Omnicom Launches Marketing and Insights Platform to Track Consumers Across All Practices

According to an Omnicom statement, Omni will help the network of agencies work, collaborate and deliver value across generating insights, audience building, channel planning, creative development and message distribution. Omnicom said the platform will continuously measure and optimize all activities around client performance “at every step of the consumer journey.”

The platform was developed by Annalect, Omnicom’s data-driven strategy division that encompasses tech, analytics and consulting, in partnership with Omnicom Precision Marketing Group.

“When we launched Annalect seven years ago, we dedicated ourselves to transforming the effects of data and analytics on media,” said Omnicom Media Group CEO Daryl Simm in a statement. “With Omni, we’re extending everything we’ve learned to transform the entire marketing process. Omni connects our talent around a single view of the consumer and inspires them to create the best integrated ideas that drive success for our clients.”

Omnicom’s move comes as data and analytics becomes increasingly more crucial for agencies to utilize and understand—and after rival advertising holding company Interpublic Group’s announcement last week that it dished out $2.3 billion to acquire Acxiom, an Arkansas database marketing company that collects and distributes information drawn from an estimated 2.2 billion consumers worldwide.

IPG has said that the purchase should help clients better target their ads without leaning exclusively on tools provided by tech giants like Facebook and Google.

“Everyone is welcome to their own strategy,” Simm wrote in an email to Adweek when asked about Omnicom’s decision to build its data and analytics division in-house rather than acquire third-party assets like IPG.

Simm continued: “Omnicom’s is based on the certainty that the data-driven marketing ecosytem is fluid and ever changing. What was important yesterday—think universal cookies and DMPs— pales in comparison to the sophistication and demands of today’s environment. That’s why we have always believed in an open source strategy, one that is neutral and nimble, purpose built for change.”

Omnicom said in an announcement earlier today that “at the core” of Omni is “the industry’s most robust people-based identity graph,” which monitors consumer behaviors in real-time to “reveal how people connect, engage and transact with brands.” The graph was built from “multiple identity authorities” including Neustar, LiveRamp and Experian, and it uses a methodology that claims to “respect regional regulatory and privacy practices,” according to Omnicom.

When asked to elaborate on that methodology, Simm said: “In regard to compliance with regulatory privacy requirements, we have the ability to integrate different data providers without compromising the integrity of the capabilities Omni delivers. And, because we don’t have interests in data companies, we have maximum agility to objectively monitor the compliance and integrity of our partners’ data and adjust sources as required to meet any changes in regulatory conditions.”

Simm said that consumer privacy and security is “at the heart of our design,” noting that teams conduct what he called “data privacy impact assessments” to evaluate their practices and ensure that Omni doesn’t infringe on consumers’ privacy.

“The challenge is creating platform architecture that must manage vast data with incredible sophistication, while affording the agility to continuously source the best-in-class vendors and application partners, that are also compliant, in a fast-changing regulatory and privacy landscape,” Simm said in an email.

Omnicom also said that another function of Omni will be mapping consumer behaviors to a “comprehensive media inventory graph that delivers a precise view of quality, value and availability of inventory in the marketplace.”

The holding company has been implementing Omni on select creative, media and CRM business engagements over the past several months and will now roll it out across the entire network.

Simm declined to comment on what select creative, media and CRM work has already utilized Omni or what insights it may have provided.