• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, July 18, 2017

Acxiom’s LiveRamp on Tuesday launched IdentityLink for publishers, a tool it said will enable publishers to attract more ad spend and improve the monetization of their data. In addition, the company said IdentityLink aims to enable marketers to expand so-called “people-based” marketing initiatives beyond Google and Facebook in a bid to offer customers a more consistent cross-channel experience.

LiveRamp said more than 200 publishers are currently using IdentityLink to help them understand their audiences better. Publishers like The Weather Company, an IBM company, market weather data as a tool that can help marketers predict and drive consumer purchasing behavior.

"Every marketer wants to create relevant, seamless interactions between their brand and consumers," Jeremy Hlavacek, head of global automated monetization, The Weather Company, an IBM business, told Digital News Daily. "The key to being successful with that is bringing as much context to advertising as possible,” as well as using specific data sets and advertising technology. “Our partnership with LiveRamp allows us to better match our weather and location data sets with real people via the IdentityLink technology. This will help us drive better results from our weather and location data and also set up the infrastructure to apply our AI [artificial intelligence] capabilities in the future."

“The ability to connect data, devices, and people—what the industry refers to as identity resolution—is key to improving both the efficacy of marketing and the consumer experience on a publisher's properties," Jeff Smith, chief marketing officer at LiveRamp. told Digital News Daily. Smith said IdentityLink enables publishers to offer marketers the ability to target audiences directly on publishers’ properties. They can also offer marketers data to help them generate an omnichannel view of the consumer that can help them contextualize their messaging across digital and offline channels.