• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 24, 2024

Advertisers are closing the gap between search and connected television (CTV), targeting the introduction of advertising measurement and performance metrics. 

Customer data platform (CDP) Hightouch expanded into CTV advertising measurement this week -- putting the company in direct competition with LiveRamp, which earlier this month laid the foundation for stronger data and identity support as it looks for new ways to improve efficiency and speed.  

Hightouch’s plan for CTV advertisers helps to target, match, and measure first-party audiences across the fragmented CTV landscape of demand-side platforms (DSPs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and measurement tools.

Ian Maier, go to market (GTM) and product lead at Hightouch, described how the company works with one of the largest food delivery apps, which uses the platform to up-sell audiences by running campaigns that access customer data like subscription purchases and consumer app purchases.

The technology sits on top of the food delivery company’s data warehouse and enables the advertiser to activate the audience across CTV demand-side and OEM platforms like Roku, Samsung, and LG. The audiences are measured to determine how much attention -- incremental sales lift -- they achieve.

Hightouch -- which works with brands like WeightWatchers and PetSmart -- believes the biggest CTV advertisers have been left with two options. They can either do nothing and lose the performance benefits of first-party targeting and measurement, or allocate multiple engineers to implement and manage a slow, expensive and error-prone legacy data onboarding solution.

At LiveRamp, new enterprise-level identity capabilities through LiveRamp Data Collaboration Platform now enable more precise consumer intelligence that can lead to improvements in advertising and marketing campaigns while informing other aspects like product mix. 

The latest version of the platform enables first-party identity graphs with self-service capability, standardized queries to help customers drive immediate insights with clean room measurement, and more rapid activation and performance.

Kimberly Bloomston, CPO at LiveRamp, said the company’s clients include some of the world’s most innovative companies such as Sam’s Club, The Hershey Company, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Albertsons Media Collective.

“Data collaboration is essential for driving improvements across companies,” Bloomston said. “These updates enable customers to go from initiating data collaboration to achieving significant results.”

The idea is to allow advertisers to quickly make sense of the data they see and strengthen collaborative networks to realize value faster based on their company’s rules.

The launch of LiveRamp’s capability accelerates the process and the ability to build out first-party identity graph from months to hours. If the advertiser is activating from LiveRamp’s Data Collaboration Platform to Google’s Display & Video 360 PAIR, they can add PAIR as a destination with a few clicks and be ready for activation within minutes.

The last feature update is a standardized query library in the LiveRamp Clean Room, powered by Habu. Through query standardization, a Retail Media Network client can bring on a new brand partner within hours.