The data backbone just changed hands
Publicis Groupe’s $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp closed this week, pushing a behind-the-scenes identity partner into the centre of CMO budget conversations. LiveRamp helps brands onboard first-party data and match it against audience profiles for targeting and measurement. Its RampID remains one of the most widely used alternative identifiers in digital media.
The close means marketers now have to decide whether to keep a scaled data pipeline inside a rival holding company or take on the cost of switching.
The case for staying put
Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun and chief strategy officer Carla Serrano have framed the combination with Epsilon as “plug and play” for clients. The pitch: lower upfront investment and faster activation. Sadoun described brands as “trapped between two bad options” of handing data to walled gardens or spending heavily on consultants.
The practical arguments are real. LiveRamp is a market leader with a broad dataset built through its customer base and commerce partnerships. Its ties to Walmart, Target, Albertsons and Kroger matter as the IAB expects commerce media spending to grow 13.6% this year, the third-fastest growth area after social media and CTV. It was also OpenAI’s first conversion API partner in June, giving it an early foothold in an emerging channel. Not every holdco is ready to walk away; Havas has indicated it expects to keep using LiveRamp in its Converged data platform in North America.
Regulatory guardrails provide some cover. Under FTC-enforced terms, Publicis must:
- maintain competitor access to LiveRamp
- operate firewalls so it cannot see customer data or confidential information
- allow an independent auditor to review compliance every six months for two years, then annually for three years
Those terms do not stop Publicis from building integrated products across LiveRamp and its other units, but Serrano promised the service “will stay open to every brand, every platform, and yes, every agency.”
The case for walking away
For marketers outside the Publicis orbit, the neutrality question is not minor. WPP and Omnicom are stepping back, uncomfortable with funding a direct rival’s infrastructure. Omnicom CEO John Wren said in May he saw no value in “keeping LiveRamp independent of the rest of your infrastructure.” Liquid Death chief media officer Benoit Vatere was blunter on LinkedIn: “Who in their right mind will let a holdco own your data and graph?”
The global angle adds friction. LiveRamp earns about 95% of its roughly $800 million annual revenue in the U.S. For brands operating across borders and regulatory regimes, that narrow footprint may weaken the case for accepting neutrality risk.
The broader technology shift also matters. Apple’s recent crackdown has made deterministic identity harder. An OpenX study found third-party data accounted for 40% of supply-side-targeted CTV deal spend on its platform in 2025, down from 78% three years earlier. Contextual and vector-based approaches are gaining ground, with brands such as Heineken moving in that direction. If your roadmap is probabilistic and intent-driven, you may need less identity resolution altogether.
What to do before renewal
Run a focused audit rather than deciding on headlines. Map where LiveRamp sits in targeting, measurement and onboarding. Have legal review the FTC firewalls and audit terms. Then test one alternative in a limited pilot before committing: WPP’s InfoSum and Omnicom’s Acxiom Real ID are already positioning themselves as fallbacks. Also track whether WPP and Omnicom withdrawals shrink the dataset; if the graph narrows, the performance case for staying weakens along with it.
Source: Digiday
