LiveRamp says IdentityLink lets clients use their own data to target consumers on any device. Unlike similar products that organize targeting around devices first, however, it is set up to target consumers at the household level first, using so-called deterministic data such as email addresses and utility bills, and then on their devices.
Much of the digital ecoysystem's targeting capabilities rely on "probabilistic" data, in which marketers strive to infer the characteristics of consumers based on things like the websites they visit. Google and Facebook have been able to vacuum up so much of marketers' digital ad budgets because their audiences identify themselves by signing in.
LiveRamp's sales pitch is that Google and Facebook have tremendous targeting and measurement capabilities—within their walls. Outside, however, LiveRamp claims it should be considered top dog.
"People-based marketing should be foundational for every campaign," says Ashton Gary, director of enterprise partnerships at Goodway Group, an ad tech provider. "Every campaign should start with 'What data do I have on my customers and how can I use this to have a better more personalized experience with my users?' The whole reason we are calling this people-based marketing now is because we're actually talking to people not and not just using a megaphone."
Gary says his company has seen return on investment increase nearly ninefold on using IdentityLink.
Brands, publishers and tech platforms already had access to IdentityLink. Some agencies, meanwhile, had concentrated on building similar capabilities in-house.
"Agencies do three things: they plan, they buy and they measure media," says Nikhil Dixit, VP of agencies and publishers at LiveRamp. "At LiveRamp, we have been really good at the buy portion, but we haven't had an offering to engage with agencies across all three core competencies."
