Starcom MediaVest Group and Nielsen Catalina Solutions Enter Multi-year Agreement to Integrate Purchase Behavior Data Into SMG’s Media Platforms

Leading Edge Buyergraphic Approach Breaks Down Silos and Drives Increased Return

CINCINNATI & CHICAGO – Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) and Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) today announced a multi-year relationship to ultimately help advertisers drive sales and boost the return from their advertising investment. SMG will integrate the industry’s largest single-source CPG dataset from NCS into its TV planning and buying system, bringing consumer packaged goods and over-the-counter advertisers the opportunity to access the NCS tools that help identify high potential consumer segments and select the most effective TV programs to reach that audience based on real purchase behavior.

According to NCS, television advertisers who use purchase-based approaches have an increased opportunity to gain significant incremental revenue. With AdVantics On Demand™, NCS enables better TV efficiency and effectiveness by integrating data from Nielsen’s gold-standard TV panels and cable set-top-box homes with over 70 million households of shopper data from Catalina. This buyergraphic approach looks at audience segments based on purchase behavior, providing powerful solutions that drive retail sales lifts across nearly all media touch points.

“Media’s next wave is integrating large-scale datasets and software platforms into existing planning and buying systems to deliver the most effective advertising to the right audience,” said Mike Nazzaro, CEO, NCS. “Agencies and brands can realize the promise of a consumer-centric approach through a focus on analyzing data and using creativity to develop data-driven insights and make decisions that can be activated in the media marketplace.”

SMG has been at the forefront of incorporating buyer-based data to drive better results from advertising for clients and maximize budget efficiency. With the seamless automation of the NCS dataset and TARDIIS, SMG’s planning and buying platform, clients will benefit from an integrated system that will help identify the most promising consumer segments, optimize and allocate their TV campaigns based on a shopper’s actual purchase behavior with precision and scale.

“At SMG, we are committed to staying on the cutting edge of media, technology and processes that help our clients maximize their ad budgets and make smarter media decisions,” said Kate Sirkin, EVP and global research director of Starcom MediaVest Group. “Purchase-based targeting is further evidence of our precision marketing future and we’re confident that we are continuing to provide our clients with the best solutions in the market today.”

“As our team looks to ensure we are investing with impact, we believe the NCS AdVantics’ tool could drive significant improvements to our Linear TV negotiations and allocation of television inventory resulting in a substantial increase to Kellogg U.S. sales,” said Chris Osner-Hackett, senior director, Kellogg North America. “We are actively working with NCS and Starcom to identify further ways to leverage the buyergraphic data to inform our overall media investment.”

“At Kraft, to realize our vision of addressability, we must be able to read results with precision and power real-time allocation decisions,” said Bob Rupczynski, Kraft’s vice president of media and consumer engagement. “We have been using purchase-based data to guide television decisions for multiple years already and this year we have even adjusted our contracts with the networks to be able to apply this data in near-real time to deliver more precise optimized television plans for our brands.”

About Nielsen Catalina Solutions

Nielsen Catalina Solutions provides the most comprehensive single-source view of advertising to help consumer package goods marketers, agencies and media companies measure and improve advertising performance by precisely linking what consumers watch and what they buy.

The joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina integrates “watch” information from industry-leading Nielsen People Meter and cable set-top-box for TV, and multi-media viewing data from Nielsen Catalina Solution’s channel partners. The media viewing data is matched with the “buy” data from 70 million shopper households. This single-source view provides precision advertising solutions that drive incremental retail sales for TV, online, mobile, CRM, radio and print advertising. Nielsen Catalina Solutions is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Visit www.ncsolutions.com/ to learn more.

About Starcom MediaVest Group

Starcom MediaVest Group is the Human Experience Company. We believe experiences matter. They enhance lives and build brands. We bring brand experiences to life through SMG’s three global award winning agency brands: MediaVest, Starcom and Spark. In 2014, SMG was named Media Network of the Year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. SMG was also named Festival of Media Global Network of the Year for the second year in a row, and the fourth time in the last six years. Ranked the number one global media network in billings in the world by RECMA, SMG (www.smvgroup.com) encompasses an integrated network of human experience strategists, investment specialists, content creators and digital & technology experts. With over 8,000 employees in 130 offices worldwide, SMG partners with the world’s largest marketers including The Coca-Cola Company, P&G, Samsung, and Walmart, as well as new establishment brands including Spotify, Twitter, LinkedIn and Airbnb. SMG is part of Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40], one of the world’s leading communications groups.