LiveRamp adds third-party data to its cross-channel identity service

Last October, data onboarding service LiveRamp launched IdentityLink, making its internal identity resolution service available to brands for their first-party data.

IdentityLink creates “people-based marketing” profiles, which describe the activities of real people across devices and through their purchases in the real world. That is, a brand might connect the activities of its customer Jane Smith across her smartphone and her laptop — based on when she is logged on to the brand’s site or app — with her real-world purchases at its stores.

This cross-channel identity is connected by one or more common identifiers, like a common email address. When used for marketing outside of that brand, the profile is anonymized, such as Customer 123.

Now, the Acxiom-owned LiveRamp has launched IdentityLink for data owners, which allows third-party data owners to sell their information for integration with these cross-channel profiles.

This is the third of five IdentityLink versions that LiveRamp is issuing. The first release in October was for brands, which was followed in November by a version so technology providers could embed IdentityLink into their platforms. Now it’s for the third-party data owner, with editions of IdentityLink for agencies and publishers in development.

Luke McGuinness, head of data partnerships at LiveRamp, told me that a third-party data owner could have, say, data that an unidentified but cookied online user has been visiting car sites, apparently in the market for a vehicle. It could link up that data with the known profile of a user in IdentityLink through its cookie and the brand’s cookie on the same laptop, or some other common identifiers.

LiveRamp notes that three third-party data owners are already utilizing IdentityLink. There’s mobile purchase data from Ibotta, data on fans involved with celebrity clubs through Vertical Mass, and verified iOS and Android users in PushSpring. Here’s a LiveRamp screen showing management of PushSpring data:

The integrated LiveRamp data is made available through integrations with over 400 marketing and ad platforms in the company’s Data Store.

People-based marketing has become a kind of premium data supply, based on the idea that real profiles can more accurately track users across channels.

Time, Inc.-owned Viant, for instance, recently bought mobile-oriented demand side platform (DSP) Adelphic to better target its large number of people-based profiles. Adobe launched a Cross-Device Coop last March to anonymously utilize brands’ cross-device first-party profiles.

McGuinness told me that LiveRamp works with other providers of people-based data, particularly since his company specializes in marrying offline data with online. Adobe, he says, uses IdentityLink for that purpose.