MUMBAI: Many mergers, partnerships and acquisitions happened in this year. Now, when the year is coming to an end, there’s another big deal that has been sealed between media agency Starcom MediaVest Group and marketing technology and services company Acxiom. A multi-year deal has been signed between the two.

The deal will let Starcom use Acxiom’s Audience Operating System, which enables audience segmentation and targeting across online and offline media using first-party and third-party data. The two firms aim to develop new applications for the system, such as targeting TV advertising.

The deal gives the Publicis Groupe an option to expand its services to other companies under the umbrella. It also gives Starcom MediaVest the first right of refusal for using Acxiom system in overseas markets when in becomes available outside US. Acxiom expects to roll out the audience targeting platform in the UK and China next.
However, the deal isn’t exclusive and Starcom can test system with other companies as well.

The time-frame of the deal hasn’t been revealed by the companies. And since Publicis and Omnicom are in the middle of a merger approval process, there's no indication on how the Acxiom deal might extend over to Omnicom agencies once the merger is completed.

The new partnership is followed by similar deals that have been signed earlier in the year. A pact gave Starcom MediaVest a first crack at premium Twitter ad inventory, and is intended to give the agency the ability to influence new Twitter products. Even last month, a deal between Starcom and Yahoo was announced which gave the agency exclusive access to Yahoo’s first-party data on its visitors.