At Cannes, we love a good team-up.
With that in mind, today, Smartly, an adtech platform focused on using AI for creative automation and campaign management, has expanded its partnership with agency Horizon Media. The deal makes Smartly the first SaaS activation platform to directly integrate audience segments generated through HorizonOS, Horizon’s AI-powered marketing platform, via the Blu Audience API.
The integration allows advertisers to activate Horizon’s Blu audiences across Smartly’s campaign workflows spanning social, commerce, Google, and CTV. According to the companies, early campaigns generated nearly twice the creative engagement of traditional audience targeting approaches while reducing cost per order by 35%.
Why This Matters:
One of advertising’s biggest themes right now is closing the distance between data, creative, and activation.
Audience insights, creative development, and campaign execution have historically lived in separate platforms — a fragmented workflow that slowed optimization and made it harder to connect performance back to audience decisions.
This partnership is another step toward unifying those pieces. It also shows how Horizon is turning HorizonOS and Blu into a more usable activation layer, giving advertisers a clearer path from audience intelligence to media performance.
Experts React:
Laura Desmond, CEO, Smartly, had this to say about the launch in the company’s press release:
“Audience intelligence is even more valuable when you have the ability to quickly act on it. By bringing Blu audiences directly into Smartly, we’re helping brands move faster from insight to activation in real time, and turn that into stronger performance across every channel.”
Our Take:
A few years ago, agencies primarily differentiated themselves through strategy, planning, and buying power. Increasingly, they’re also trying to differentiate through proprietary technology and data.
This partnership is another example of the shift. Horizon isn’t simply using HorizonOS internally. It’s extending the output of that platform into the broader adtech ecosystem. As agencies continue investing in AI operating systems and intelligence layers, expect more partnerships to make those assets actionable across the platforms where campaigns actually run.
