DIGITAL ROUNDUP

Publicis moves to acquire LiveRamp to fuel agentic growth

Publicis threw the marketing ecosystem into a frenzy with a Sunday announcement that made LiveRamp it's latest big money move.

Within days, plenty of opinions have shown up across trade press & social media, whether it be themed along an identity resolution backbone or towards agentic use cases. Not since Google's will they won't they get rid of 3rd party cookies has an adtech story taken such a keen interest, but this time with plenty of AI "curious" posts showcasing why AI is not always correct!

My take is quite simple and no doubt this is a smart move on Publicis' part. LiveRamp is ultimately the plumbing that exists within the Martech / Adtech ecocsystem, whether it be walled gardens or specific vendors / publishers. Generally speaking, they exist, made famous for their identity resolution capabilities based on RampID, as a largely deterministic alternative identifier based on hashed PII. LiveRamp themselves have made big strides, particularly outside of the US over time. Whether it be their own acquisition of Habu as a neutral data clean room, which you could argue was the only true competitor to InfoSum (now owned by WPP) at the time. Or the fact LiveRamp have had strong connections to partner in places which for most companies are difficult to enter, such as Retail Media and also the only 3rd party with the ability to put in a 3rd party ID into Google ADH (Ads Data Hub) as a clean room.

Does LiveRamp scream Agentic? No not really but the plumbing aspect of what it does for connecting the dots does fit nicely in an agentic talk track. The identity resolution piece is full of snake oil at the best of times and Publicis have had plenty of time to try make it work over the years with Epsilon and more recently Lotame. In reality though, it is a struggle to make work outside of the US where even LiveRamp themselves have struggled in the UK / EU. And if you did a poll of Publicis brands who actively use the Core ID today, I bet it won't be as high as one thinks. This is why WPP's moves in their opinion of federated identity are for me the most logical approach to the future state of identity.

Ultimately this is about owning the pipes beyond what is out of control (walled gardens) and nobody is better at that than LiveRamp. For competitor holdcos / agencies and even advertisers, plenty have reliance on LiveRamp today whether they know it or not. Even TTD have famously showcased that UID2.0/EUID does have some synergy with RampID to scale it up. Whilst Publicis / LiveRamp can argue nothing changes here from a neutrality ground, the classic owning your own tech stack conversation will become even more important. The data piping element can be done through APIs nowadays. The clean room element does exist in both a cloud (AWS / GCP Clean Rooms) or 3rd party (Optable amongst others) perspective. The ID graph is a different story, with argubly only ID5 being big enough to challenge it. Though if vendors / advertisers start to pull out of LiveRamp, the graph may get smaller but the damage is already done. I also see this as a means for Publicis to have an even bigger footprint in Retail/Commerce Media, a space that continues to grow at pace.