MediaMath has a very strong partnership with LiveRamp on multiple fronts. As a reseller of LiveRamp’s Data Onboarding and Customer Link products, we are constantly looking for ways to better and deepen the way we work together.
With LiveRamp’s annual conference, RampUp, just under a week way, we are very excited about having our CEO, Joe Zawadzki, speak on a panel about the future of ad tech and our SVP of Vertical Practices, Abhijit Shome, participate in the “Technology Partners” track of the pre-conference event.
I recently chatted with LiveRamp’s Chief Product Officer, Anneka Gupta, to find out what’s new at LiveRamp and what she’s looking forward to at RampUp.
1. What trends do you think will define 2016 in the ad tech and marketing tech ecosystem, and how will data connectivity play a role?
We’re seeing marketers beginning to really embrace the vision for omni-channel marketing. Typically this includes breaking down internal silos, deploying more technology in-house and adding a data connectivity layer to the marketing stack that makes it easy to move data between ad tech and mar tech platforms.
One of the hot topics I’m particularly excited about is the concept of “people-based marketing.” We all know that consumers use a variety of devices and connect with a brand across a broad range of touchpoints. We’re seeing marketers make a bigger push to know which devices and offline interactions relate to the same consumer, so they can do a better job with segmentation, frequency capping and attribution. I believe this will fundamentally change the way consumers are delivered marketing and how marketers measure the effectiveness of their outreach.
2. You’ve launched Customer Link—a new data connectivity service. How do you see this driving your business?
We know marketers want to create a unified view of their customers to fuel insights that can then be incorporated into their marketing strategies to increase engagement. But with so many channels and devices out there, it’s been incredibly difficult for them to link data from different sources to create an accurate view of customer journeys. Customer Link addresses this problem head-on by connecting online and offline activity across channels and devices at the consumer level in a privacy-safe way, so brands can finally create a unified view of their customers. Some of the world’s largest companies have already adopted the service to analyze cross-channel campaigns, perform closed-loop measurement and refine audience models.
3. You’ve recently partnered with Beintoo to tap into geo-behavioral data for cross-device targeting—would you say this is the future of targeting? How will marketers and brands benefit from this?
This partnership provides marketers with a rich asset that can be incorporated into understanding the customer journey. Geo-behavioral data helps marketers understand how consumers are interacting with their brand out in the physical world. This data also provides unique insight into user intent and interests.
It’s hard to claim that any one thing represents the future of targeting, but we are certain that geo-behavioral data combined with people-based marketing will create a future where every message a consumer receives is relevant and meaningful.
4. Cross-device targeting is a fairly new implementation—what challenges do you think this will bring and how do you hope to solve for it?
Successful cross-device targeting is dependent on overcoming the obstacles of reach and accurate recognition. The real challenge that many marketers face when doing cross-device targeting is whether a deterministic or probabilistic approach is better for them. At LiveRamp, we think both strategies have their time and place. While at LiveRamp we focus on deterministic matching, we partner with other cross-device players to fuel their probabilistic models. In turn, our clients can use LiveRamp’s deterministic matching, a partner’s probabilistic model, or both depending on their desired outcome and the trade-off they are willing to make between accuracy and reach.
5. We’re getting ready for RampUp next week. What will be some of the stand-out topics and discussions?
It’s hard to pick favorites in the RampUp agenda this year. I’ll make a shameless plug for the panel “Future of Ad Tech” with Mediamath’s CEO, Joe Zawadzki. MediaMath fans who can’t make it to the event will be able to view the video on the conference site after the show. I’m also personally excited about the session AdExchanger’s John Ebbert is hosting on what’s happening in mobile, as well as sessions that Gartner and Forrester are leading on trends in data and smart TV.
See the other posts in our “5 Questions with…” series here.