ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announced today that it has signed a capital and business tie-up with Switch Media, Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Shunji Takayama, CEO; hereinafter "Switch Media"), the developer and operator of the X Media Insights and TVAL AI-powered ad data platforms. Through this tie-up, the two companies will use TV viewership data, in-store purchasing data, and digital ad distribution and exposure data to develop advertising solutions that analyze the effects of advertising on purchasing across these channels. This will enable advertisers to comprehensively evaluate the effects of many campaigns from brand awareness development to purchasing, facilitating the optimization of marketing initiatives.

Methods for visualizing the effectiveness on advertising across TV, retail media and digital channels have become widespread in recent years, primarily in the United States. In Japan, however, advertising effectiveness is often measured separately for each medium. This makes it difficult to consistently monitor the process from the start (brand awareness development) to the end (a purchase), leaving cross-media advertising effectiveness verification a major challenge.

Switch Media leverages its proprietary TV viewership data, one of the largest datasets of its kind in Japan, to help advertisers make data-driven decisions. The company provides X Media Insights, which enables the cross-channel analysis of TV commercials and digital ads, and TVAL, which is linked to purchasing data and is for the measurement of how TV commercials drive the growth of net sales.

The ITOCHU Group has been developing its retail media business through Famima TV, an in-store retail media platform operated by Gate One Corp. In addition, Data One Corp. sells advertising inventory on Famima TV and operates a data marketing business leveraging purchasing data across more than 60 million consumer IDs.

Through this partnership, Switch Media's TV viewership data will be integrated into the Famima TV distribution, exposure and purchasing data handled by Data One Corp., to facilitate analyses of the effectiveness of advertising across TV, retail media and digital channels. This enables advertisers to perform end-to-end analysis from TV commercial exposure to in-store purchase.

Under its management policy, "The Brand-new Deal — Profit opportunities are shifting downstream-," ITOCHU is working to build a business model from a market-oriented perspective. Through this collaboration, ITOCHU will create new advertising value centered on purchasing, help improve advertisers' business performance, and deliver a better purchasing experience for consumers.