• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 22, 2024

Google may have given the ad industry the equivalent of a seventh-inning stretch vis a vis identity-based targeting -- at least for now -- but that hasn't stopped big agencies and their clients from accelerating the integration of new forms of contextual data that, in many ways, may be even better than using consumers' explicit identities and behaviors.

This morning, Dentsu took to the field announcing a deal with Sports Innovation Lab (SIL), which has developed an audience segmentation schema based on affinities to major sports teams, leagues and even sports betting platforms, which can be used to segment audiences on virtually any publisher's advertising inventory, not just sports-related ones.

Significantly, Dentsu has become the first of the major agency holding companies to integrate the sports fan data into its own proprietary consumer targeting platform: Merkury's data on 268 million "reachable" U.S. adults.

The SINL data is additive to Merkury's 10,000 consumer attributes, and gives Dentsu shops and clients a new way of thinking about and targeting Americans.

“Through the partnership, our clients can confidently develop custom audiences, enabling personalized, real-time experiences for sports enthusiasts across channels while adhering to the highest standards of consumer data protection," explains Merkury Chief Strategy Officer Gerry Bavaro, noting that the integration is built on a privacy-first, cohort-based scoring method that aligns with the growing demand for data privacy and security in digital advertising.