• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, April 6, 2009

Omnicom Group has teamed up with Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to launch the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative , a new digital media think tank.

Led by Wharton professors Eric Bradlow and Peter Fader, the Media Initiative promises to bring a new level of data-driven research to media businesses that influences industry decision makers and help "companies understand how to monetize interactive data that they and others have collected."

Key aspects of the effort include a joint call for proposals with the Marketing Science Institute for the study of user-generated content, job placement assistance for students and alumni, and the creation of advisory and executive boards to encourage participation from alumni and leading-edge companies.

In January, WIMI held its inaugural conference on Modeling Social Network Data, which took place in January and focused on the challenge of gathering data from social networks. "Companies see the benefits that can arise from using customer-level data, but they often lack the analytic capabilities or bandwidth to do so," said Fader in a statement. "This is where WIMI steps in: by serving as a 'matchmaker' between these companies and leading academic researchers around the world."

For its part, Omnicom said the project would help accelerate development of digital marketing applications and expand the pool of talent for the interactive industry. Omnicom executive vice president and CFO Randall Weisenburger received his MBA from Wharton in 1987 and currently serves on the school's Board of Overseers.

WIMI was launched with a $1 million gift from alumnus Arthur H. Bilger and his wife, Dahlia. He is a managing member of Shelter Capital Partners, a Southern California-based private investment fund.