Company Close Up: LiveRamp Walks The Talk
Powered by identity with a central focus on privacy, LiveRamp focuses on providing data value to advertisers and brands Marketers aside, every individual in the business world today realises the importance of leveraging data to deliver the best customer experience possible. Data is the competitive advantage for business growth and customer loyalty. And where there […]
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Powered by identity with a central focus on privacy, LiveRamp focuses on providing data value to advertisers and brands
Marketers aside, every individual in the business world today realises the importance of leveraging data to deliver the best customer experience possible. Data is the competitive advantage for business growth and customer loyalty. And where there is data, there is marketing and advertising.
A company that began its journey with phone books is LiveRamp.
Earlier known as Acxiom, the company was founded in 1969 by Charles D Ward. Using lists of physical mailing addresses from phone books, the company produced mailing lists and payroll processing for organisations. It became Acxiom Corporation in 1988, and until 2018, Acxiom was the proud owner of the world’s largest commercial database.
Then privacy laws in Europe and California changed the course of data history. Scandals followed the company and the data brokerage industry. Acxiom reacted to data privacy by selling its database for $2.3 billion and positioned itself as a data exchange standard between significant data marketplaces. In 2018, the company also announced that it had transferred the Acxiom brand to IPG and changed its name to LiveRamp Holdings.
Now powered by identity with a central focus on privacy, it demonstrates the value of data for advertisers and brands. Currently headquartered in San Francisco, with 15 other offices worldwide, LiveRamp enables companies to better control, connect, and activate data to transform CX and generate valuable business outcomes. From sustainable identity solutions, next-gen encryption technology, API-based tools, and application-agnostic solutions, LiveRamp’s interoperable infrastructure delivers end-to-end addressability for brands, agencies, and publishers.
In a recent Advertiser Perceptions SSP survey, LiveRamp’s RampID was the most-used identity service, pacing Google Privacy Sandbox proposals, Apple’s SKAdNetwork, and Unified ID 2.0.
But is LiveRamp profitable? Not yet, although it earned 17 per cent more in 2021, with its retail category powering the business performance. That said, the company spent $11.3 million more on research and development than the previous year and $6 million on sales, marketing, and administrative costs.
The company’s privacy-focused clean room and identity data solution, called Safe Haven, where the smart investments are going, falls under the subscription business. Launched over a year ago, it already accounts for a fifth of the company’s total revenue. One of the main reasons for Safe Haven’s success is its part of LiveRamp’s retail offerings. Walmart is one of the many companies that has adopted this subscription contract.
“We’re at an exciting inflection point for the business, as we’ve evolved our offering from an application to a unified enterprise platform, Safe Haven, which empowers our clients to take a radically simple approach to enable data in more ways than ever before,” said Scott Howe, LiveRamp CEO.
Scott Howe, LiveRamp CEO
In the more recent report, the company revenue shot up by 19 per cent and Subscription Revenue Up by 22 per cent. “We ended the year with 87 customers paying $1 million or more in annual revenue and approximately $400 million of ARR. Despite the macroenvironment, we enter FY23 with confidence in our forward outlook. We are executing our growth strategy, expanding internationally, and delivering category-creating innovation to our customers,” said Howe.
Building On Partnerships
After crucial integrations with companies such as Carrefour and eBay in 2021, LiveRamp continues to offer enhanced solutions.
There was a time when adtech companies gained market share through heated optimisation conversations in the conference room. It’s all on the cloud now. At the beginning of 2022, LiveRamp formed a strategic partnership with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Building on its identity data partnership, LiveRamp expanded its GCP integrations. Clients can use the tech to support digital ad payments, reconciliation, and procurement services.
The new LiveRamp integration consolidates spending on cloud services within GCP. Instead of running payments elsewhere, vendor services and payments are now integrated into GCP. The brand then qualifies for additional scale discounts within GCP and can lower costs against subscription payment commitments.
Meanwhile, authenticated inventory performs better and is a huge incentive while having conversations with advertisers. Regardless of the third-party cookie deprecation delay on Chrome, 40 per cent of the browser market is already cookieless. As a result, LiveRamp’s partnership with PubMatic to deliver improved omnichannel addressability is helping publishers boost their effective CPM (eCPM) up to 101 per cent, setting them for success. By integrating LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and PubMatic’s Identity Hub, publishers can connect authenticated inventory with advertiser demand to increase fill rate, yield, and revenue across cookieless environments globally.
LiveRamp and PubMatic discovered 145 publishers using ATS through Identity Hub and achieved higher CPMs on Safari and Firefox. It increased their ability to convert ad requests to serve impressions across inventory.
“There is an urgency to explore privacy-first identity solutions in the wake of eventual third-party cookie deprecation, but even more than that, we’re seeing urgency and immediacy because ATS outperforms third-party cookies,” said Travis Clinger, senior vice president, addressability and ecosystem, LiveRamp.
Soon after, the data connectivity platform also announced that Adobe Advertising Cloud supports RampID across channels. The deprecation of third-party cookies and device IDs has also created a need for innovation and improvement across the advertising industry.
Advertisers can unlock people-based audience targeting, frequency capping, first- and third-party data activation, delivery reporting, supply-side integrations, exposure logs, and measurement support through Adobe’s Advertising Solutions Group (ASG).
As part of this integration, advertisers can connect to authenticated audiences across publishers that support the LiveRamp Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS). It gives advertisers improved access to premium, high-value inventory to build the experience for their customers. Over 11,000 domains globally have adopted ATS, including CafeMedia, Microsoft, and Tubi.
For greater connectivity across cloud data, the company recently brought its online identity and translation capabilities to Snowflake’s Media Data Cloud.
The move makes it possible for connected TV platforms and other agencies to access accurate and dynamic media insights. It enables them to collaborate to measure their content’s reach and media impact and its impact on brand awareness.
LiveRamp TV Chief Strategy Officer Jay Prasad said: “Our online identity resolution capabilities enhance measurement infrastructure by securely connecting data from all screens and streams. Ultimately, we’re helping power data collaboration for partners who are helping usher in a new era of currencies within Snowflake.”
LiveRamp said that going into the upfront, buyers and sellers will be looking for ways to deliver audiences across screens. In March, the company had announced that it was working with Iris.TV and SpringServe to provide buyers with contextual data, enabling them to use more of their cross-screen inventory in targeted and addressable campaigns. Univision and Plex are among the publishers using the new capabilities.
In the same month, the company announced a new member of its executive team. With extensive marketing expertise from her leadership roles at some of the most iconic brands, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and SAP, Jessica Shapiro joined as the chief marketing officer (CMO) of LiveRamp.
Jessica’s expertise in data-driven marketing, having led several marketing functions for notable B2B and B2C organisations, makes her the ideal candidate, according to the company. “The future is bright for LiveRamp, and I could not be more thrilled to realise our tremendous opportunity,” said Shapiro.
To give companies expanded network audiences and increased efficiency in targeting, LiveRamp recently made headlines about its partnership with AdAdapted, a shopping list marketing and insights platform provider.
AdAdapted has increased its audience size since implementing LiveRamp. Now, with the help of LiveRamp ID, LiveRamp’s identity graph, AdAdapted can target users across several touchpoints that it previously was unable to reach.
Focused on the climb
LiveRamp continues to rapidly increase its number of customers whose subscription contracts exceed one million dollars in annual revenue. Global brands require global solutions, and LiveRamp continues to accelerate expansion to over a dozen new countries across APAC, EU, and LATAM. Recently, the company added a slash to its logo, symbolising a ramp to represent the elevation of the enterprise and accelerated growth.
“Our operations trends remain strong. We are well-positioned to deliver revenue growth and continued operating profit expansion in fiscal 2023,” Howe added. Led by its bold vision and category-creating technology, LiveRamp hopes to generate more than a half-billion dollars in revenue.
