LiveRamp is expanding its data driven advertising arm.
Recently, it acquired Data Plus Math,
a data-driven TV advertising solutions provider, for $150 million.
This acquisition will bring together Identity Resolution
and measurement and media planning capabilities.
Data-driven TV advertising is becoming
increasingly popular among advertisers.
The growth in CTV (connected TV) providers is driving this trend.
In 2017, mobile-dominated video ad impressions had
a 39% share in Q4 while CTV claimed a tiny 16% share.
By the end of last year, CTV impressions grew to 44%.
Traditional TV has mostly been the playground for large ad buyers.
CTV and streaming advertising solutions could potentially change this.
Do people still watch live, ad-supported linear TV?
As per the Nielsen Total Audience Report,
linear TV still commands the majority of viewing.
LiveRamp recently sold its data marketing division
Acxiom Marketing Solutions to IPG for $2.3 billion.
This data marketing arm uses third-party data
to deliver hyper-targeted online ad campaigns.
However, it relied heavily on Facebook and similar platforms.
With the recent privacy and data-breach issues with Facebook,
the fate of such business units that focused on third-party
started looking gloomy.
While data-driven TV advertising has been attracting
big investments, it still lacks industry standardization.
It is to be seen how the marriage of LiveRamp and
Data Plus Math will drive data-driven advertising on the television.
With omnichannel marketing becoming more pervasive,
data-driven TV advertising could definitely change the TV ad space.