Dentsu Becomes NBCUniversal’s First Agency Partner for NBCUnified

NBCUniversal, the leading global media and technology company, today announced that dentsu international, one of the largest global marketing and advertising agency networks, will become the first agency partner of NBCUnified, its holistic first-party data and identity platform that unites NBCUniversal’s vast network of consumer touchpoints into a scaled offering for marketers within One Platform. 

In a first-of-its-kind integration, the deep partnership will enable utilisation of both person-level and household-level IDs from dentsu’s M1 platform and consumer data products, as well as those of its advertisers, to directly integrate into NBCUnified’s identity platform. With privacy in mind, this partnership allows for matches with NBCU’s database of NBCU IDs, which in its initial release will comprise 150 million person-level IDs tied to 80 million households.

dentsu and its media agency brands will now—for the first time ever—be able to utilise its M1 platform on behalf of clients to match audiences using NBCUnified Consumer Match, and leverage NBCUniversal’s deep first-party knowledge of its consumers—through NBCUnified Audiences—to develop greater insights and more in-depth, higher-performing custom audiences for targeting across premium NBCU TV, video and display inventory.  Additionally, dentsu clients will be afforded advanced analytics and measurement capabilities enabled by NBCU and dentsu clean room environments.

Cara Lewis, chief investment officer at dentsu Media US added: “At dentsu, we pride ourselves on being leaders in driving relevancy and knowing people better than anyone. This first of its kind partnership with NBCU delivers an innovative addressability solution in the traditional marketplace that can be activated right away. Bringing together IDs and data from dentsu’s M1 platform, our clients, and NBCU will enable us to uncover more resonant audiences for our clients, fuelling more effective media purchases that are fully transactable.”

Launched in January, NBCUnified builds on the NBCUniversal’s expansive suite of advanced advertising tools and capabilities—from AdSmart for data-driven audience targeting on every screen to NBCU’s Audience Insights Hub for data interoperability through a clean room environment. NBCUnified was created to be fully interoperable, providing marketers a modern-day, privacy-minded solution to connect data spines ranging from agencies, third-party technology platforms, industry-wide initiatives, consortiums, and NBCUniversal’s clean rooms.

“Identity is increasingly becoming the new currency for the advanced television and digital video industry,” said John Lee, chief data officer, NBCUniversal. “With this partnership, NBCUniversal and dentsu are taking a leadership position in accelerating our joint ability to allow clients to transact on identity and first-party data across our premium offerings at a level of scale and transparency never before possible. This presents our joint clients with a path forward to move away from black-box, panel-based systems to one where our joint identity pool of over 100 million households becomes the currency.”

Today’s announcement is the third in a series of partnership news NBCUniversal has made in the run up to its developer conference, One22, taking place on March 22nd, where the company will further showcase its capabilities and partnerships across data, technology, and measurement.