Dentsu Aegis Network strengthens content marketing offering through investment in Avid Media

Dentsu Aegis Network today announces it has made a significant investment in Avid Media, a leader in content marketing and native distribution, based in the UK. The company and its proprietary technologies will become available to Dentsu Aegis Network’s clients as part of the Group’s media investment platform, Amplifi.

Through its proprietary insight tool, Canopy, Avid Media can search and discover what, where and by who content is being discussed, consumed and shared online and provide valuable insight into the best content to create. Combined with its native distribution and measurement platform, Spartan, Avid Media offers end-to-end solutions for marketers to manage, track and distribute content natively, serving the UK, US and APAC region.

This significant, strategic and highly complementary partnership accelerates Dentsu Aegis Network’s content marketing capabilities and strengthens its data-led performance buying and programmatic offering. The move also supports Dentsu Aegis Network’s goal of becoming a 100% digital economy business by 2020.

Founded in 2010 by brothers Nick and Tim Brown, Avid Media will continue to be led by both, as CEO and CTO respectively, reporting to Mark Creighton, COO of Dentsu Aegis Network UK & Ireland.

Mark Creighton said: “The appetite from advertisers to create engaging brand experiences through quality digital content has never been greater. Creating the right content and distributing it effectively to the right audience is key. With the rising trend towards ad-blocking, native content placement will become increasingly important to reaching people with relevant brand messaging. Avid Media is a highly complementary fit to our existing capability in media, performance, content and brand commerce, and will provide our clients with a powerful combination of both content insight and distribution.”

Nick Brown added: “We’re really excited to be working with Dentsu Aegis in this increasingly important space. Native is a form of distribution and should not be treated as just another advertising unit. If you invest the time to understand how content works, how it is consumed and created, you can then further improve its performance and truly engage with a consumer. This announcement reflects the hard work and dedication of our very talented management team, and will help us further scale our global footprint and make our offering available to more clients.”

According to Enders Analysis, the combination of content marketing and native advertising will represent 64% of all paid media via mobile by 2020. This proportion is predicted to be even higher in more mature markets such as the UK, where almost three quarters of paid mobile media spend is expected to be on content marketing and native. In addition, the growth of ad-blocking has the potential to compromise the reach of standard programmatic buying, based on the IAB’s latest report (March 2016), indicating that 22% of UK users are using ad-blocking applications, an 18% increase in usage compared to October 2015. Native content targeting is not impacted by ad-blocking technology, enabling brands to continue to deliver their messages across a range of audiences, which cannot be reached by other programmatic formats.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

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For further information contact:

Mandy Rayment
Head of Communications
Dentsu Aegis Network UK
mandy.rayment@dentsuaegis.com
T: +44 (0)207 550 3253

Notes to Editors:

About Dentsu Aegis Network
Part of Dentsu Inc., Dentsu Aegis Network is made up of ten global network brands - Carat, Dentsu, Dentsu media, iProspect, Isobar, mcgarrybowen, Merkle, MKTG, Posterscope and Vizeum and supported by its specialist/multi-market brands. Dentsu Aegis Network is Innovating the Way Brands Are Built for its clients through its best-in-class expertise and capabilities in media, digital and creative communications services. Offering a distinctive and innovative range of products and services, Dentsu Aegis Network is headquartered in London and operates in 145 countries worldwide with around 35,000 dedicated specialists.

About Avid Media

Avid Media is a leader in content marketing and native distribution. It provides a content discovery platform with a native delivery mechanic and is dedicated to exploring the way content is consumed and how it influences the mindset of the user engaging with it in order to create valuable insights for marketers. Its programmatic native demand-side platform, Spartan, offers an end-to-end solution for marketers to manage distribution and dynamically feed the best client content into different formats. Its content ‘DNA’ and ‘Consumption’ insights measure and optimise performance to ensure marketers are distributing the right content, at the right time, in the right place, in the right way. Founded in 2010 by CEO Nick Brown, Avid Media is headquartered in London and employs 30 staff across Europe and APAC.