Dentsu announced as first partner with NBCUniversal’s NBCUnified

Dentsu international will become the first agency partner of NBCUnified, NBCUniversal’s new first-party identity platform that helps advertisers use data to meet business goals.

Originally announced on 5 January, NBCUnified builds on NBCUniversal’s existing advertising tools and capabilities through AdSmart and the Audience Insights Hub by combining NBCUniversal’s suite of consumer touchpoints (including movies, news, sports, ecommerce, subscriptions, and theme parks into a single database.

The One Platform is comprised of three main components – NBCU ID, Data Marketplace, and Partner Integrations – with the goal of providing a more connected, data-driven experience of video for audiences and advertisers.

Dentsu will be able to bring together both person-level and house-hold level data from its own M1 platform, as well as those of its advertisers, with NBCUnified to create effective and fully transactable media purchases.

Dentsu clients will further be afforded advanced analytics and measurement capabilities enabled by the NBCU and denstu clean room environments.

The announcement comes as the industry is shifting towards transacting against scaled identity-based currencies across linear and streaming amidst increasing deprecation of third-party identifiers such as cookies and device IDs.

NBCUniversal and Dentsu are attempting to find new ways to connect their identity spines and remove friction from scaled audience-based buying while utilizing first-party data signals while moving away from third-party IDs.