dentsu

Dentsu Expands Partnership with Newton Research

Newton Research and dentsu have expanded their partnership to scale AI-powered media intelligence across dentsu’s U.S. media agencies — Carat, dentsu X, and iProspect — following a successful 2025 pilot. The collaboration gives dentsu access to Newton’s agentic AI for enhanced analytics, AI-driven reporting, real-time campaign visibility, and workflow integration with dentsu’s proprietary offerings such as Modern Media and dentsu.Connect. Newton’s agents will support planning, activation, and measurement across omni-channel formats while surfacing optimization opportunities and AI-generated recommendations that are executed with human oversight. dentsu plans to extend the partnership globally. Executives quoted include Caitlin Gelles (EVP Data Technology & Measurement at dentsu), John Hoctor (CEO & co-founder, Newton Research) and Emily Kennedy (EVP Head of Marketplace at dentsu). The announcement was published June 23, 2026.

Cannes: Ad Industry Power Shifts Toward Tech and Deals

At Cannes Lions 2026 Digiday reports a subtle but broad power shift in the advertising industry: platform and agency presences are consolidating, Silicon Valley technology and AI players are more prominent, and the festival increasingly functions as a dealmaking forum. Several social and professional platforms have reduced or changed their beachfront footprints while independent agencies and consultancies occupy visible space. OpenAI and Adobe are prominent on the Croisette, and investment banks and private-equity firms (e.g., Solomon Partners, Shamrock Capital, Providence Equity) are running summits and panels. Industry voices say AI use cases are moving from hypothesis to proof-of-concept, elevating data as a competitive moat, and that media work is centralizing or offshoring. WFA/LIONS research cited low confidence in creative excellence and limited AI plans among marketers. Publication date: 2026-06-22.

WPP Media Tests Charity-Based Synthetic Audiences

WPP Media has partnered with data startup Givsly to test synthetic audiences built in part from charity donation data for programmatic media buys in the U.S. Givsly’s system — built using the Claude LLM and layered with national census, election results and nonprofit donation signals — generates audience segments that WPP enriched with its own first- and second-party data. Early PMP tests across four beauty and fashion campaigns (running on CTV and online video) produced a reported 2% lift in video completion rates. WPP says the approach helps target audiences by social values as well as demographics. Forrester and other industry observers cautioned that results depend on the quality of input data and matching capabilities (InfoSum was named as a matching capability referenced). WPP plans to roll the solution out to U.S. clients following initial tests.