• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 7, 2022

Omnicom’s Annalect unit this morning announced an agreement to license a new form of consumer intelligence data segmenting media audiences based on “past purchase data,” and will integrate it into Omnicom’s company-wide operating system, Omni.

The agreement with Affinity Solutions will enable Omnicom’s organization to apply Affinity’s “purchase-based media scoring” method to media inventory in Omni’s “inventory graph,” enabling Omnicom staffers to plan, buy and measure the outcomes of campaigns targeting people based on their purchasing history.

“This unique combination will enable advertisers to evaluate and optimize their marketing investment based on actual buyers and their level of spend across retailers, restaurants, communication providers, streaming platforms, and travel/hospitality companies, among others,” the companies said in a statement announcing the agreement. 

It compares the new media audience-targeting method to the kind that marketers and agencies have historically used based on consumer “FICO” or credit bureau ratings, asserting it “finally gives advertisers a way to measure the extent to which a media property attracts people in market for their products and services.

For example, McDonald’s naturally wants to reach people who go to QSRs and buy hamburgers (and who live near a McDonald’s).”

 “Connecting Affinity’s purchase graph to Omni’s proprietary consumer database of 250-plus million individuals and thousands of data points will allow us to develop enhanced commerce consumer journeys, as well as build more effective target audiences,” Annelect Global CEO Slavi Samardzija said in a statement, emphasizing that the approach is “privacy-compliant” and another workaround for identifying consumers in the wake of the deprecation of cookies and mobile device IDs.