• by Tanya Gazdik , February 26, 2009

Havas Digital has entered into a multi-level strategic partnership with Media6°, which uses "social graph" data to connect marketers to customized potential audiences, Online Media Daily has learned.

Under the agreement, Havas Digital agencies will become early adopters of Media6°'s social graph targeting capabilities in order to integrate consumer insights with hyper-targeting.

In addition, the partnership will develop advertising solutions that will further Havas Digital's development of its Virtual Brand Network for Advertisers. The Virtual Brand Network aggregates digital media inventory that meets the needs of a specific brand.

Media6° believes that a consumer who is connected to any firm's existing customer (a "network neighbor") responds to advertising from the firm at rates 2X-30X higher than consumers targeted using traditional demo or geotargeting techniques. "In a recent test, for every $1 dollar spent with Media6º, an internationally recognized travel brand recorded $48 dollars of transactional revenue," said Joe Doran, Media6°'s founding CEO and former general manager of Microsoft's AdCenter. "Media6°'s display media campaigns have outperformed even search by a factor of two to one."

This result translates across categories, he said. "We have seen similar success in telecommunications, consumer retail, financial services, leisure/travel and entertainment--all leading brands in their categories," Doran said. He declined to name any clients for competitive reasons.

Media6° began talking about the partnership with Havas Digital last summer, Doran said. "We knew right away that given our shared vision and capabilities in delivering valuable and actionable consumer insights to advertisers, that a partnership was in the cards," he said. "Havas Digital has incredible assets, clients and a global footprint, not to mention a strong vision in the Virtual Brand Network."

Media6º technology uses no consumer or publisher data to map the social graph or deliver its targeting solution. The firm is a signatory to the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) guidelines on the appropriate use of data in online advertising. The company is backed by $9M in funding from U.S. Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures and several prominent angel investors.

Havas Digital (www.HavasDigital.com) is an umbrella holding company that manages all Havas Media's interactive companies. Clients include Air France, Danone, Diageo, Expedia, Fidelity, France Telecom, ING Direct, Nike, Peugeot/Citroen, Repsol, Reckitt Benckiser, Sears and Vodafone.

"There have been many attempts to leverage the power of social media, but Media6° has developed an innovative and highly effective way to build responsive audiences at great scale," said Edward Montes, managing director of Havas Digital North America, in a statement. "This partnership demonstrates Havas Digital's ongoing strategy of investing in data-driven advertising solutions that integrate client, publisher and agency data to attain a more robust view of value creation."