Dentsu Aegis Network Canada has officially announced the launch of Data2Decisions in the country, a division that emphasizes marketing effectiveness.

Neil Weitzman, managing partner of Data2Decisions Canada, will lead the team, spending his time meeting with current, and prospective clients for the group. Weitzman says that Data2Decisions will be working with both clients of Dentsu Aegis Network as well as companies that don’t work with the agency.

Also hired for the Canadian team so far are Andrew Dodds as director of marketing analytics and Chris Rohoman as director of modeling and analytics. Dodds comes to the company from his most recent position as director of customer insights and analytics at ConAgra Foods and Rohoman joins Data2Decisions from his last role as manager of business analytics at OLG.

Data2Decisions first launched in the UK in 2001, and was acquired by Aegis Media (now the Dentsu Aegis Network) in 2012. It now has outposts in the United States, Asia, Scandinavia, Germany and Spain.

The new team at Data2Decisions Canada will be built out with people who have experience in both media mix modeling and consulting – a mix Weitzman says is hard to find.

Annette Warring, CEO of the Dentsu Aegis Network, says Data2Decisions aims to go beyond traditional analytics, analyizing data from a more holistic viewpoint.

“It’s not like we’re inventing data from scratch,” she says. “But now we can take a much broader viewpoint, and one that because we can action on so many different levels.”

Weitzman has spent his career on the analytics side of the business, spending 16 years at Nielsen before working at Rogers Media as its head of media and audience insights, media-side experience he said is invaluable now in his current role.