• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 27, 2013

DG will announce this week an integration partnership with Marin Software allowing brands that use the platforms from both companies to share information between specific media channels and analyze the data across campaigns. It merges the data for agencies on the back end.

Automation will soon support many of the functions marketers do manually today. A handful of companies like IBM have begun to build integration tools, connections or dashboards. In the case of DG and Marin, the partnership built on a protocol enabling the platforms to match data between disparate media sources, Nick Talbert, head of product marketing at DG MediaMind, told Online Media Daily.

Media buys typically consist of search, display, video, mobile and others. Maintaining separate conversion tags for each platform creates the potential for data discrepancies. The integration of two platforms that provide an automated system aims for zero discrepancies that deliver rapid deployment of campaigns.

Let's say a marketer bids on search terms in Marin. A display campaign runs simultaneously on DG MediaMind. The data merges on the backend to analyze results. If a search campaign triggers a conversion, the marketer can tell if a display ad, along with any keywords, contributed.

On a 500-keyword campaign, automation would allow clients to cut 10 steps, 8 days, 9 hours, and 50 minutes from the process, per DG stats. Set-up would require nine steps taking 3 days, 9 hours, and 50 minutes.

Both platforms offer reporting and the ability to export of data in to a variety of formats: PDF, CSV and Excel Web Query formats. Marin also offers data passback. Data is exported from the platform and available for collection by other systems.

DG has similar relationships with search companies -- one U.S. and two European -- but Talbert declined to name them. He said to expect other partnerships with a variety of companies. DG built a "pipe that allows marketers to pull data into the MediaMind platform," he said. "When more data companies in the ad tech space collaborate, it will reduce the manual workflow for the average agency.

Today it's search companies, but in the future it could be demand-side platforms, Facebook and social, or programmatic media buys.