How LiveRamp and Acquia CDP Activate First-Party Data for Digital Advertising

As the digital landscape undergoes rapid change, marketers must continue to evolve the way they acquire and engage with customers. And as standards for data use and consumer privacy also evolve,  brands and advertisers must ensure they are doing so while meeting ever-changing requirements. Recently, Google announced it will postpone discontinuing third-party cookies until 2023, meaning that digital marketers and advertisers have a little more time to put together a plan for how they understand the user journey and target customers. Thankfully, there are solutions that help marketers reach audiences e through strong first-party data and a well-established approach to data connectivity.  

Many Acquia clients are leveraging  LiveRamp, a leading data connectivity platform that combines the unified profile, machine learning and advanced segmentation of Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP) with LiveRamp’s core identity capabilities and unparalleled network of advertising and personalization channels. Acquia's rich CDP data combined with LiveRamp's data connectivity platform will enable brands to do more with their data by reaching more audiences in deeply relevant and impactful ways.

Acquia CDP provides a golden customer profile that is unified from all online and offline first- and zero-party data sources. From this unified profile, marketers can analyze who their customers are, gain a clear understanding of business performance and marketing opportunities and easily build segments that connect to activation channels for personalized marketing. 

A key activation use case for CDPs is digital advertising. For this use case, rather than using third-party cookies to target customers like a DMP does, a CDP leverages first-party, personally identifiable information (PII) data, including names, email addresses, geographic location, etc. The top three ways that marketers can harness CDP data for advertising and boost return on ad spend are:

1. Suppression of buyers from retargeting campaigns (e.g., a user browsed online but purchased in the store, the call center, etc.)
2. Targeting intelligent segments identified by machine learning in the CDP
3. Leveraging segments in the CDP, such as high value customers, for lookalike modeling to fuel acquisition campaigns

However, using identified customer data in conjunction with advertising that targets anonymous audiences gets tricky as the market shifts to be more privacy-forward, and regulations such as GDPR and CCPA are ensuring that brands take privacy seriously. These laws don’t allow for indiscriminate sharing of known/unknown data. That’s where connecting LiveRamp with Acquia CDP can help maintain data anonymity and ensure compliance with data privacy laws. 

How LiveRamp Connects with Acquia CDP and Helps Maintain Data Privacy 

LiveRamp helps by acting as a safe harbor for anonymizing and passing data from known identities (such as the golden customer record of Acquia CDP) to anonymous audiences for advertising purposes. LiveRamp has built-in connections to over 500 advertising channels, making it easier for marketers to activate data for advertising use cases. Integrating Acquia CDP and LiveRamp’s data connectivity platform is a simple process that will help marketers optimize their ad targeting efforts in a consent-focused, deterministic way.  

Step 1: Brands connect Acquia CDP’s unified profile data (resolved into a single ID via email addresses or postal addresses) to LiveRamp, sending PII-based audiences to LiveRamp. 

Step 2: LiveRamp anonymizes Acquia CDP data to be used for advertising and personalization use cases, matches these records to online digital identifiers and distributes segments defined in the CDP to marketing applications leveraged by the brands. 

Step 3: Data and segments are refreshed on an ongoing basis.

The Combined Value of Acquia CDP and LiveRamp 

By connecting Acquia CDP’s enriched customer database and LiveRamp’s platform, marketers can better tie their advertising efforts to specific conversions and improve how they measure and analyze results while maintaining privacy and compliance. There are a myriad of use cases that become possible with Acquia CDP and LiveRamp, such as:

• Customer retargeting: Using the CDP data to build a display campaign. For example, a travel company can cross-sell existing customers on other trips that might interest them. Through Liveramp’s robust data network, brands can reach customers identified and segmented in Acquia CDP through a broader advertising network. 
• Cross-channel campaigns: Targeting the same audience through multiple channels, such as through Social, Programmatic and Display. Not only can you activate CDP data through a vast advertising network, but you can reach target audiences across a wide range of channels (not just display).
   

After leveraging Acquia CDP’s customer intelligence to identify your high value customers, marketers can target customers who look like them across LiveRamp’s vast network of advertising and personalization channels. This combined specificity helps increase Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and the impact of ad retargeting and acquisition campaigns and earns greater ROI and revenue.

For more on how marketers can build a first-party data strategy and prepare for a cookieless future, get our glossary: The Marketer’s Glossary for the Cookieless World.