Despite Google’s recent announcement, continued cookie deprecation across the industry and heightened privacy regulations globally have introduced a new set of challenges for the modern marketer.

“To help brands navigate this rapidly evolving world, we’ve focused on developing innovative, brand-first solutions that are globally scaled but locally relevant. Our solutions enable hyper-personalised customer experiences, but with the scale and value that third-party data provides.”

Merkury’s predictive audience capability solves industry challenges by leveraging the innovative application of AI, machine learning, and data engineering.

The end-to-end integration facilitates audience creation from planning through activation in a single platform. This lets clients use Merkury data and target audience profiles across media partners while remaining privacy-conscious and without using third-party cookies.

“Our collaboration with Dentsu through Merkury brings a new era of audience insights and targeting utilising the latest large language modelling techniques without a reliance on third-party cookies,” said Amit Kotecha, Chief Marketing Officer at Quantcast. “This innovative approach marks a significant step forward in data-driven marketing strategies.”

Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery brand, is already on board and using the partnership.

Hattie Smith, brand manager at Pandora, said, "We are really excited by this integration. When innovation is at the forefront, a collaboration of this kind really showcases the power and potential of CTV. We are continuing to build on this partnership and look forward to seeing more great results.”

The integration with Quantcast is the latest in a series of Merkury updates as Dentsu continues to enhance its suite of open identity products. 

The article first appeared on Campaign's sister title Performance Marketing World.