Mizuho Bank, CyberAgent, and FLYWHEEL Reach Agreement on Strategic Business Alliance Regarding Marketing Platform Business

1. Background
People's lives, the economy, and society are undergoing major and rapid shifts in line with changes in social structures due to factors such as declining birthrates, an aging population, and the advancement of digital technologies and digital transformation. Accompanied by this shift, the needs of Mizuho Bank’s customers have diversified, and there is a growing demand for corporate clients to advance marketing in order to deliver personalized products/services to a wide range of consumers.

In Japan’s banking industry, the revised Banking Act came into effect in November 2021 to allow banks themselves to manage new business activities that utilize management resources from the banking business. This in turn enabled services that could further respond to issues faced by corporate clients by way of advertisement, system sales, and personnel placement businesses.

With these efforts in the background, the three companies agreed to form a strategic business alliance to create a marketing platform business that utilizes each company’s strengths to provide support for the marketing activities of corporate clients.

2. Details
(1) Creation of advertising business
Through the utilization of customer information¹ entrusted to Mizuho Bank, as well as CyberAgent’s ad delivery model that applies its AI technologies, Mizuho Bank will explore ways of offering optimal information at the appropriate time to fit each individual customer.
1: Highly personal information such as names will not be used in the advertising business. Additionally, personal information of customers will not be provided to the two partner companies or corporate clients (advertisers).


(2) Creation of marketing platform business
By linking the new advertising business with Mizuho Bank’s offering of Mi-Pot², a statistical data sales service aimed towards businesses, Mizuho Bank will look into construction of a platform that can perform functions from advertisement delivery to analysis. Furthermore, through offering this platform, Mizuho Bank will provide digital transformation support for data-holding enterprises looking to establish marketing support businesses, aiming to improve industry productivity in the process.
2: Press release (dated November 10, 2020), “Launch of statistical data sales service ‘Mizuho Insight Portal (Mi-Pot)’” (Japanese language only)
https://www.mizuhobank.co.jp/release/pdf/20201110_2release_jp.pdf


(3) Advancement of analysis through activities in the data science field
Mizuho Bank and CyberAgent are both expanding data and AI businesses to further the range of data science. With this business alliance, both companies will work to utilize their cumulative knowledge, improve analysis/prediction capabilities to provide customers with information fit for their needs, and construct an ad delivery model.

(4) On efforts to protect personal information
Upon the creation of this new business, Mizuho Bank will strive diligently to protect the personal information of customers. Specifically, it will collaborate with Flywheel, which possesses advanced data management technologies as well as knowledge on personal information security, to construct an even safer and more secure structure to utilize information provided to Mizuho Bank with the prior consent of individual customers.

Additionally, when launching the new business, Mizuho Bank will notify customers who do not wish for their information to be used about the framework for halting information usage.


3. Company introductions and roles
Mizuho Bank
Mizuho Bank has been working to offer solutions for a variety of marketing challenges faced by corporate clients through data business activities and Mi-Pot, the first service of its kind by a Japanese bank to provide statistical data to companies.

With the innovation of this business venture, Mizuho will utilize our business platform and knowledge on data science accumulated thus far. Additionally, with the support of our strategic business partner, SoftBank Corp., we will leverage solutions from SoftBank's business partner, Treasure Data, Inc. to provide high value-added services to customers.

CyberAgent
CyberAgent possesses top-class sales, operation, and ad product development capabilities in the Japanese digital advertising market. In order to expand digital advertising business that utilizes AI and produces new AI businesses, it established the AI Business Headquarters and the AI Lab, which conduct research and development on a wide range of AI technologies in relation to marketing activities. The AI lab focuses not only on solving business problems, but also on solving social challenges, by contributing to academia through collaborations with universities and educational institutions. Within this business venture, CyberAgent will provide technological support by utilizing AI to construct an optimized ad delivery model, an area of strength of the AI Business Headquarters, as well as provide abundant knowledge in the marketing field.

FLYWHEEL
FLYWHEEL is a team of data specialists who accompany customers in the challenges of data utilization and support their growth. It provides full support according to customer needs, including data strategizing, system construction/implementation support, and utilization support.

FLYWHEEL will construct a framework that further protects the safety and security of Mizuho Bank customers’ personal information, based on advanced data management technologies and knowledge of personal information security. Specifically, FLYWHEEL will provide its data usage platform ConataTM, in which individual customers maintain control with regards to consent (or lack thereof) for data usage and application.


Structure of strategic business alliance
By combining the new advertising business with the strengths of each company, Mizuho Bank will support corporate clients in advancing their marketing and data-holding companies in entering the marketing support business, enabling delivery of optimal information to individual customers at the right time.

4.  Moving forward
The three companies will consider the development of a variety of services within the marketing platform business, and by leveraging each company’s activities and strengths, will endeavor to create a new marketing business that can respond to the diverse values of customers.


Company overviews (as of March 31, 2023)
Mizuho Bank, Ltd.
CyberAgent, Inc.