Microsoft Advertising Honors Tinuiti

Now that Microsoft Advertising has named Tinuiti its Global Client Partner of the Year for the first time. Josh Brisco, Group VP of Acquisition Media at the largest independent performance-marketing firm in the U.S., reflected on this latest recognition.

Although being named Global Client Partner of the Year is a first for Tinuiti from Microsoft, it is the fifth award from the software giant Tinuiti has received in the past two years.

“We’ve always viewed Microsoft Ads as a table stakes part of our prescribed media mix,” Brisco said. “We’ve never seen it as an auxiliary channel to invest in situationally but use it consistently across our client base to drive overall client performance. As such, we have and will continue to lean into the Microsoft partnership and constantly look for new ways to evolve and strengthen it.”

Tinuiti works with Microsoft Advertising’s SPARC Group, a fashion industry leader that designs, sources, manufactures, distributes, and markets apparel leading brand names such as Brooks Brothers, Reebok, Eddie Bauer, Aéropostale, Nautica, and Lucky Brand.

The Microsoft Advertising Global Partner Awards recognized partners for exemplary work completed in 2022 across various categories. Last year, Tinuiti became the first-ever independent performance-marketing firm to win the highly coveted Microsoft Global Agency of The Year award for demonstrating excellence in driving innovation, efficiency, and growth across Microsoft Advertising.

Tinuiti has also been recognized as Microsoft Advertising Client Partnership of the Year, Channel Partner of the Year (both in 2023), and Agency Partner of the Year USA (2022).

In a statement, Nick Berliner, Director of Agency Development at Microsoft, said: “Tinuiti’s decade-plus partnership with Microsoft Advertising has consistently demonstrated everything we appreciate in a partner–from transparency and open communication to creative collaboration and solution-driven ingenuity.”

Tinuiti’s relationship with Microsoft dates to 2004, or as Brisco put it, for “as long as we’ve been managing paid media, since our inception, we’ve always worked with Microsoft. The relationship has only strengthened over time as we’ve had to partner even more closely to ensure we’re rising to the challenges of digital media.”

Among the cornerstones of Tinuiti’s offering is Mobius, a proprietary suite of marketing intelligence and media-activation technology that helps businesses and brands to understand every data touchpoint and determine the path forward.

In March, Tinuiti released its Q1: Media Landscape in Review report, saying that March 2023 marked the ninth straight month ad spending declined — falling 8.4% compared with the year-ago month. It attributed the decrease to “the loss of deterministic user-level data” that is a result of stricter consumer-privacy protection rules.

As such, brands must have partners with deep channel expertise to make the most of their media spending. “We also have the skill, experience, and tech to tie all our channels together for maximum client business impact,” Brisco said.

So far, 2023 is turning out to be a banner year for Tinuiti, which notched the following milestones:

• Tinuiti Live. The company’s largest annual event in May challenged marketers to find clarity by asking the right questions to unleash unconventional, creative solutions to amplify brands’ promises and help them grow.
• Unilever named Tinuiti its lead digital agency for its Health and Wellbeing Division, which includes brands such as Liquid I.V., OLLY, Onnit, SmartyPants Vitamins, and Welly Health PBC. Tinuiti supports Paid Media, Lifecycle Marketing, Creative Services, SEO, CRO, Retail Operations, Marketplaces, and Analytics across the five brands.
• Tinuiti acquired Ampush, a leading growth marketing agency known for driving brand growth.
• Tinuiti worked with client partners, e.l.f. Beauty for the brand’s first-ever television commercial at Super Bowl LVII, leading media strategy and planning for the 30-second spot, which featured White Lotus’ star Jennifer Coolidge.

Tinuiti offers performance marketing across streaming, Google, Meta, and Amazon, with more than $3 billion in digital media under management and over 1,200 employees.