Over 450 publishers are now using LiveRamp’s IdentityLink, including Time, Inc., Hearst, and The Weather Company. IdentityLink unifies LiveRamp’s identity resolution suite of capabilities with those acquired in the 2016 acquisitions of Arbor and Circulate. We spoke to David Yaffe, GM, Publishers and Platforms, LiveRamp to understand the changing landscape of people-based marketing strategies after the new announcement.

MTS: Tell us about your role at LiveRamp and how you got here.

David Yaffe: I am the GM for LiveRamp’s publisher and platform businesses. Prior to LiveRamp, I cofounded Arbor to help publishers monetize their data, and we were acquired by LiveRamp late last year. With Arbor and now with LiveRamp’s IdentityLink, I’ve been working to help publishers and platforms participate in this movement towards omnichannel people-based marketing, whether that’s by monetizing data or offering people-based advertising solutions.

MTS: Could you provide us a sneak preview into the IdentityLink for Publishers’ Identity Graph?

David Yaffe: One of the foundational assets behind IdentityLink for Publishers is LiveRamp’s Identity Graph, which is the largest addressable deterministic graph available to the advertising ecosystem. The graph enables us to address a key challenge for publishers, which is increasing the addressability of their advertisers’ audiences. Through IdentityLink, publishers can combine LiveRamp’s Identity Graph with their first-party data — that allows them to recognize and target more advertiser audiences across their properties, regardless of the device or browser they use to access the publisher’s content.

But IdentityLink for publishers is more than the Identity Graph – it’s the set of services for publishers that connects identity across advertisers, technology platforms, and data providers. For example, IdentityLink enables publishers to access data for new insights about their audiences. Many publishers that work with us today focus on data monetization, either by distributing their data to advertisers and platforms for targeting or directly monetizing their authenticated web and mobile traffic. So while LiveRamp’s Identity Graph is a key element behind what we do for publishers, it’s really only the beginning of the story.

Read More: LiveRamp Launches IdentityLink for Publishers as a Gold Standard in People-Based Marketing

MTS: What are the new people-based marketing strategies that LiveRamp is targeting with its latest announcement?

David Yaffe: Our marketer clients, and the platforms that buy on their behalf, want more omnichannel targeting and measurement, period. They want to resolve everything they know about their customers, then reach customers and prospects in a targeted way across all their channels, then be able to understand how those customers responded – especially when those responses occur in other channels, such as in the store after a digital ad exposure. Publishers, with their unique ability to deliver custom brand experiences and context, have been underrepresented in people-based marketing because most lack the robust identity infrastructure to participate. With IdentityLink for publishers, we expect to see more of the larger content publishers offering people-based ad solutions and data. That gives brands more premium media destinations where they can deliver targeted, engaging brand experiences.

MTS: How do you see omnichannel marketing attribution and analytics market evolving with the changing dynamic of marketing intelligence technologies?

David Yaffe: Identity has triggered another wave of evolution for omnichannel attribution and analytics platforms. With more brands taking a people-based approach to targeting and measurement, they are looking for their measurement platforms to evolve along with them. That means incorporating identity, and often AI, to gain insight into consumer journeys at the individual level. With IdentityLink, we’re working with many of these platforms to resolve omnichannel consumer touches using identity, and we expect great progress to be made on this front over the next year.

MTS: How is IdentityLink for Publishers different from the one offered for Brands and Data Owners?

David Yaffe: Publishers have unique needs separate from brands and data owners, and our IdentityLink for publishers solution reflects those differences. While publishers may have subscriber acquisition/audience development needs similar to brands, and data monetization opportunities similar to data owners, publishers uniquely need to develop people-based ad solutions to attract media spend and deliver great results. IdentityLink for publishers addresses all of these needs.

Read More: AppNexus, LiveRamp, and MediaMath Launch Technology Consortium to Enable Privacy-First People-Based Programmatic Advertising

MTS: How does LiveRamp Identity leverage Acxiom AbiliTec® to map and resolve online identifiers?

David Yaffe: LiveRamp is privileged to have the leading solution for offline identity, Acxiom AbiliTec, as the foundation for IdentityLink. AbiliTec gives LiveRamp the ability to resolve online identifiers to offline individuals – giving us deterministic scale and accuracy that are real differentiators for IdentityLink.

Thanks for chatting with us, David.

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