• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 29, 2013

Havas Media and DG will announce a global cross-media partnership Monday to support the optimization and delivery of ads across TV and online. The agreement also supports mobile devices, as well as search engine marketing through DG's Channel Content for Search platform.

The partnership integrates Havas Media's Artemis, a global data management network, with DG's MediaMind Online products and VideoFusion TV platforms. The combination focuses on optimization and aims to remove obstacles and hurdles slowing the convergence of marketing across TV and online digital media. It will help advertisers to reach consumers across multiple screens.

Sylvain Le Borgne, executive vice president of data platforms at Havas Media, said DG remains the only company that offers the technology for Havas to optimize and deliver content globally from TV to online. He said through DG's delivery and pixel and tag management infrastructure, Havas' Artemis platform will let the company provide tracking, attribution and predictive analytics across every campaign. Havas operates in more than 100 countries.

Delivering ads across screens hasn't been easy. Andrew Bloom, senior vice president, strategic business development at DG, said the three biggest issues: mismatch of creative assets and workflow strategies between TV and online media; lack of ad verification checks and balances that someone viewed the advertisement; and poor targeting options.

"In traditional linear TV, targeting is managed at the household level rather than the user level," Bloom said. "In mobile, where cookies are all but irrelevant, targeting at the user level is emergent through device fingerprinting and probabilistic targeting based on user behavior."

Bloom said as consumers use more devices, the challenge of delivering the right content to the perfect audience at the correct moment becomes increasingly more difficult.

A recent change in business structure that places Havas Media's digital expertise and content marketing at the core of its operations supports the partnership. DG also integrated all its business platforms under one master brand, creating a large independent advertising technology platform that manages more than 10% of the world's media spend.