Tru Optik now allows identified customer data for OTT TV ad targeting, through LiveRamp

Data provider Tru Optik has been busily assembling the ability to target Over-The-Top (OTT) TV audiences with the kind of data that is commonly used by online advertisers.

Toward that aim, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company launched last August its OTT Data Cloud, which it said was the first of its kind. Guided by the company’s Data Management Platform, it is intended to target ads on OTT TV programs via behavioral, demographic and purchase data. OTT TV is online-delivered video that is seen through smart TVs, gaming consoles or connected devices like Roku.

The OTT Data Cloud combines anonymized data from a variety of sources, such as Experian Marketing Services, so that a brand or agency can, for instance, marry household income with data about whether a particular household is in the market for a given product category, or with data about whether that household has children.

This week, Tru Optik is adding Acxiom’s LiveRamp to its mix.

This addition, Tru Optik CEO Andre Swanston told me, means that his company can now allow clients to utilize their personally identifiable information (PII) on their customers for ad targeting in OTT programs — but without Tru Optik having to handle it.

PII is the most valuable kind of customer data, because it has exact user identities that can help to assemble detailed profiles of purchase behavior and other characteristics. Typically, it comes from a brand’s customer relationship database and includes names, street addresses, email addresses and purchase histories of all its customers and identified prospects.

But it is also the most sensitive data, since it shows real identities and is accompanied by a variety of legal requirements and industry best practices.

PII is “not data Tru Optik wants in its DMP,” Swanston said, while LiveRamp “is a massive leader in this space.”

LiveRamp is known for handling and combining this “people-based data” with other kinds. It can match personally identified profiles from a brand with other data layers, and hand the profiles — anonymized with a label like Customer 123 — to Tru Optik for use in its ad targeting.

The LiveRamp partnership is only the latest effort by Tru Optik to combine its anonymized data targeting with the behavior of real identities. Earlier this month, for instance, it announced a partnership with global research agency Kantar Millward Brown where advertisers can track offline purchases to the serving of an ad in OTT TV.