Why data collaboration is a marketer’s biggest competitive edge

Marketing has been in its “outcomes era” for a while now, where the industry is no longer seen as just creating vanity metrics or creative awards, but about unlocking real, bottom-line impact. Marketers are no longer just storytellers; they’re revenue drivers, and every dollar spent must be justified by measurable growth. Intuition and experience are nice, but without data—good, comprehensive and actionable data—it’s just a guessing game. And in today’s market, guessing is expensive. The hard truth is that no matter how robust a brand’s first-party data might be, it will never provide the full customer picture. Consumers browse on TikTok, compare on Amazon, buy in-store and leave reviews on Reddit. Every touchpoint leaves data breadcrumbs, but if those insights aren’t connected, brands can’t get the whole loaf. The special ingredient is data collaboration. By securely and responsibly pooling insights across partners, companies can unlock new demand, refine customer understanding, and drive meaningful business results. Data is often a company’s most valuable asset, yet too many brands don’t know how to maximize it. The irony is that a single dataset, no matter how rich, is inherently limited. Businesses that collaborate—whether brands with retailers, publishers with advertisers, or platforms with agencies—gain a serious competitive edge. Commerce media networks: Unlocking new demand with data collaboration Commerce media networks have become a goldmine for advertisers seeking to reach high-intent audiences. By leveraging first-party shopper data, retailers and brands can create high-performance advertising strategies that drive measurable outcomes. Take Mohegan, a global leader in casino and entertainment destinations, for example. The brand recently launched the industry’s first casino media network, powered by LiveRamp. Brands can now access Mohegan’s rich first-party insights, learning about visitors’ entertainment, dining and vacation preferences. With ad spending on travel-focused commerce media forecasted to reach $2.96 billion next year, opportunities like this are only the beginning. Similarly, brands like Pinterest are tapping into the power of secure data collaboration. Through LiveRamp’s technology, Pinterest partnered with Albertsons and Mondelēz to connect recipe-based ad exposures on Pinterest with actual in-store transactions. This breakthrough allowed Mondelēz to measure a 16% sales lift and a 19% lift in incremental buyers from its Pinterest campaigns, demonstrating the true business impact of its media investments. From data to dollars: The power of strategic partnerships As collaboration becomes a vital part of any business marketing strategy, connectivity is the ecosystem that pulls all of these disparate pieces together. Brands that connect with complementary datasets can drive performance and optimize the consumer experience. Clean rooms are a vital part of that connection and collaboration. A clean room is a secure environment that enables multiple parties to collaborate with data responsibly to unlock customer insights. Clean rooms provide the privacy and governance controls agreed upon by collaboration partners to enforce trust boundaries, ensure auditability and prevent data misuse. Clean rooms also offer brands the ability to connect all their marketing touchpoints into one unified view. For example, a global airline sought to enhance its loyalty program by better understanding customer preferences and behaviors. By connecting browsing data, such as flight searches, with transactional data from past bookings in a clean room, they uncovered key patterns in premium travel preferences. These insights enabled the airline to deliver highly personalized upgrade offers to loyalty members, driving a 20% increase in premium ticket sales. However, if data is the new currency, standardization is the banking system enabling seamless transactions. Without interoperable frameworks, data collaboration becomes inefficient and difficult to scale across multiple partners and platforms. In the complex landscape of collaborations, partners often face prolonged periods of negotiation and technical setup, spending months defining the scope of partnership terms and writing custom code. This extensive back-and-forth not only delays insights but also consumes significant technical resources. The industry is moving toward standardized solutions for intelligence, such as LiveRamp’s Quick Start Insights, which offers pre-configured agreements and data insights such as audience overlaps and shopper dynamics. Insights that may have once taken months to find now takes only hours. This allows businesses to immediately dive into data analysis with the option to customize or enhance these insights further, depending on their specific needs, accelerating the journey from data collection to actionable insights. Redefining marketing: Data-driven, measurable and accountable Marketing’s days of chasing trends for the sake of optics are over. As consumer spending tightens and pressure mounts to prove ROI, brands must find tangible ways to transform data into growth. This means embracing data-driven marketplaces, forging smarter partnerships and refining activation strategies to drive performance. Brands are seeking to improve their cross-media measurement and attribution strategies, but the path to accurate, actionable insights is more complex than ever. The rise of privacy regulations, the deprecation of traditional tracking methods like cookies and IP addresses, and the fragmentation of media consumption have made it increasingly difficult to get a unified view of performance. Measurement is often treated as an afterthought, rather than an integral part of media planning, leading to reactive rather than proactive decision-making. Governing bodies like the IAB have already laid the groundwork for how brands can standardize their measurement process. Brands that build upon this framework and continue to push the industry forward through standardization have the opportunity to propel growth and efficiency. The keys to survival: Adaptation and collaboration The shift from marketing intuition to marketing intelligence has arrived. Organizations that prioritize secure, strategic data collaboration will be the ones leading the charge in turning insights into impact. Whether through partnerships, clean rooms or standardized activation strategies, data collaboration isn’t just a competitive advantage anymore—it’s a necessity for survival. Incrementality is king, and marketing leaders need to think about where consumers are spending their time and their dollars. There’s no room for gut instincts in a world that runs on measurable outcomes. Brands that successfully leverage data collaboration will be better positioned to meet consumer expectations and prove marketing impact. About LiveRamp LiveRamp is the leading data collaboration partner, empowering marketers and media owners to deliver and measure marketing performance everywhere it matters. Only LiveRamp’s data collaboration network seamlessly unites data across advertisers, platforms, publishers, data providers, and commerce media networks—unlocking deep insights, delivering transformational consumer experiences, and driving measurable growth. Built on a foundation of strict neutrality, unmatched interoperability, and global scale, LiveRamp enables organizations to maximize the value of their data while accelerating innovation. Trusted by the world’s leading brands, retailers, financial services providers, and healthcare innovators, LiveRamp is shaping the future of responsible data collaboration in an AI-driven, outcomes-focused world. LiveRamp is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices worldwide. Learn more at LiveRamp.com. Kevin Dunn Kevin Dunn is senior VP of brands and agencies at LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP). In his role, Kevin drives strategic growth across industries including retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, health care and others. He oversees new business, account expansion and channel partnerships, leveraging over 15 years of experience in martech and ad tech.

Why data collaboration is a marketer’s biggest competitive edge

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