Acxiom and Matterkind (née Cadreon) are tightening their partnership with a new addressable media solution for Acxiom clients released Thursday.
For the first time, brands will be able to work with Acxiom for addressable media buying through the Addressable Advertising service. The media buys will be powered by Matterkind.
More than 2,000 brands already work with Acxiom to manage their first-party audiences and execute direct mail and email campaigns. The new service rounds out that offering with omnichannel buys across all addressable media, including programmatic, OTT and digital out of home.
“Anything we can buy based on an audience, with a combination of client data plus Acxiom data, is the focus for this media offering,” said Acxiom CEO Chad Engelgau. “We’re handing those audiences off to Matterkind to buy them programmatically.”
Acxiom will manage measurement and analytics across paid and owned channels so brands can have a more holistic view of their marketing spend across a consistent audience.
“Our customers want an integrated offering across paid, owned and earned,” Engelgau said. “Adding this to our portfolio and managing across their media investments, instead of in a silo, is the key differentiator we’re offering.”
By funneling more media buying toward Matterkind, Addressable Advertising will grow the programmatic agency’s services with Acxiom clients, and vice versa. Matterkind has embedded Acxiom’s ID graph as its foundation for media buying.
The service will leverage IPG’s open architecture model, which cherry-picks talent across agencies to service client needs. Engelgau likened Addressable Advertising to a more formal offering of IPG’s work with American Express, an Acxiom client that uses UM as its AOR for media buying and plugs into Kinesso and Matterkind for programmatic and digital.
“We’re enabling clients to use as much or as little as they want across the holding company in a way that works for them,” he said.
The new service also marks Acxiom’s first foray into media buying. Historically the company intentionally stayed away from media buying, as it works closely with media agencies across the industry.
The service just launched, so no brands are using it yet. Acxiom is targeting marketers that have brought media buying in house but still need external support.
“This is a fundamental change, where Acxiom is going to directly offer [media buying] services to clients under existing contracts,” Engelgau said. “It’s about addressing a market segment that hasn’t had access to the necessary tools and technology to do effective media buy.”
This is the first of multiple products that Acxiom, Matterkind and Kinesso, the technology services arm under IPG Mediabrands, will bring to market in 2020, with the aim of bridging the gap between ad tech and mar tech solutions.
“We see a convergence between the mar tech and ad tech stack,” Engelgau said. “Marketers are asking for help consolidating all of their marketing intelligence.”
