Big data is at the heart of a new business agreement between iHeartMedia and Unified, a relatively new marketing technology supplier. The two also announced that iHeart has made an investment in Unified.
The companies said their partnership will provide insights to advertisers on iHeart’s many platforms.
Unified is a marketing and analytics technology company whose Social Operating Platform is a data and analytics offering. Sheldon Owen is CEO and co-founder; Jason Beckerman and Josh Backer are also listed as co-founders on its website. Its first products began delivering three years ago.
IHeartMedia Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman made the announcement with Unified President Calvin Lui.
IHeart believes the agreement will allow it to “aggregate and unlock the massive data sets” generated by its 858 radio stations and its digital, mobile, events, social and on-demand services. “This partnership makes iHeartMedia the first and only media company that can deliver measurable impact and results across broadcast, digital and mobile consumer marketing channels,” it stated. It said iHeart data and Unified analytics together bring “the power of attribution, audience identification and impact analysis associated with digital marketing to the unparalleled scale of broadcast media.”
Among the data products and services planned are the creation of audience segments based on iHeartMedia’s data, client data and other info about consumer behavior; campaign effectiveness, attribution insights and the measurement impact on social; and “the creation of ad products that work to reach a target audience across all iHeartMedia platforms and social media.”