Snap and Dentsu Join Forces for Innovation Partnership

Snap Inc. has entered into an innovation partnership with global advertising and public relations giant Dentsu to leverage the two companies’ expertise in creativity, data and media to give advertisers more capabilities and insights into their activity on the platform. The companies said the combination of Dentsu’s ad solutions and Snap’s brand safety initiatives will give the former’s clients access to high-value opportunities on Snapchat. “The current reality that we are living in has changed not only the way consumers interact with one another, but also the ways in which they are interacting with brands," said Jacki Kelley, Dentsu Aegis Network CEO of the Americas, in a statement. "Experiences that were once grounded in the physical world have pivoted to the digital world, by leveraging augmented reality tools and cutting-edge technology." Snap will work with Dentsu on its key U.S. offerings, including Attention Economy, Attention Ads Lab and its Disrupt marketplace. “Our ambition is to scale the success that we’re seeing in the U.S. across Dentsu markets globally and to upskill and enable our teams and clients around the world to innovate together and tap into the combined power of Dentsu and Snap," Dentsu Aegis Network head of global media partnerships Clive Record said in a statement. Attention Economy involves Dentsu teaming up with advertisers and media owners to create a new value system that optimizes their creative for attention. Snap’s attention metrics will be integrated into its systems and capabilities to help media planners and buyers tweak their campaigns on its platform in order to reach their goals. Dentsu called its new Attention Ads Lab a home for products, solutions and partnerships with a focus on creative asset effectiveness. The company partnered with creative analytics and postproduction platform VidMob as part of its AAL initiative. Snap reached its own partnership with VidMob in February 2017. The combined resources of Dentsu, Snap and VidMob will enable their clients to move from insights to action and ensure that their campaigns match their intended purposes and drive incremental return on investment. The Disrupt marketplace was created by Dentsu to address the unique growth needs of the direct-to-consumer and ecommerce sectors, leveraging the company’s partnerships with media and tech outfits, including Snap, and its internal solutions to provide brands with a direct-to-solution approach. Snap said it will work with Dentsu to remove traditional barriers of entry and help DTC and ecommerce brands embrace performance outcome-based models and become more flexible and agile. “Our partnership with Snap enables our clients to be truly nimble and pivot as needed, amid this period of massive digital transformation,” Kelley said. The two companies will also work to educate Dentsu’s teams on new ad formats and innovations from Snap, and to integrate Snap’s ad technology with Dentsu’s M1 people-based insights platform. Snap vice president of global agency and brand partnerships David Roter said in a statement, "Our partnership with Dentsu provides advertisers with a powerful way to reach our unique millennial and Generation Z audience at scale, with proven ROI. We look forward to helping their clients continue to unlock creative, innovative opportunities that leverage both our video and AR products across the Snapchat platform."