Dentsu Aligns US Performance Capabilities to Meet Accelerated Client Demand

Dentsu today announced an innovative alignment of key performance capabilities to help clients capitalise on the next wave of growth through customer transformation and technology. In support of this ambition, the company also announced several business leadership appointments to oversee each reimagined practice.

Dentsu will unify Merkle's media capabilities under iProspect, performance creative capabilities under Dentsu Creative, and media analytics capabilities under Merkle. The strategic focus on aligning capability, talent, and investment comes at a time of significant growth for dentsu and its clients.

“As we embark on the next phase of growth in the Americas, these strategic moves will accelerate our speed to market and further cement dentsu as a leader in marketing innovation, customer transformation and technology,” said Michael Komasinski, CEO, dentsu Americas. “Critically, it will help our clients deepen their relationships with their customers and build a lifetime of repeat interactions, loyalty and advocacy. We’re setting the direction and pace of growth – not only across our industry, but for Global 500 companies.”

The unified capabilities will offer clients:

Performance Media Meets Experiences

Dentsu brings together two industry pioneers that have shaped the modern performance media landscape. iProspect and Merkle will combine their best-in-class media offerings under the iProspect brand. Alongside Carat and dentsu X, the evolved iProspect will create a future-facing media agency: founded in identity and performance, powered by AI, fueled by a team that brings media to the heart of the customer journey.   

Leading this practice will be Liz Rutgersson, who has been appointed chief executive officer of iProspect, North America. Liz has 17 years of experience leading media teams and will continue to be a strong industry voice on the importance of data-driven performance media.

Intelligent Performance Creative

The performance creative businesses within Merkle and dentsu’s media brands will be unified under Dentsu Creative, the company’s global creative network. Dentsu Creative will bring together creativity, technology and intelligence to help clients design and drive distinct end-to-end experiences - from brand creative and dynamic creative optimization to omnichannel production at scale through the power and scale of Tag, a recent dentsu acquisition.

The practice will be co-led by Amy Thorne and Octavio Maron, two industry veterans who each bring 20+ years of experience delivering culture-defining creative campaigns that deliver both results and differentiation for iconic global brands.

Performance Analytics for Connected Customer Experience

Dentsu’s analytics capabilities will be unified under Merkle’s world-class analytics practice. By connecting the analytics capabilities across dentsu’s CXM, media and creative offerings, this enhanced practice will focus on helping clients build a deep understanding of their marketing efforts, customers and drive performance through AI strategy, process automation, media effectiveness, advanced attribution and measurement, organizational enablement, next best action decisioning, predictive sciences, data engineering product analytics and more. 

Leading this practice will be Shirli Zelcer, global head of analytics and data platforms, Merkle. Shirli brings over 20 years of experience and is at the forefront of innovation ranging from ethical AI and advancements in cloud engineering to future-proofing data literate organizations around zero-party data.

Underpinning all capabilities is Merkury, dentsu’s proprietary customer identity platform which enables brands, media owners, and publishers to own, build, and control a cookieless private identity graph. With a 90% match rate to personally identifiable information (PII) and coverage of 95% of US households, Merkury uses valuable customer interactions to create and grow a universe of person-based IDs for cross-channel targeting, personalization, measurement, and more.

Additionally, Komasinski has made a key appointment to the Americas Executive Leadership Team in support of the company’s future growth strategy. Danielle Gonzales, who was previously CEO of iProspect, has been named Chief Growth Officer, dentsu Americas. In this role, Danielle will focus on building new client relationships and delivering cross-brand, integrated marketing solutions that accelerate growth for clients.