UM is to look to expand its recently announced two year multi-million dollar US deal with Facebook globally as it looks to give its clients greater access to the social media platform.
The Interpublic-owned agency has also hinted that it would not be “outlandish” to think that Twitter would be “next on the list” for a multi-year partnership.
As part of the Facebook deal UM has committed to doubling its Facebook spend in return for access to advanced consumer research, premium video content and data.
Speaking to M&M Global David Cohen, chief investment officer at UM, Said: “We have been working [with Facebook] for some time on a variety of different elements to the deal, as we are big believers in backing up announcements like this with things that will benefit our clients and address a lot of the challenges they have.”
He said there would be “four pillars” to the Facebook deal one being “research” having identified “three bespoke research projects to work with Facebook on in the short-term” to better understand “video consumption on the platform”, “messaging across screen” and “a third area that is yet to be determined”.
Cohen also said that “creativity” was another pillar in helping UM client’s become more creative with their Facebook strategies, another pillar would be called “access” and that access is to “premium video content” while the fourth pillar would be “data” focused around a tool called “Facebook audience insights” and would involve ingesting that audience data into UM planning tools.
“It is a US deal for starters, but we are hoping to be able to expand this globally in short order,” Cohen said.
He added: “I don’t think it’s outlandish to think that Twitter will be next on the list, but what we do is we look at where our business is organically scaling or naturally scaling and we try to, obviously, tap into that and add some fuel to that fire.
“So with Facebook we have seen really nice healthy growth over the past two to three years so it was a natural time to partner in some way.”
UM US clients BMW and Sony Pictures Entertainment have both signed up for the deal.
