Omnicom partners with Amazon and Meta to build on live content and live shopping

The arrangement with Amazon involves two elements that are ultimately tied together in terms of their impact on measurement. With the first, around Amazon’s coverage of Thursday Night Football, Omnicom’s goal is to access audience data that goes further back in order to gain deeper insights into the viewer in a live environment. As part of the proof-of-concept, Amazon extended the look-back window on audiences who viewed ads shown during 2023 and 2024 Thursday Night Football seasons.

“Live sports and live television was historically measured on things like GRPs, and we didn’t have the measurability that we have have now,” said Megan Pagliuca, chief product officer for Omnicom Media Group North America. “So not only can we look at reach and frequency of holistic video, inclusive of Thursday night football, but now we could also look beyond reach, beyond frequency, to beyond sales to customer value.”

Through its Flywheel commerce practice, but also using data from Omni, the orchestration platform within Omnicom, the holdco also participated in an Amazon Ads limited beta access that enabled its clients to plan and measure campaigns using live content signals in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) – Amazon’s clean room solution including Amazon Live and Thursday Night Football (TNF) to gain insights around path-to purchase and lifetime customer value. 

“Because of that look back, and because of having TNF as a touch point, we are able to properly understand the value of live sports in the context of essentially all this other media,” said Dru Sil, executive director of global commerce products at Omnicom’s Annalect, which helps to operate Omni. “Increasingly, we’re connecting what is largely a fragmented kind of measurement and planning environment into a more consolidated one.”

“This integration takes the guesswork out of live shopping’s value, enabling more informed decision-making and improved campaign performance,” said Paula Despins, vp of measurement for Amazon Ads. “With Amazon Live signals in AMC, advertisers can now more clearly see how their live shopping marketing efforts drive measurable full-funnel results.”

“The enhanced availability of Amazon Live data in AMC allows us to connect our Amazon Live events to business performance, and provides us with a more complete picture of customer journey and lifetime value,” said Meghan Signalness, global head of media, marketing planning & operations at consumer tech firm and Omnicom client Philips, “while also enabling a greater understanding of our customers that goes beyond the transactional to behavioral and cultural insights.”

Separately at Cannes Lions, Omnicom rolled out its partnership with Meta, which delves back into the world of influencers by tapping into Facebook’s Live Partnership Ads program for deeper insight and understanding of influencers (in this case, live-streaming influencers) and their impact on consumers. The information and data Omnicom Media Group picks up with this partnership will inform the knowledge base of Omnicom’s Omni Influencer Discovery Agent, a database of influencers and creators that offers insights from audience targeting to cultural trends. But Omni can also put audience data into Facebook Live’s ads program to find the ideal influencers for Omnicom clients.

Specifically this partnership lets Omnicom clients tap into Facebook Live Partnership Ads during and after creator-led shopping livestreams. Brands are able to boost live creator content into paid ads, essentially selling directly through creator-led live shopping events. Data that gets fed back sheds light on mapping the creator’s role in the path to conversion, comparing the impact of live creator content against other paid formats, and quantifying outcomes to inform future creator investment decisions. 

Kevin Blazaitis, U.S. president of Creo, Omnicom’s influencer platform, noted that a powerful side-effect of this partnership enables the holdco to better understand smaller influencers who may have better engagement with their followers. “From a discovery perspective, how we can look at these influencers and really find those kind of next niche and rising [influencers] using our audience data is a very, very important piece for us,” he said. “This is a game changing application because of that scale of meta and how granular we can be with our data. Now it’s really something that will dramatically improve how our influencer offering represents those the talent across the spectrum.”

The pilot test is happening across the Asia-Pacific region, whose consumers are more comfortable with live shopping. Bharat Khatri, Chief Digiday Officer, OMG APAC, summed it up when he said “live-streaming in Asia is actually changing perceptions” of how powerful a tool it can be for brands. The plan is for the program to roll out globally.

Faith Lim, ASEAN digital and media lead at Philips agreed, having done a test for the company’s Sonicare toothbrush with a live food influencer in the region. “With these new solutions, we’re able to scale [the] impact while gaining clearer insights into how live commerce drives our business outcomes,” she said.

“It’s fantastic to see how Omnicom are tying together a number of our advanced products with a new system they are piloting with support from Meta,” added Dave Dugan, vp of global clients and agencies at Meta. “We’re excited to see how Omnicom’s innovations will drive even greater advertiser performance.”