Digital Garage Launches AI-Powered Advertising Platform “FT MediaString” to Navigate Post-Cookie Landscape
Digital Garage (TSE Prime: 4819), a leading Japanese payment and marketing group, has launched “FT MediaString,” an AI-driven advertising business designed to integrate proprietary FinTech data with premium media inventory.
The initiative, spearheaded by subsidiary BI.Garage, enters the market as the digital advertising industry faces mounting challenges in the "post-cookie" era. By moving away from traditional tracking methods, FT MediaString aims to reach "latent" customers through a combination of contextual targeting and cognitive AI.
The platform’s technical framework relies on "ONE Insight," an AI solution provided by Singapore-based SQREEM Technologies. This technology analyzes behavioral data to identify audience interest patterns, which are then matched in real-time with high-quality content from the Quality Media Consortium—a group comprising 33 of Japan’s leading media companies and newspaper publishers.
Prior to the official rollout, Digital Garage conducted a pilot program using its own B2B service, "DGFT Invoice Card Payment." According to the company’s brand lift survey, the AI-orchestrated campaign resulted in an 18-percentage-point increase in advertisement understanding and a 9-percentage-point rise in brand association. Notably, negative responses regarding "low levels of trust" decreased by 10 percentage points during the trial.
Akio Niizawa, CEO of BI.Garage and Chief Data Marketing Officer of Digital Garage, indicated that the launch marks a shift from the experimental phase of AI to its "establishment" in the business core. Niizawa noted that the group intends to further expand its data sets beyond fintech to accelerate its "Variable Data & Media Solution," an integrated model supporting both payment processing and marketing.
Digital Garage, founded in 1995, continues to leverage its position as a major payment service provider in Japan to scale its marketing and startup investment divisions. The launch of FT MediaString signals a strategic push to capitalize on the synergy between its payment transaction data and high-authority media partnerships.
Norbert Gehrke
