June 22, 2023 | By Michael Bürgi

Fresh off announcing a sales-side platform called Commerce Grid together a week ago, Omnicom Media Group and commerce media company Criteo are collaborating on a data and clean-room partnership enabled by InfoSum, Digiday has learned.

OMG and Criteo, using InfoSum’s clean-room tech, will match audience data from Omni (Omnicom’s open source operating system) and first-party data from clients with Criteo’s shopping intent insights generated from some 750 million daily active users to achieve maximum precision and efficiency — all within the bounds of privacy safety.

Both parties say it’s the first time an agency holding company will have access to the signals and performance insights in Commerce Grid, for activation through alternative buying platforms. OMG will be able to package commerce segments with its curated premium inventory from Commerce Grid’s more than 1,500 directly integrated publishers for activation in OMG’s preferred demand-side platforms, which then empowers streamlined campaign management, reporting and optimization.

“InfoSum acts as a clean room to be able to allow for that connectivity between us and OMG, and allow Omnicom’s brands unique access using Omni – but then marrying that to Criteo signals in the appropriate way, typically around commerce,” said Brian Gleason, global CRO at Criteo. “It hasn’t been done in this capacity at this scale ever before, which I think is significant.”

Megan Pagliuca, OMG’s chief activation officer, who’s been centrally involved in all of OMG and parent Omnicom’s commerce-related announcements at Cannes this week, said OMG had been looking for a way to connect with Criteo for some time, and last week’s partnership on Commerce Grid was a stepping stone to this clean-room opportunity.  “We wanted to figure out where we could bring client first-party data and model it,” said Pagliuca. “We have the flexibility to access it via any DSP. And there’s a signal resilience component of having that data on the SSP side, which is important as well.”

“The meteoric rise of retail media is inextricably linked to the rapid adoption of data clean rooms,” added Brian Lesser, chairman and CEO of InfoSum. “By leveraging these data collaboration technologies, for the first time, multiple companies can collaborate using first- and second-party data to deliver powerful retail media experiences while fully protecting the privacy of consumers and safeguarding the security of their data.”

Jay Pattisall, vp and principal analyst at Forrester, credited Omnicom, the parent company, with making strong strides in commerce media.

“Omnicom’s Criteo announcement is not unlike the Amazon or Walmart clean-room deals Omnicom established in 2022,” said Pattisall. “The advantage of Criteo for OMG is more precise commerce media activation and measurement … When you look at the entirety of these partnerships, it appears that through Omni, Omnicom is linking its media and creative/ content business through Omni and a series of key partnerships.”

Indeed, both companies are looking to get ahead of looming privacy legislation that could impact the $6 trillion ecommerce economy, as well as the confusion caused by multiple DSPs and SSPs working the marketplace.

At Cannes Lions this week, Omnicom announced separate deals struck with Uber to access its valuable rider data as well as the first multi-party clean room with Snowflake using Albertsons Media Collective data melded with major video publishers’ viewership data to generate more effective insights on business outcomes.

The company also unveiled its internal orchestration solution, called Omni Commerce, that incorporates all the commerce related signals coming into Omnicom.

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