How LiveRamp Helps Brands Manage First-Party Data

Is the juice worth the squeeze? That’s what SaaS company LiveRamp wants clients to ask themselves when they opt for the relative ease of scaling ad campaigns in walled gardens like Facebook. Consumer perceptions and privacy regulations are continuing to evolve, and personally identifiable information (PII) via first-party data is a brand’s most valuable asset. The customer information inside walled gardens is at least one step removed from the clean data—that is, data that is privacy-aligned and accurate—that is most effective in achieving brands’ goals.

As such, LiveRamp is trying to help brands find opportunities to connect with consumers in the post-cookie, post-mobile ad ID world of evolving regulatory compliance.

Travis Clinger, SVP, Activations & Addressability at LiveRamp, explains how the software company is a leader in consumer privacy, data ethics, and foundational identity in its scale and reach.

There is always risk in sending PII directly to platforms. How is LiveRamp addressing this issue?

We don’t recommend brands send customers’ PII anywhere. While brands need to be able to leverage and collaborate with their first-party data, they should do so in a way that safely shares the data without the transmission of PII.

First-party data is critically important to marketers, as it can be used to develop strategies, experiences, and campaigns catering to their ideal customers’ wants and needs. This data is collected from a company’s customers with their explicit permission, and customers want to know how this data is being used and treated ethically. When brands send this PII outside of their walls – be it to the social platforms, or any other partner or platform, brands lose their control over this data and may be putting their customers, as well as their businesses, at risk.

Brands, publishers, and the rest of the ecosystem can leverage LiveRamp’s pseudonymous people-based RampID on custom-built platform IDs while still maintaining full control of customers’ PII without the need to send it out to other ecosystem players. In this way, LiveRamp enables brands to maximize usage of their data, all while preventing the sharing of any PII.

The ability of many social platforms to use first-party data to grow audiences was severely hampered by ATT. How does ATT obstruct this?

Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature requires that individuals share their consent for Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) and arrive as part of Apple’s iOS 14 launch. With a smaller proportion of users opting in to share their IDFA, mobile-app publishers, including the social platforms, have a hindered ability to “see” their end-users across the ecosystem, leaving many users unrecognizable. All publishers and social platforms are still able to get ATT consent by explaining the value exchange to the user.

ATT is just one of the many changes the industry is experiencing, but they all follow a common thread — requiring publishers, marketers, and platforms to build trusted relationships with consumers wherein the consumers share their data to access the content. Marketers should look at ATT and the other browser changes as an opportunity to revamp their marketing strategies to focus on reaching their consumers where there is consent. This means advertising across more publishers and platforms to find their consumers where they spend time and develop trusted relationships.

Authenticated identity is powered by consumers choosing to share their information in exchange for better experiences and personalization, which helps marketers. Authenticated identity — like RampID – sustains individuals’ relationships with both brand and publisher and helps to deepen the engagement over time, creating a lasting and valuable relationship. RampID is compliant not just with the letter of regulations, but the spirit of regulations, meaning that companies incorporating RampID into their strategies can know that they’ll be able to rely on it, even as browsers shift their strategies to fit the regulatory landscape.

How did LiveRamp connect the customer journey for Dollar General, in-store and online?

LiveRamp’s Data Collaboration Platform helped resolve Dollar General customers’ online and offline identities for a deeper understanding of their audiences. LiveRamp helped Dollar General to develop a robust and dynamic view of customers, from exposure to purchase, serving CPGs using Dollar General Media Network with better insights.

Powered by LiveRamp, Dollar General Media Network was so successful in a six-month sprint that 50 new advertising partners signed on for future campaigns, representing brands such as Unilever, General Mills, and Colgate-Palmolive.

How does LiveRamp protect a customer’s PII? How does that benefit a brand and the consumer?

In contrast to other popular identity solutions and strategies, like universal identifiers or transacting on hashed emails, LiveRamp’s pseudonymous, people-based identifier, RampID, is interoperable but partner-encoded, meaning that each RampID is encoded differently for each platform using it. This enables interoperability across the ecosystem – including more than 14,000 publisher domains and enables more than 165 DSPs and SSPs – while preventing any RampIDs from being leveraged by an outside party. Further, LiveRamp’s addressability infrastructure also supports direct integrations with the world’s largest social platforms, such as Meta, Amazon, Spotify, Pinterest, Snap, and more. All of these integrations enable the marketer to connect their data without sharing PII.

How does LiveRamp keep first-party data protected across so many touchpoints?

LiveRamp is not using first-party data – rather, LiveRamp provides tools to help companies get their first-party data in order and then analyze, activate, and measure using this first-party data. We power identity, connectivity, data collaboration, and activation across the entire ecosystem, occupying a space between data, platforms, and applications. Through LiveRamp, any organization can activate its data on platforms, partners, and publishers in a privacy-centric way. LiveRamp helps companies tie their data together while still maintaining complete control of it.