Don't form a partnership if you just want to borrow the other party's strengths. The important thing is whether you can envision the same future.

On September 2020, 9, XICABusiness partnership with Atara LLCWas announced.

Our company has alwaysBusiness partnership with Intage Inc.,Business partnership with Cross Marketing Group,Business partnership with Spark Neuro Japan, Inc.However, little is known about what goes on behind the scenes of the business partnership or its actual objectives.

What benefits does a business partnership bring to customers?
What are you aiming to achieve through this business partnership?

In order to hear the true thoughts that cannot be seen from the news release alone, we spoke with Masakazu Yano, COO and director of XICA, who promoted this business partnership.

── First of all, what benefits does this business partnership bring to customers?

Until now, Magellan has been used by customers who mainly advertise offline (TV commercials, etc.). Given that more than 100% of the top 10 companies in Japan by advertising expenditure have adopted Magellan, I think the impression that it is a product for enterprises was strong.

Atalla, our business partner, specializes in collecting and formatting online (Web) advertising data. Atalla provides an automated performance-based advertising report system calledglu" and Magellan, which specializes in data analysis and extraction of suggestions,More detailed analysis is possible by dividing online advertising data not only by medium but also by target and segment.will be.

Online advertising involves huge amounts of data, and processing it is very difficult. Glu has strengths in collecting and processing data, so through this partnership,The collection and formatting of online advertising data can also be completed within the toolIt looks like

▲ It will become possible to perform detailed analysis of programmatic online advertising, significantly reducing the burden of collecting and formatting online data.

These two points will make it easier for customers who primarily use online advertising to make use of Magellan.Even if there is little accumulated offline advertising data, it will be possible to combine it with online advertising data and measure effectiveness with high accuracy, and the burden of collecting and formatting online advertising data will be greatly reduced.These are the two benefits we can offer to our customers.

XICA is"Democratize data analytics, democratize marketing due diligence."Through Magellan, we want to create a foundation where anyone can analyze data on their own and make decisions with confidence.

This business partnership will enable detailed data analysis using online advertising data and significantly reduce the burden of collecting and formatting data, making data analysis more accessible and providing an environment in which people can focus on strategic marketing.

── What challenges did Magellan face before the business partnership was formed?

To date, Magellan has built up a strong track record with clients who primarily engage in offline advertising.

On the other hand, for customers who primarily use online advertising and have only recently started using offline advertising, or who do not place ads very frequently, we were able to provide great value by making good use of online data, but we were told that the heavy burden of collecting and formatting online data was an issue.

We wanted to meet the great needs of our customers there.

── What value does this business partnership bring to both XICA and Atalla?

Atalla's "glu" has the capability to easily collect and format data from media. Meanwhile, Magellan has the capability to extract insights from collected data. We believe that by combining the two, we can complement each other's shortcomings and enhance our strengths.

── What is important in a business partnership?

If it is faster to borrow resources from another company than to do it ourselves, we believe it would be better to partner.

But business partnershipsDo you have the same ideaI think that is very important.Instead, it is better to start with an idea.I wonder.

To be honest, differences in business conditions can be managed, but differences in ideology are impossible to reconcile.

So,Even if the capabilities we want are exactly the same, we will not partner if our philosophies are different.Different philosophies mean different business assumptions, so I think things will start to go wrong at some point.

This time, we decided to work together because the issues and world goals of XICA and Atara were similar. In our previous business partnerships, we have always placed importance on whether our ideas and business strategies matched.

── Finally, please tell us your future goals.

We are currently in the PoC (Proof of Concept: verification and demonstration prior to prototype development) stage.

Our vision for the future is that Magellan will automatically collect and combine data from online and offline ads.A world where you can analyze data and allocate budgets immediately after placing an adOur ultimate goal is to build a marketing infrastructure that can carry out this series of steps at high speed.

*The affiliation and title of the interviewee are those at the time of the interview.