Podcast: Merkle's Data Worldview
Summary
Six months ago, Dentsu officially closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of CRM and digital media agency Merkle. The first plot is a straightforward portfolio expansion, with Merkle taking its place alongside Carat, iProspect, 360i and other sister Dentsu shops. Merkle also cultivates connections to publishers to identify audiences on various platforms, including television and private marketplaces. "Why would you plan hundreds of millions of dollars of media off a panel of 40,000 or 70,000 people and build proxies,” Lee asks, “when I can use the clients actual data – people who bought pickup trucks last week or auto insurance – and model that against every living, breathing adult in the US, and use that as the basis of truth?" He says if you gave a report card to every company in the Fortune 500 based on whether it had created a single view of the customer in a way thats usable for omnichannel marketing, "The brutal truth is … there wouldnt be a lot of A’s."