Dentsu Launches Merkury for Media, Next Evolution of Entirely People Informed and Activated Media

Groundbreaking end-to-end offering enables addressable media experiences, AI-powered intelligent media allocations and optimizations that drive more cost-effective outcomes, all in a single integrated platform for dentsu’s media clients across Carat, dentsu X and iProspect 

NEW YORK, MARCH 28, 2024 – Dentsu announced today the official launch of Merkury for Media, the network’s latest offering within its unrivaled global data, identity, and insights platform, Merkury. The new product is the only one live in-market today where every dollar of media is placed using first-party people data optimized to business outcomes as the root of all linear and digital media planning and buying.  Dentsu’s global Merkury product suite will continue to expand in scope and scale in new markets across enterprise, media and creative capabilities in the coming months. 

“As the industry looks for scalable solutions to cookie deprecation and cost-efficient media addressability, we could not be more excited to bring this solution to market. With Merkury for Media we can make media dollars work harder in unrivaled fashion through data-driven, customer-centric experiences, intelligent media allocations and optimizations that drive higher business value and media performance for our clients,” said Sean Reardon, CEO, Americas Media Practice, dentsu.  

Merkury for Media is powered within Dentsu Connect, dentsu’s proprietary operating system consolidating network-wide products, where practitioners can seamlessly facilitate evolved audience creation and connect data to elevate insights, planning, targeting, and measurement to deliver personal and frictionless experiences across channels. 

• Audience Builder: Enhance 1st party advertiser data with the best, most complete audience IDs. The Merkury Audience Builder interface provides the seamless integration of client first-party data, in a connected, brand-safe environment, anonymized Merkury IDs of 268MM adults inclusive of 144MM households. Merkury IDs can be enriched with 10k+ proprietary and marketplace consumer data attributes including customized survey-based behavior and motivation data. Merkury Audience Builder has hundreds of open identity integrations with ad-tech and publisher partners like Amazon, Google, LiveRamp, LG, Meta, and NBCU to create the most comprehensive, flexible media targeting opportunities. For clients increasingly using CDPs and cloud data platforms for audience management and total experience, Merkury also offers enterprise identity features like direct integration of identity and consumer data with Adobe, Salesforce, Braze, AWS and more for unparalleled interoperability.
• Media Planner: Addressable planning for both Reach and ROI. The Merkury Media Planner allows teams to simultaneously achieve brand and demand objectives through fluid full-funnel mix optimizations grounded in a client’s first-party Audience Builder segments. Customize spend against KPIs, including reach and attention, to drive optimizations across channels. Teams can use both Media Mix Modeling (MMM) and scenario planning to gauge the right frequency and mix to drive both media and bottom-line business results.
• Merkury Activate: Cookieless digital media activation with the highest fidelity audiences at scale. With dentsu’s new custom-built, tightly integrated programmatic activation platform, clients can now own their bidding strategies across direct premium inventory with full transparency and control. Based on premier plans built within Merkury Planner, Merkury Activate reaches a client’s first-party-based audience segments at scale without cookies. CTV inventory can be negotiated directly with publishers and delivered via Programmatic Guaranteed or Private Marketplace deals with Merkury ID integrated supply side platforms, starting with Freewheel. Activate is designed to minimize media supply chain inefficiencies and maximize first-party audience enablement by building serverto-server direct supply audience integrations, surfacing hidden costs, enabling buyer controls, and exposing log-level delivery data. This unprecedented level of granular transparency empowers advertisers with the control to mitigate supply chain risk exposure, including ad fraud and Made for Advertising (MFA) websites. 
• Measurement + Optimization: Privacy-Safe end-to-end media management. Dentsu’s Merkury Clean Room provides teams and partners a privacy-safe data and analytics environment that unifies first-party data with partner second-party and select third-party data sources at an anonymized person ID level. Clients can more easily and securely collaborate and analyze collective datasets without sharing or copying one another’s underlying data. 

With this launch, dentsu also becomes the first agency holding company to utilize a combination of FreeWheel’s Beeswax platform and custom bidding tools and identity matching technologies to access its direct connections to premium ad inventory.

“Dentsu and FreeWheel are both leaders in the area of data-driven, addressable audience buying and planning, and we’re extremely proud to partner with them on this latest innovation,” said Mark McKee, General Manager, FreeWheel. “The use of first-party data is becoming increasingly important for advertisers as identity solutions of the past begin to unravel. The work that dentsu has done to create their own custom algorithm to build audiences pairs exceptionally well with FreeWheel’s solutions to create the most direct connections with premium publishers. We look forward to seeing its impact in the marketplace.”

Merkury for Media solves for challenges that modern marketers face with data fragmentation, allowing brands to truly own their data, resulting algorithm and end-toend activation, unlocking new growth audiences based on customer segments with the highest growth potential. Ultimately, by integrating first-party customer data securely with Merkury sources, clients can personalize programmatic bidding and content algorithms resulting in a 25% average boost in ROI. 

“Merkury for Media’s AI-based predictive engine will dynamically learn and react to create performance predictions that account for more internal client and outside environmental factors to plan for what will happen, not just based on what has happened in the past. This is a game-changer as we look for new intelligent ways to make our clients’ data work harder for them,” added Shirli Zelcer, Global Chief Data and Technology Officer, dentsu.

An integral part of what makes dentsu’s Merkury for Media stand apart are the 130+ open identity and data integrations, with more expected in the coming months. Most recently, dentsu inked new partner integrations in the CTV space with both Roku and Disney. The end-to-end integration with Roku allows dentsu’s US clients to seamlessly plan, activate and measure against advanced audiences built in Merkury for Media across Roku’s inventory, giving clients the potential to reach up to 80MM active accounts available through both Roku's Ad Platform and its Owned and Operated ecosystem. The integration with Disney’s award-winning Clean Room and Audience Graph, similarly provides unparalleled access to Disney's vast inventory, enabling clients to reach highly targeted audiences with incredible precision and efficiency.

To learn more about Merkury visit: Merkury.dentsu.com

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Brittany Hescheles 

Dentsu Media Communications 

Brittany.hescheles@dentsu.com 

Asha Gopalan Ramirez 

Corporate Communications 

Asha.ramirez@dentsu.com 

About dentsu

Dentsu is the network designed for what’s next, helping clients predict and plan for disruptive future opportunities in the sustainable economy. Taking a people-centered approach to business transformation, dentsu combines Japanese innovation with a diverse, global perspective to drive client growth and to shape society. https://www.dentsu.com/ https://www.group.dentsu.com/en/