At an investor day in April, CEO Mark Penn introduced that Stagwell was testing a partnership with Palantir to discover whether or not the controversial AI agency’s expertise can enhance efficiency media concentrating on.

On Stagwell’s second quarter earnings name final week, Penn elaborated barely on the partnership, telling buyers that the businesses are working to “develop state-of-the-art information concentrating on” expertise inside Stagwell’s ID Graph, leveraging structured and unstructured information from throughout its community.

In an interview with ADWEEK following the earnings name, Penn defined how Stagwell is testing Palantir’s AI on its inner information platforms equivalent to BERA, an AI-powered model insights platform that conducts 50,000 client interviews weekly, and advertising and marketing analysis agency Nationwide Analysis Group (NRG), which tracks leisure and media conduct. That information is then fed into techniques like Stage, Meeting’s media planning and shopping for platform, to gas higher media outcomes.

“How do they take our structured and unstructured information and enhance the concentrating on out of that?” Penn mentioned of Palantir.

Penn mentioned Stagwell is piloting the expertise with a single shopper for now and can assess a broader rollout from there. He described the collaboration as a managed trial: “You get a profitable drug, and then you definately go to market.”

Whereas Palantir’s AI is at present being examined inside Stage, its integration into Stagwell’s broader ID Graph system has not but begun—although that’s the last word objective. “If they’ll [enhance targeting], we’ll then talk about the way to take the partnership to a different stage,” Penn mentioned.

The collaboration started roughly three months in the past and is being led by a brand new cross-agency tech workforce at Stagwell, which incorporates current rent Slavi Samardzija, the previous CEO of Omnicom’s Annalect and one of many architects of its Omni platform, alongside chief AI officer John Kahan, former Accenture govt Mansoor Basha, and former Microsoft exec Elspeth Rollert.

Individually, Stagwell is creating an AI platform known as The Machine, which centralizes and automates workflows and content material creation and permits groups to observe efficiency in the identical interface. Penn mentioned the long-term objective is to permit purchasers to question marketing campaign efficiency, timelines, and artistic property straight by way of the platform.

A Polarizing Companion

Palantir is finest recognized for its authorities work—together with its contracts with the U.S. Division of Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Inner Income Service (IRS). Its reported involvement in building a centralized “mega-database” of sensitive U.S. citizen information under the Trump Administration has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers over potential privateness violations.

The agency additionally works with business purchasers together with Airbus, BP, Merck, and Ferrari, serving to them combine information to optimize operations—although its authorities enterprise stays the vast majority of its income.

Palantir’s in depth position in surveillance and legislation enforcement has made the corporate a lightning rod in debates over the usage of military-grade AI in business settings. On Stagwell’s Q1 earnings name in March, Penn described the trouble as “creating superior military-grade concentrating on to reinforce the utilization of Stagwell’s distinctive datasets.”