LiveRamp CEO: Why connected data beats perfect data

In 25 years in advertising, including stints at Razorfish, Microsoft and Acxiom, LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe has had a front-row seat to the evolution of the internet. Drawing on that experience, Howe recently challenged the myth of the “golden record,” the idea that companies can build perfect consumer profiles by hoarding every data point.

With third-party cookies in flux and first-party data tools on the rise, many marketers may believe in the possibility of a unified consumer profile.

The reality is that signal loss, fragmentation, data silos and data privacy laws make such a record practically impossible. But according to Howe, that’s not a problem. The real winners will be companies that prioritize connectivity and interoperability.

“The winners are going to be the ones who connect the silos, who realize everything is connected and bring the right information together at a moment in time,” Howe said during his keynote at LiveRamp’s RampUp conference.

This observation may be something of a bombshell coming from a man who leads a company with the largest commercial identity graph, according to AdExchanger. Instead, he notes, successful companies are using clean rooms, identity resolution and data collaboration to create the most connected records possible.

To obtain consumer-consented data, companies should offer a clear value exchange to earn consumer trust and make it worthwhile for consumers to share their information, such as through discounts or loyalty programs.

“Consumers get it,” Howe tells The Current. “They don’t want their data to be a commodity that’s traded back and forth between everyone. They’re going to give their permissions to the companies they trust.”

Identifying the data in front of you

Companies need to understand their customers well enough to be strategic about the data and tech stack they need. Simply purchasing every available tool — whether it’s a customer data platform (CDP), customer relationship management (CRM) or data management platform (DMP) — won’t automatically improve business outcomes, Kumar Rathnam, head of global products and digital audiences at Dun & Bradstreet, tells The Current. Instead, businesses should leverage their valuable first-party data and adopt tools that will elevate that data.

This is where identity solutions come into play. Travis Clinger, LiveRamp’s chief connectivity and ecosystem officer, likens identity solutions like Unified ID 2.0, RampID or ID5 to the Rosetta Stone. Just as the artifact helped decode Egyptian hieroglyphics, identity frameworks enable marketers to piece together fragmented customer data, turning it into a more cohesive identity.

While signal loss can make it a challenge to understand customer behavior, the industry has shifted toward prioritizing first-party data in recent years. According to Clinger, LiveRamp hit a milestone last year — its authenticated identity graph (from users who have agreed to share their data) now sees more ad opportunities than its older system, which relied on third-party cookies. More than a billion consumers’ authenticated data is accessible through LiveRamp.

That’s why marketers can still thrive without relying on the elusive golden record.

“One of the benefits of data collaboration is you can take what you know and then you can infer what you don’t know,” Clinger tells The Current. “So, you can use the data you can connect to. Maybe you only get connections on X percentage of it, but then you can panel it out from there. And we’re seeing some marketers get quite clever about that.”

Clean rooms for privacy

As companies leverage their data in a privacy-conscious way, clean rooms have become essential. Forrester recently reported that 90% of surveyed companies now use clean rooms.

And companies like Snap and Booking.com have come together to leverage the technology, with data-matching conversions increasing by 40% in a recent example from 2024.

Lisa Valentino, president of Best Buy Ads, has vast experience setting up clean rooms from her time at Disney, where she and her team set up over 100 clean rooms. Speaking on a panel at RampUp, she emphasized that the big pivot for clean rooms is moving them past insights into activations — turning recommendations into potential future revenue.

“The ability to not only learn and understand common audiences and audience segmentation, but then buy those segments programmatically, that was a tipping point that many are taking advantage of today,” Valentino said onstage. “I actually think we’re on our way to acceleration.”

While the golden record may never come to fruition, it seems marketers have enough tools to thrive without a perfect consumer profile.