Havas Media Network is laying solid foundations in preparation for a cookieless future with ‘Converged’ – an AI-powered planning and insight solution for the post-cookie era.
The agency’s cross-platform planning-to-activation tracker has been designed to allow marketers to make audience-led decisions in a world without third-party cookies.
Powered by over 35,000 audience insights, Havas’ innovative solution takes in the geographic, demographic, attitudinal, behavioural, purchasing and consumption data of over half a million people.
“We believe people are more than IDs,” said Havas Media Network UK chief data and product officer, Laura Kell.
“We can’t understand people properly by tracking what they do, what they buy and why – and the demise of the cookie means this is ending anyway. A strength for a particular type of client can be a weakness for another vertical, country or region.”
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“With Converged, we are eliminating that one-size-fits-all approach. Advertisers are regaining control of the emerging digital ecosystem by improving audience targeting, insight and control and better still, we are under-writing performance without compromise.”
Designed to offer full cross-platform transparency, Converged – which has been in development at Havas for over two years – gives marketers control over their campaign performance, media outcomes and business growth.
Notably, this is all achieved without without the need for new technology providers, first party data permissions or ID resolution providers.
Converged has already delivered an average 45% improvement in campaign performance across 93% of campaigns tested.
Retail business Homebase has been part of the initial testing phase and, according to director of digital and marketing, Lisa Tackle, has already seen some “impressive results”, leading to its full adoption for 2024.
“The depreciation of the cookie has of course accelerated the move to first party data, and this has made it increasingly difficult to match planning with the audiences we want to reach,” she said.
“Converged eliminates this challenge and has already yielded some very impressive results for us across a number of our product categories and channels. We are looking forward to embedding Converged in 2024 as part of our digital plan and strategy.”
