Mindshare has launched a new strategic planning and integration platform designed to help clients worldwide make quicker, more effective decisions from a growing array of media channels and consumer touchpoints. The GroupM media shop, a unit of WPP, has teamed with a group of outside vendors to create an open-source “always on” platform that crunches media, pricing, consumer behavioral and client data, such as sales, supply chain and CRM stats, enabling on-the-fly decisions by marketers about how to reach consumers. The agency likens the platform to those used by financial traders making constant split-second decisions about buying and selling shares, albeit with different sets of data. Nick Emery, CEO, Mindshare Worldwide, said the agency has invested heavily in the new platform, dubbed Core, “because we believe it is the future of marketing. We are bringing together state of-the-art technology providers to truly deliver real-time business and media data.” Antony Young, CEO Mindshare North America, said most clients are increasingly concerned with making the right media choices in the most efficient manner. "We think [the new platform] is going to provide a competitive advantage for us and our clients.” The platform, unveiled Tuesday at the Cannes ad festival, is designed as “single source” marketing intelligence platform,” per the agency. Contributing vendors include Acxiom, the consumer intelligence data giant; ratings company Nielsen; MySupermarket, the retail data firm; online behavioral expert Exponential; Adobe, the end-user interface and data mining and modeling specialist, and online and social media metrics firm Visible Measures. The platform also utilizes Mindshare sister firm 24/7 Real Media for cookie and synching technology and Ab Initio for data integration and other functions.