In an unusual partnership between agency and onboarder, DigitasLBi has teamed up with LiveRamp to sharpen and speed up the segmentation capabilities of its advanced analytics platform to drive more targeted campaigns.
DigitasLBi said Thursday that it will leverage LiveRamp’s data connectivity services on IDIOM, its advanced analytics platform – still in the process of being rolled out – that uses multiple sources of behavioral data to guide campaign planning. The integration allows the agency to move away from problematic survey and panel data.
“The traditional process is flawed but fundamental,” said Jason Kodish, global chief data scientist at DigitasLBi. “You … have a segmentation that’s probably half right and use it for programmatic buying. [The process] can take anywhere from 90 to 180 days.”
IDIOM’s integration with LiveRamp scraps surveys for more granular, behavior-based segmentation. The entire process can be completed in less than 30 days, Kodish said.
LiveRamp sits behind IDIOM to link and anonymize data sets collected from multiple digital media sources and third-party partners. It strips personally identifiable information before the information is used by DigitasLBi’s data scientists.
The ability to combine and derive analytics from previously siloed data sets offers a tremendous amount of insight IDIOM couldn’t offer before, said James Arra, COO at LiveRamp. For example, the integration allows the platform to analyze a brand’s first-party data against competitors and third parties.
According to Kodish, DigitasLBi could look at a consumer’s time spent with one home goods retailer vs. another, or the search traffic he or she generates toward each website. It can then compare that to comScore census data or look outside the range of just that transaction.
When DigitasLBi started building out IDIOM in January 2015, it initially partnered with Acxiom to use its Audience Operating System. But DigitasLBi decided that LiveRamp, which Acxiom acquired in May 2014, had core matching capabilities that were better suited to lead the partnership.
DigitasLBi clients with existing LiveRamp integrations can instantly plug into the platform. IDIOM, however, can also integrate with other data connectivity platforms like Experian or Acxiom directly.
“We don’t have to [use LiveRamp], but it makes it more consistent,” Kodish said.
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The partnership is unusual for LiveRamp, which typically goes direct-to-client. While it has some agency partnerships, it usually doesn’t integrate with an agency-built tech product.
Most of LiveRamp’s agency relationships involve the agency reselling its onboarding products to clients. But if agencies continue to build out products like IDIOM, Arra predicts the opportunity to work with them will grow.
