In this edition of Insights from the Buy Side, Michael Guzewicz, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX, spoke with Sam White, Head of Addressability, Adtech Platforms, LiveRamp. Thanks for taking the time, Sam!
As Head of Addressability, Adtech Platforms at LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP), Sam White advocates for an open and interoperable internet and has struck product partnerships across LiveRamp’s addressability offerings that help partners mitigate their reliance on legacy device identifiers. Sam leads LiveRamp’s efforts to help develop the infrastructure across the ad tech ecosystem to support LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and direct publisher integrations.
What should brands be thinking about with the impending deprecation of cookies?
This change is an opportunity to fix digital advertising: We can now optimize for outcomes consistently across channels instead of using inefficient identifiers across web, CTV, and mobile that might not respect the consumer’s preferences for privacy nor offer them control.
Instead, brands can improve their omnichannel addressability, frequency management, and measurability all while giving consumers a better experience, building more personalized – and more transparent – relationships with them.
How is LiveRamp helping to solve for a cookieless world?
One of the ways that LiveRamp has leaned into this opportunity is with its Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS), a privacy-first solution that helps publishers and marketers transact without relying on third-party cookies or device-based identifiers. ATS enables publishers to match authenticated user data with LiveRamp’s pseudonymous identifier, RampID, enabling advertisers to better reach their audiences.
RampID is helping to solve for an increasingly signal-less world by:
- Protecting user privacy. ATS puts user privacy first, relying on first-party authentications, and does not use any type of fingerprinting or probabilistic expansion. Instead, users share their data in a trusted value exchange with publishers to be connected to marketer data.
- Ensuring that publishers and marketers can continue to reach their target audiences. Advertisers can leverage RampID to reach their audiences across all devices and browsers.
- Enhancing the performance of advertising campaigns. Advertisers who have used RampID see increased performance, including improved reach and return on advertising spend (ROAS). Reaching more of their audience enables advertisers to better personalize the consumer journey and drive more efficient campaigns through people-based frequency capping. Improved measurability helps advertisers to optimize on their campaigns, leading to better business outcomes.
What do you think the most common misconception is about the deprecation of cookies?
The most common misconception about the deprecation of cookies is that it will spell the end of the ability for advertisers to reach their intended audience. This isn’t the case. While third-party cookies were once a powerful tool for digital advertising, better ways exist for advertisers to accurately reach their consumers, and savvy advertisers have already been working in cookieless browsers and mediums to reach the already-cookieless segment of the internet. In reality, this is a chance for all the stakeholders of the digital ads industry – publishers, advertisers, and the technology ecosystem that connects them – to build solutions from the ground up that will benefit consumers.
Publishers use ATS to improve monetization and leverage trusted relationships with their users to create a better experience. Marketers use ATS to reach their audiences more effectively, improve performance, and comply with global privacy regulations. Consumers receive a personalized and privacy-enhancing experience. A true win-win-win.
Supply-side targeting has emerged as a strategic media buying approach. Why are buyers embracing SST?
Supply-side targeting (SST) allows buyers to target their ads to specific audiences on publishers via their SSP partner. SST is becoming increasingly popular because it offers key advantages over other media-buying methods:
- Improved targeting: SST allows buyers to apply their data closer to the inventory source and access more premium inventory. This allows marketers to ensure they are not only reaching their ideal consumers, but also reaching those consumers in publisher environments where they feel their media will have the greatest impact and ROAS.
- Increased efficiency: Through the overlap of data strategy and inventory strategy, buyers optimize where their media is activated and in turn, reap efficiencies in their media spend. This can free up dollars to invest in other aspects of their advertising business.
- Improved transparency: With media buying occuring one (or potentially many) steps closer to supply, it can increase the accuracy of reporting, helping buyers to improve their understanding of their media buys. And when used in conjunction with solutions like ATS and RampID, these can power closed-loop measurement and help buyers make better decisions about their future media budgets. Every impression bought on RampID is measurable on RampID.
What’s unique about the LiveRamp/OpenX partnership?
The LiveRamp and OpenX partnership is unique in a couple of ways. First, it is a global partnership that brings together two of the leading companies in the online advertising industry. Additionally, the partnership is designed to help publishers and marketers reach their audiences on their preferred publishers more effectively and efficiently with 100% measurability – allowing advertisers to activate and measure in 21 countries across the globe.
Through OpenX’s comprehensive use of LiveRamp’s identity, deep roots across publishers who have implemented LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, and its connectivity from the LiveRamp platform for both first- and third-party data, advertisers working with LiveRamp can reach publishers working with OpenX using supply-side targeting that operates with scale, accuracy, and efficiency.
How does the LiveRamp/OpenX partnership improve performance for buyers?
By bringing together LiveRamp’s best-in-class foundational identity, data collaboration, and data connectivity with OpenX’s best-in-class publisher network and supply-side activation capabilities, advertisers can be confident that working across the LiveRamp and OpenX platforms will yield media performance that drives business results. And better yet, advertisers can prove their results through the closed-loop measurement enabled by RampID activation.
What unique factors does OpenX bring to the partnership?
OpenX maintains a large and growing network of premium publisher relationships across channels and devices that enables advertisers to reach users programmatically across the board. The capabilities layered on top of this around data and supply-side targeting in partnership with LiveRamp are all strong compliments contributing to efficiency, transparency, and ultimately performance toward the goals of an advertiser.
What can buyers do to unlock the full value of their first-party data?
Over the past few years, the management, analysis, segmentation, and activation of first-party data has become table stakes for advertisers seeking meaningful results on their digital media spend. The most successful advertisers are now expanding their first-party strategies into the newer frontiers of data collaboration and people-based, closed-loop measurement.
By leveraging LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform, OpenX’s supply-side targeting for activation of RampID, and subsequently the online and offline closed-loop measurement enabled through RampID buying, advertisers can take their media strategies to new heights.