LiveRamp, which has for years helped brands, publishers, and platforms connect and activate customer data, is launching its first brand campaign on connected TV. The message, one of trust and flexibility, arrives amid a pending Publicis takeover that has the ad industry questioning whether the platform can remain neutral.
The adtech company will air 15- and 30-second ads for its services on Netflix for the next five months, targeting executives with a promise to help marketers connect data sources seamlessly and “deliver experiences customers want, maximize marketing returns, and drive more revenue.”
The core message: Marketers can rely on LiveRamp in the era of AI. “AI is only as valuable as the data that it sits upon, and only LiveRamp has the foundation in data ethics, identity, cleanroom technologies, along with our broad network, which together enable marketers to scale AI-powered workflows and business performance in a way that’s durable and defensible and secure,” the company’s chief marketer Jessica Shapiro said.
Trust is likely to be a valuable differentiator in light of increasing automation in the industry. When marketers start handing the keys over to autonomous systems to handle campaign planning, audience creation, measurement, and optimization, quality and governance of the underlying datasets will only become more important.
The promise, right now, is also an opportunistic one for LiveRamp. The company’s claims of neutrality are under heightened scrutiny after French advertising giant Publicis in May announced plans to acquire the platform for $2.2 billion. Since then, some ad industry leaders have not just expressed concern about giving a competitor access to their identity and data infrastructure, but have said outright that they will drop the platform. Among them are Omnicom CEO John Wren. Meanwhile, former Dentsu exec Doug Ray told ADWEEK recently that, as with IPG’s 2018 takeover of Acxiom, there will be a “slow erosion” of clients off LiveRamp.
The new campaign could help do damage control on the perception of LiveRamp’s neutrality and trustworthiness in the market. But the campaign is not a direct answer to concerns about Publicis’ takeover of the platform; it was in the works before news of the acquisition broke and is designed first and foremost, Shapiro said, as a “response to the acceleration of AI.” She added: “It’s, in general, the message people need to hear, and it reinforces what we stand for in terms of neutrality,” Shapiro said. “Being trustworthy and making sure that the data is secure is something that is in the roots of our company.”
Asked whether LiveRamp expects to see Publicis competitors like WPP, Omnicom, and Dentsu using its platform in a few years’ time, Shapiro said: “We maintain that we will be neutral, and we have always been neutral and worked with companies and agencies across the board. And we’re not expecting a change on that front.”
