Omnicom Group is enhancing its strategic focus on “live” marketing and sports advertising capabilities through new partnerships with Disney and Walmart. The company made the announcement at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Disney Partnership

As Digiday reports, Omnicom’s collaboration with Disney and The Trade Desk enables advertisers to programmatically capitalize on high-attention moments during live sports broadcasts. The partnership, described as “first-mover,” utilizes Disney’s “Magic Words” technology to identify engagement opportunities such as lead changes, turnovers, and scoring plays.

“It’s about the opportunity to create more addressability, more personalization, and more relevance within live,” said Megan Pagliuca, North American CPO at Omnicom Media Group, in a statement.

Charlie Cebuhar, North American Managing Director of Programmatic at OMG, noted that the company is building a custom algorithm for the initiative, with test results expected in the coming weeks.

State Farm, a major sports advertiser and OMG client, is already leveraging this technology. “We’re tapping into key real-time, high-attention-driving game moments so that we show up where and when viewers are the most engaged,” explained Alyson Griffin, Head of Marketing at State Farm.

Walmart Partnership

Omnicom’s second partnership focuses on integrating Walmart’s customer purchase data with influencer marketing through its Creo division. The arrangement provides first-mover access to Walmart audiences, enabling the identification of influencers with proven purchase conversion capabilities.

According to OMG research, 49% of consumers make regular purchases based on influencer recommendations, while half of Gen Z and Millennials report making purchases based on a single influencer post.

The process matches Walmart audience data against influencers’ followers, beginning with TikTok, to identify creators who effectively drive purchases. This data feeds into Omni’s Influencer Discovery Agent, part of Omnicom’s expanding influencer capabilities.

This partnership builds on Creo’s existing platform relationships. In October 2024, OMG announced a collaboration with Snap Inc., following earlier partnerships with Google, TikTok, Amazon, and Meta.

“We’re thinking about how to really capitalize on that and use that gain and efficiency to tie creators to commerce as often as we can,” stated Kevin Blazaitis, U.S. President of Creo.

Noosa Yoghurt is the first brand to activate this capability, with Senior Director of Marketing Emily Black noting that it enables them to “identify and partner with the right creators to create and amplify content that is anchored in true shopper purchase data.”