Turning 700T Customer Signals into Media Intelligence

Overview

MiQ, a global programmatic media partner, built Sigma, an advertising platform on the Databricks Data + AI Platform, to unify more than 700 trillion fragmented customer signals across watching, browsing and buying activity into a single governed intelligence layer. Data flows through a medallion architecture on Delta Lake with Unity Catalog governance, and Databricks SQL serves dashboards, Genie Spaces and agent queries. MiQ built a Planning Agent using two Genie spaces (unified consumer signals and historical campaign data) plus Vector Search to translate natural-language audience descriptions into activation segments, letting non-technical marketers go from audience discovery to media plan recommendations in minutes instead of days. Sigma has powered over 40,000 campaigns for more than 2,300 advertisers since launch, with campaigns returning 2.2x the ROI of standard programmatic campaigns; campaign planning and analysis that once took 6+ hours now takes roughly 5 minutes, and AI-assisted optimization workflows cut storage needs by 50%.

The challenge

There were too many data silos. Teams worked across separate internal platforms for traders, sellers and analytics, each with its own pipelines and data stores. Governance was fragmented across Hive Metastore workspaces, making privacy, lineage, access control and reusable data products harder to manage consistently.

The solution

Reported business value

Campaign planning and analysis that once took 6+ hours can now happen in roughly 5 minutes through agent-assisted workflows. Sigma has powered over 40,000 campaigns for more than 2,300 advertisers since launch, with campaigns returning up to $2.22 in value for every $1 spent compared to standard programmatic campaign setups, and AI-assisted optimization workflows reduced storage by 50%, saving $85K per year.