MUMBAI: Merkle, a technology-enabled, data-driven performance marketing agency, has inked a strategic partnership with Rentrak.

Through the partnership, Merkle and Rentrak will combine Merkle’s understanding of consumer segments with Rentrak’s massive and passive viewership data to create more effective customer advanced analytics and demographics.

With this partnership, Rentrak can utilize Merkle’s proprietary, multi-national database, Data Source, as a third-party data solution to gain access to the most comprehensive source of consumer data and can provide rich demographic insights about the consumer population it observes. The partnership will also allow Merkle and Rentrak to provide their clients with analytic solutions related to viewership data.

“In the media industry, broadcast and cable networks have converged on the need for a better understanding of their viewers in support of both the buy and sell sides of the ecosystem. Our partnership with the leading player in the marketplace, Rentrak, allows us to help advertiser clients get more granular insights on the viewing behavior of their target audiences with the most powerful medium in the world, TV. This is a new and extremely valuable input to today’s modern media planning activities,” said Merkle SVP and general manager, media and entertainment Andrew Hoeberichts.

“Merkle’s rapid growth is a product of our efforts to identify more intelligent ways of leveraging data, analytics, and technology to understand customers and their motivations and use that knowledge to target customers with relevant, effective media experiences. The opportunity to gain a granular level of insight in TV, a mass medium that has historically relied on broad, imprecise measurement, is extremely exciting. Our broadcast and cable network clients are already seeing the powerful impact of highly focused consumer segmentation, and our partnership with Rentrak will enable them to understand and serve their customer bases even more effectively,” added Merkle chairman & CEO David Williams.

“Rentrak is very excited to be working with Merkle to power targeting solutions that are revolutionizing the way television is bought and sold,” said Rentrak Corporation CEO Bill Livek.