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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:25]
B
This podcast is brought to you by adstrated. Adstra's leading identity resolution network enables precise targeting, scalable activation, and richer customer understanding. Whether you're looking for person based accuracy or massive scale, only adstra has the transparency to give you both. Learn more@adstradata.com that's AD S T R A data.com.
- [00:58]
A
I'm Allison Schiff. You're listening to Ad Exchanger Talks, and my guest this week is an ad tech and data OG. Scott Howe is the CEO of LiveRamp, which he likes to describe as the Switzerland of data. By which he means that Liveramp positions itself as a neutral, interoperable infrastructure that could connect different data partners, including combining online data with offline data. We'll talk about the privacy challenges of that and how AI is upending everything. But first, please save the date for Convergent TV World. Taking place on March 5th and 6th at the Times center in New York City, Convergent TV World is the new name for our CTV Connect event. We'll bring together the worlds of linear TV streaming, CTV, of course, gaming, retail media, and digital out of home to help you tackle the challenges of measurement, attribution and cross screen storytelling. Podcast listeners get 10% off the price of their ticket when they use the code POD10. So get your ticket and see you there. Hey Scott, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:03]
C
Thank you Alison. It's great to be here.
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A
So what is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know? And you can't say that your office used to be a refurbished 1956 Airstream, which I happen to know because you told our former managing editor Ryan Jo that at one point. It's in an old story in our archives.
- [02:25]
C
Yeah, that got me through Covid pretty well. I'll tell you what, Allison. You know, we're in the middle of the NFL football season and so this story comes to mind, you know, on your resume, everybody's resume, you have that section at the bottom that's like personal and other where you just like put random facts about yourself. So my entire life, my random fact about myself at the bottom of my resume is part owner of a professional football team. And when I go like in my life, when I've gone to interview, that's all anybody wants to talk about. Now, of course I'm only part owner of a professional football team because I grew up in Wisconsin and the Green Bay packers are Publicly owned. And so everybody, but everybody who grew up in Wisconsin has like a share or two of the Green Bay Packers. I think if they ever sold the money goes to, like, the local Kiwanis club. But every decade or so, they actually do another offering. And I think the last one was maybe like five years ago. And that was the year that everybody on my holiday gift list got a share of the Green Bay Packers. And so by virtue of telling you this story, next time they issue shares. Allison.
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A
Yes.
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C
You're in luck. I'm going to make you a minority owner of a professional football team. And the only thing I ask is that you cheer for the Green Bay packers as opposed to whoever you you cheer for tonight.
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A
I have no NFL loyalties, so the packers are now my team. I actually play that game. I don't know if I should admit this, where you try to spend as long as possible in total ignorance of who won the Super Bowl. Like, how long can I go without finding out? And I've gone for like a solid week without even knowing who won, so.
- [04:27]
C
Well, I'll give you a head start. This year, the Green Bay packers are not going to win the Super Bowl.
- [04:32]
A
Happening on my condolences. So I think all of our listeners will know who you are. But just to do like a quick resume rewind following King of the Web, which was, I was, I was looking back, looking way back in your LinkedIn, which was this free to play online game that you were. That you were running back in 2011.
- [04:56]
C
It was a great idea. That was a great idea. It was.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I founded it with a guy named Nick Canauer, who was one of the first investors in Amazon, and Rich Barton, who was Expedia and Zillow and a couple others of us. And it was an amalgamation of everything that was wrong with society. So it was social media and politics. And the whole concept was you could, whatever group you were part of, like your local high school or the city that you live in, you could run for king or queen of that entity by just declaring it. And you won votes against other people by shooting, like social media. I mean, it was amazing. And the best prize was King of the Web. And if you won King of the Web, you got a billboard in your hometown. It would be like, alison Shift is King of the Web. And it was like a cool deal. And man usage took off. It was YouTube before YouTube. It was like all social media, user generated content. But the problem was is everyone played once and then the novelty wore off. And so eventually we sold it and Made nobody. But everybody has to have, like some crazy, zany. I mean, the people I launch it with, they're so much fun. And, you know, what's work about? Like, then it's got to be about fun, too.
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D
And so that was a bonus, ideally.
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A
Although not everyone gets that. Not to derail us further, but if you were a king of something, what would you be the king of?
- [06:40]
C
Oh, I think I'd have to say king of collaboration, which ties into Liveramp's thing as a data collaboration platform.
- [06:49]
A
What a fantastic segue. Thank you for bringing me back on track.
- [06:52]
C
I will tell you, Alison, I have the best job in the world right now. And the reason being is because Liveramp is neutral and we work with so many folks. Like, you know, last week I was at CES and I could walk into any meeting at CES and basically whoever I was talking to say, how can I help? And it is so much fun because people that, you know, I might otherwise think I was competing with, now I'm just in the business of helping them out. And so I get to. I get to meet a lot of really amazing, talented people.
- [07:31]
A
So let me ask a question. How do you explain what Liveramp does to people who aren't in the industry? Like, what would be your, like, 32nd, very clear, jargon free explanation?
- [07:47]
C
If you have data, you make better decisions about things. But the problem is that the data you need isn't always the stuff that you see directly. You got to work with other companies to do it. You got to work with other companies to get the right data, and you got to work with other companies to activate it at the moments that matter. And so we just make all that possible. Think about us as the easy button for using data.
- [08:12]
A
Do your kids understand what you do? I ask this because my mom is so proud of me, but she doesn't know what I write about. Does that resonate with people in your life?
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C
You know, my kids are the tech generation, and so they're pretty savvy. I'll tell you what, Allison, my daughter works for one of the California legislators right now. And so, you know, I asked her, what is she doing at work? And she's like, well, I'm helping write the new California privacy bill, and this is something I have huge, huge ideas on, huge opinions on. Right. So I would say in some respects, my kids are more tech savvy than I am.
- [08:55]
A
That is so interesting. Well, so I asked that question, actually about explaining Liveramp simply because buzzwords like, I don't know, identity resolution or Cookie less retargeting, all of that kind of stuff. They feel, if not simple, at least familiar to people on the inside, but they're opaque and confusing and maybe even like scary to people, people outside of the bubble. And it's so interesting that your daughter is working on privacy legislation in California, because I think one of the main drivers there is that fear and a little bit of a confusion about how this stuff works. And there are lawsuits that come out of class actions and, you know, life ramp is the subject of one. This, this happens like, pretty frequently. There's sepa, the California Invasion of Privacy Act. It was passed in the late 1960s, and there's been this wave of class action lawsuits against digital companies. I mean, putting aside the fact that plaintiffs bars are gonna plaintiff, that's just what they do. How did data companies avoid data companies in particular avoid those tripwires? Like, what can they. Like what can you do to make sure you don't become the subject of, of a lawsuit? As there's more and more scrutiny, ramping and legislation, legislators really want to use not only the laws that are already available to them, but passing new ones too. Like your daughter.
- [10:26]
C
Yeah, well, I mean, the, the fact is in California, you get sued for breathing these days. You know, it's, it's a little bit crazy, but I, I think, you know, at the end of the day, what can you do? You can educate folks such that you take the uncertainty, the fear factor away from it, and they see, hey, by utilizing data, they have a better experience. You can encourage, as we do, all of our partners, to make the value exchange very explicit. So to educate consumers about, hey, in exchange for your data, you're getting a better experience, unique access to insights, something of value, because that helps demystify things as well. And then ultimately, I think this problem is going to continue to grow. I mean, how could it not in a world of AI where invisible algorithms could be making decisions around, you know, what offers we get, what credit we get, you know, all kinds of things. I think for companies, I say, hey, it's really important to get consumer consent. If you're collecting data about people, make sure they understand that and you have their consent. And if you do those things, then it's really hard for someone to say, hey, I gave my permission, but I think it's wrong. If they give their permission and you explain what you're doing, then chances are you can do all kinds of innovative things that help that consumer.
- [12:19]
A
The challenge is explaining it in an accessible way. That is really an age Old question. I remember going to FTC workshops in D.C. on that very subject, like, over a decade ago, and I don't think it's been solved. But, you know, maybe. Maybe eventually there'll be some innovation in that regard, because I think people are still quite confused, despite knowing the broad strokes about what happens online and data tracking, all of that stuff.
- [12:44]
C
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
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A
So this is your second appearance on Ad Exchanger Talks. The first time was. It was such a long time ago. It was October 2019, which was the year after Axiom sold to IPG. And then you became the CEO of LiveRamp. When Axiom rebranded to Liveramp holdings. Right. In October 2018. There was like a spinoff, all of that, but, yeah, I mean, you. You became CEO of LiveRamp, and then pretty much a year later, after the IPG acquisition and the spinoff, you were on with Zach Rogers, who was our executive editor at the time. He was hosting this podcast. And it was a very different world. I mean, it was pre pandemic, for God's sake. And also, God, I feel so old, Belle, honestly. Me too. And I'm. Fewer gray hairs, which you can't really see for the people watching video, but believe me, they're there and they. They really upset me. I don't want to get old, Scott. I don't want it to happen. But if you could travel back to 2019 and, I don't know, like, share some advice about our industry with your past self, like, what would it be like? Something you tell yourself to do or not to do with all the knowledge that you have sitting here now in somehow 2026.
- [14:10]
C
Yeah, I. Boy, I. I think the. The answer is move faster. And I. I think this is true not just of our industry, but business and even life decisions overall. You know, I. I rarely get upset by errors of action. It's the errors of inaction that always kill you, where you just say, ah, you know, I'll. I'll put that off. Or, I know this person isn't the right person in the role, but, you know, I'll give them another chance. We'll see what happens. Or, hey, I know this is important, but there are other things that are important, too. And so I'll move it lower on the priority list. Those are the ones that always kill you. And I think that's particularly true. It's true of all industries, but particularly true in our industry because technology around us moves so fast. And, you know, I gave a speech about a year ago where someone asked me about what's changed over the last 15 years. And I, I look back and I said, you know, in 2015, if you looked at the DSP landscape, you would have said, well, the winners are going to be turn. It's going to be rocket fuel. You know, maybe app Nexus was, was kind of getting to be real big then. And now here we are just a decade later and none of those companies are even standalone anymore. And it's just like overnight you blink and everything changes in our industry. And so the one thing you always got to do is lean in, embrace the change, stay a few steps ahead of it. And if you do that, then, you know, you don't need to be miles ahead of anybody else. You just need to be a few steps ahead of everyone else.
- [16:13]
A
I'm a terrible procrastinator, but that was a nice rallying call. So I guess your advice to your past self and to everybody is just like, get off your ass. And I, I want to use the time machine like metaphor to look ahead now. So I don't know if you saw it or if you get to see these things, but the email that I got from your PR agency to get you booked on this podcast promised that you would have a quote unquote spicier take on January predictions that you could dive into. So I was promised spice. And they told me you're not interested in 2026 predictions and that you're not talking about the next wave or what might come because advertising is already in the reset era, like fighting words, and that it's going to be a full tear down of the old rules that's happening right now because of AI and agentic commerce. And we're just rewriting how decisions get made, just like a lot of stuff like that. So, and let's, let's get into it. Like, what is your spiciest take about AI?
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C
Oh, gosh, I do think it changes everything, but I'm not a big subscriber of hey, you know, we're all going to buy agentically. I think that will happen more slowly. I think we're all going to research and use AI whenever it makes our lives better. And so you and me and probably most of the rest of the world under the age of 50 is now starting instead of just using search as the default homepage. Sounds like we have a dog in the background.
- [17:55]
A
We do, we do. That's Oliver. Someone is existing outside.
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C
Oliver was. I think Oliver was responding to my spicy take.
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A
He wants to hear more. Go on.
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C
Yes, I think the change is going to transform how we collect information. And so we're using AI to collect information, not necessarily perform the action right now. And I see this. We work with perplexity. It's a great company. And if I think about the last two years of their journey, it's really interesting. When they first started talking about launching an ad product, it looked a lot like Google AdWords that there was a question that they would answer. And then beneath that, there were more sponsored questions you could buy as an advertiser. And now they've reimagined that they're launching an alpha this quarter, whereby which they're saying, okay, we're going to pair the user experience, the memory, with what advertisers can uniquely bring, which is their inventory, their CRM system. And it's the combination of those two things, all of those data sets, that can enable a much better answer to whatever question that you're typing into perplexity. And so I think there's a chance to reimagine almost everything we do with AI and just say, how does this improve the user experience? And, you know, I think there are companies that are getting a little bit too caught up in AI. They're saying, AI, AI, AI. You can do anything with any. And so in a world where you can do anything, making choices is really important. And what I advise our clients to do is, before you go boil the ocean, let's think about what are the moments that really matter. And the moments that matter most to most companies are moments of despair and moments of delight. And so if you can take a moment of despair where the user is having a terrible experience so often, that might be like customer service, and enhance that with AI and deliver a better customer experience, then all of a sudden, the customer is much more satisfied. Likewise, a moment of delight. Who's really great at this? I love Netflix. Big partner of ours. I am a huge consumer of Netflix. I watch all kinds of crazy things on Netflix when I'm traveling and, you know, the fact that they have an algorithm that has gotten to know me and can suggest what I might like to watch next eliminates the time where I'm browsing and searching and thinking about or maybe even starting a show, and after 10 minutes decide, oh, this is terrible, I don't want to watch it anymore. So moments of despair, moments of delight. If we can harness the power of AI on just those two things, then almost every company can figure out some really interesting things they can do with AI.
- [21:25]
A
Despair and delight. That is the human condition in a nutshell. We just ping pong between those two. We're going to hit a break in a minute and I want to talk more about OpenAI's announcement that they're going to start testing ads and ChatGPT. But to put a pin in that and go back to perplexity, that's so interesting what you said about the Alpha, because my impression was that the ad program was on ice. It was almost like moribund. But it sounds like something's happening.
- [21:53]
C
No, they've partnered with us and they're launching this quarter. I think by Ramp up we'll have hopefully good case studies to share about what some of the Alpha clients have have seen and what kind of results they've generated.
- [22:08]
A
All right, well, definitely share that with us when it's ready. And yeah, we're going to take a quick break when we're back. Just like AI AI AI. So stick with us.
- [22:32]
B
Hello, I'm Sarah Sluice, Editorial director of Ad Exchanger and I have with me here Rick Irwin, CEO of adstra. Hi, Rick.
- [22:40]
D
Hi, Sarah. Great to see you.
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B
So in a market dominated by very large identity providers, how do you see adstra disrupting this space?
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D
Well, really simply, we set out and every day we do the things that the bigger players in the industry either cannot do or will not do. And when I say cannot do, it's because we have technology that we architected from day one that allows brands and their partners to do things that they can't do with the larger partners, like manage all of their identity resolution in their cloud environment rather than in the provider's environment. And then we do things that that larger players perhaps can do but won't do because it might threaten their business model that they've very successfully built up over time. A good example of that is Challenger brands often need the ability to scale their business using identity solutions. And volume based pricing methods like CPM really don't allow for scale because they tend to charge commensurate prices as the client grows. And so we work with clients oftentimes to provide them subscription based pricing that's flat and level and they can plan around that for a year or 18 months or two years at a time. Those are two examples of how we disrupt.
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B
So more flexibility in terms of pricing and in how you use the identity product.
- [24:11]
D
Exactly.
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B
Let's talk a bit about transparency and drill into that. Ad exchanger listeners tend to love transparency. And where do you stand on that issue?
- [24:22]
D
Well, we think the two values that matter most in identity are transparency and control. One goes with the other in both Directions. Transparency allows the brand to actually see how identity resolution is being performed because it can be adjusted to be more precise or less precise depending on the appropriate customer use case. And so we give our clients the ability to see how matches are made and then control rides along with it. They can change the level of precision for the use case that they are pursuing that particular day. So if they're pursuing an awareness campaign, they might actually want a little bit less precise identity resolution because they want to cast a wide net and reach a lot of customers. And in an application where they're offering best customers a special promotion, they would be more interested in having a very, very precise match so that they don't offer a best customer promotion to someone who perhaps accidentally isn't the best customer. So transparency and control are both extremely important.
- [25:31]
B
Okay. The opposite of a black box is what you get with adstra. And let's talk about identity. It's such a broad term in the industry now. It can mean a lot of different things. How do you think people should be thinking about identity? And how is identity sometimes misunderstood?
- [25:49]
D
Well, the biggest thing I would, if I could wave a magic wand, I would love for people to understand the real and important difference between identity graphs and identity resolution platforms. Abstra is an identity resolution platform that and every identity resolution platform produces a graph, which is a snapshot. I use an example, I use a metaphor of a movie. What's your favorite movie? Can I ask you your favorite movie? Sarah?
- [26:15]
B
Right now I'm feeling Melanie Griffith in Working Girl.
- [26:18]
D
Okay, Working Girl. So imagine if you were a production assistant or a camera person on the making of that movie when that movie was being shot, and you made a scrapbook of everything that happened during the movie shoot. You'd have this big scrapbook and page by page it would. It would sort of tell a story, but it's not the same as watching the movie. And that's the difference between an identity graph, which is like a scrapbook, it's just a point in time, and an identity resolution platform, which is actually like a motion picture in that it is running matches perpetually all the time, updating to make sure that the association of one form of identity to another is accurate. And that requires software, hence why it's a platform. And a graph can just be a bucket of data. But an identity resolution platform is actually a working, breathing piece of machinery, if you will, that performs the work of identity 24. 7.
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B
I love that distinction of identity resolution and identity graph. It feels like an ad explainer article. I'll file that away. Thank you, Rick, for educating us on identity and for supporting our podcast.
- [27:32]
D
Great to be with you, Sarah.
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A
All right, welcome back. And let's talk about the news that we just touched on before the break. Just recently, after demurring and waffling and teasing, OpenAI finally said that ads are coming soon or soonish it sounds like within a few weeks to the free tiers of ChatGPT in the US and in their announcement, they said that ads won't impact the quality of answers, which are always going to be. And I'll just like quote the blog post, driven by what's objectively useful, never buy advertising. And they also said that conversations won't be shared with or sold to advertisers. So I'm not calling you Old Scott, but we've both been around the block like we've seen some things. We're cynical, we're hard bitten. You know, we, we still have our senses of humor. But I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I do feel like that's the sort of thing you have to say at the beginning of something like this, something so high profile. And I think OpenAI will somehow change its tune eventually because it's pretty hard to run a pure advertising business without getting more into bed with advertisers. But what do you think?
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C
Well, it's funny. So for the audience, while, while we're on break, Alice and I were talking about my, my place in Seattle. I used to live in Seattle. I still have have a residence there. And you know, when I first moved there, I joined Avid Way Razorfish, later became a quantum. In 1999 I went trekked over to visit one of the other small local companies, a company called Amazon. And we talked to Amazon about advertising and they got really upset and they said we will never do advertising. And lo and behold, here we are decades later and they're one of the biggest advertising companies on the planet. And you know, I think as long as you always have the guiding principle of we're going to do what makes sense for our users and deliver a better customer experience. If that's your guiding principle, then that may include advertising, it may not include advertising. But if there is an ability to make the user experience better by advertising, well, why not? And heck, we know one thing is that AI sucks up a lot of compute power and that compute is expensive. And so you got to do something to pay the bills. And advertising is probably a pretty logical choice.
- [30:55]
A
The fruit hangs low, you know, just grab it. Well, on the point of utility and making the experience something that's good for. For users. How effective will the ads be if they're just, you know, like there and not integrated into the answers? Like, won't it just be so much noise and kind of easy to ignore? Because the format really matters. But it's a very tricky line that you have to balance on. You have to be careful not to cross it. And to my knowledge, the exact look and feel and format is still pretty tbd. And it's hard for me to envision, although I'm sure there are very smart people thinking about this, what the real the experience will be like.
- [31:40]
C
Sure. I mean, I, I think there's always been a. A blurry line between advertising and education. And part of any advertiser's goal is to educate their user about their product. And I think there's an opportunity to do that within the experience itself and that will look less like advertising. But then part of advertising is also about generating awareness. It's about exposing somebody to something they didn't even know about. And so for that effort, it may make sense that that's not in the copy, but rather that's around the frame. It's more of a billboard of, hey, you didn't know about this, but let me tell you about it. And so I do think we're going to see this bifurcation. On the one hand, we'll see advertising and communication more integrated into the user experience and. And on the other side, you're going to see it continue along the same form that it is.
- [32:49]
A
This is going to sound weird for someone who writes about advertising and thinks about advertising all the time, but whenever it works on myself, I'm still surprised I was served an ad. It was just a display ad on a random website. I can't even remember the site. It's a news site for this special kind of nail clipper that catches the nail so it doesn't go flying and is like, really got one of those, but not dangerous. Yeah. And I'm like, damn, I need that. I haven't bought it yet, but I've. I saved it, I bookmarked it and that. I don't know how they knew that that was the perfect product for me, but I'm definitely going to buy it.
- [33:28]
C
I literally think I have kept all of Instagram afloat from the start of its existence because somehow I am the person that. I see something in Instagram and, and I'm like, how did I ever live without this? I mean, they, they get me all.
- [33:45]
A
The time on Instagram you know, it's interesting about Instagram. Isn't that what Sam Altman said? He was being pressed on whether a little while ago OpenAI would ever launch ads in ChatGPT. And he finally acknowledged, like, yeah, okay, well, Instagram has some good advertising because he kept saying, no advertising, no ads, ads are bad. But he agreed that Instagram was good for advertising.
- [34:10]
C
And the reason it's good is because it's relevant. It makes my experience better. They show me stuff that is useful to me, not just stuff that feels like it's following around, following me around the web. You know, I actually think whatever algorithms they're using to decide what I get are really effective, at least for me.
- [34:36]
A
So regardless of what happens with advertising in generative AI search, if we zoom out a little bit and talk about AI agents more generally, they're just flipping decades of marketing strategy on its head. Like brands, I know this is what you believe, and you're right. Like brands aren't just competing for inventory or space or whatever. They're competing for like a presence in answers after someone prompts an LLM. So it's not surprising too that everyone's having to rethink what they do as AI search traffic goes up and up. I mean, granted, traditional search is still well over 90% of search, but I think AI search is something like doubled plus over the last maybe year. So it's just not something you can ignore in zero click. Search behavior is real and I see it in myself a little bit. I haven't really made any, done any searches that are commercially minded, but I often don't click through to source material. And I'm chagrin to admit that because part of my job is research and I'm saying it out loud almost to hold myself accountable. So if anyone sees me at a conference, yell at me for not clicking on the links, which I should do more. But to make that into a question, what is Liveramp doing to adapt? And yeah, like in this, it's a, it's a crazy world.
- [36:05]
C
Well, I'll tell you, we see such an opportunity here, Alison. So like any company, we're building AI into our own products. And so, you know, if you're doing a data query, for instance, the old way is you'd hire a SQL data scientist and they would write out the query. Now you just use natural chat. You say, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, boom, you get the answer back. And so from a programming, from a measurement, from an evaluation perspective, you know, it really simplifies our tools. But far more importantly, far more interesting is every one of our clients, without exception, is trying to solve a problem in their business. You know, they're trying to sell more stuff to consumers, they're trying to deliver more programming to viewers, they are trying to build a commerce media network. I mean, it's all over the map. And so as a result, what they want to do with AI is very different as well. So for a customer service company, it may be about how do they build chat into their website to handle those customer queries. For a video platform, ctv, it may be about how do they increasingly embed AI driven creative such that they can widen the aperture to more advertisers to advertise on tv. It's all over the map. And so just as we've done throughout our history at Liveramp, is we've gone out and we said, who are the companies that matter? And it's not us that's making that decision, it's our clients. They're saying, hey, we really want to work with Rembrandt, we really want to work with Scope three. We really want to work with Perplexity. And they can activate their data into those AI applications the same way that they would activate their data into Google or Meta or Netflix. And so, you know, we've gone from a cold start to now I think we have 17 different AI partners live. Of those 17, 10 of them are what I would consider kind of legacy providers. It's like, you know, Google creating AI within their existing products. Seven of them are Greenfield company like Chalice or Perplexity. And we have, you know, many dozens of others of efforts underway. And if I fast forward a year, I would like to believe that it doesn't matter which of hundreds of different use cases a client's trying to do. Whatever they're trying to do, we can say, hey, if you want to use your data and activate that AI functionality, just work through us. And you know, whatever the use case is, here's five, 10 different choices. And here's the experience that other companies have had in making those choices. It goes back to the conversation, the story I was telling about DSPs a decade ago. We didn't know who the winners were going to be. Then we just went and worked with all of them. I think at the Height we had 65 different DSP partnerships. World doesn't need 65 DSPs. The world is not going to need 10,000 different AI applications. But the winners and losers haven't yet been determined. And so we'll work with all of them. And we will let clients kind of like gravity, you know, the. The winners will just flow to those that best serve clients. And so if we can position ourselves to allow our clients to benefit whatever they're trying to do, we think there's a lot of growth for live rent by hand.
- [40:33]
A
And I guess the winners too, will know how to make their data agent ready. Data is always going to be best and most useful when it's structured and interoperable. But getting it ready to be ingested by an AI agent feels like a whole different kettle of fish than just the normal cleaning that you do data.
- [40:54]
C
So my big role to play there. Yeah, because so often, and I see companies making this mistake right now, you know, the mantra from above at so many companies is we got to get smart about AI. We got to try things, and then that falls to someone a little bit deeper in the organization and they go sign a contract, do a beta, and they're not thinking about data governance, they're not thinking about who owns the data. Can it be used to build someone's model, which once it's used to build the logic in the model, it can be used anywhere else. And so this whole concept of data visibility, control and governance, along with the things you're talking about in terms of data hygiene, absolutely critically important. And, and the key is, if I believe as a company that I'm going to have dozens, if not hundreds of different AI use cases, I don't want to go do this separately a hundred times and do biz, dev, control the governance, control the usage. I want to do it once, I want to do it with a company like Liveramp and know that Liveramp is managing those permissions with all of my partners. And so looked at that way, it is exactly the business we've been in for the last decade. But it's an entirely new set of use cases that draw on everything we've learned.
- [42:32]
A
What about standards, though? It's important obviously to have standards, but it does feel like we need standards for our standards here. It's getting a little crowded and confused using on the standards front because we've got like, protocols and frameworks and whatnot coming out of the woodwork. There's model context protocol, add context protocol, universal context protocol, there's commerce one. Sure, I'm missing a whole bunch and like 672 frameworks from the IAB and the IAP Tech Lab. So are all of these necessary? I mean, obviously some foundational ones like model context protocol. Yes, of course. But how do we get There. Whatever there means. Because it does feel kind of confusing right now.
- [43:14]
C
Yeah, it does. And I think those standards are going to emerge. I don't think it matters who's built the standards. I just think that the standards need to be universally embraced. And so, case in point, we very quickly realized that MCP in and of itself wasn't going to go far enough for what clients were looking for, because they were really, they really needed the data governance, the data hierarchy part of it, in terms of how do you upload your data and maintain control and visibility. So you mentioned ucp. Well, that was developed by us and then we gave it to the IAB ad. CP is developed by someone who's on our board, Brian o', Kelly, and we participated in those. We don't care what standards embraced. We just want to make sure that whatever the standard is, it's democratized and everybody in the industry is using it. Because there's such benefit to everybody having a common framework, such that things become interoperable. There is value to be unlocked by the industry working together. And if things are proprietary and unique and not interoperable, it prohibits the industry from working together.
- [44:38]
A
I mean, rising tide and all of that. So we're coming into the home stretch of this podcast and I wanted to switch topics and broach something a little bit different, which is your POV and all the drama at the hold cos right now, it's just so crazy, right? Like Axiom is like landing at Omnicom through the merger with ipg, right? Like, it's just a really interesting, crazy world. So with all of that happening, like, how does that shift the identity game for independence? Like you guys, I mean, you do love to call yourselves the Switzerland of data, but you also have partnerships with lots of different old gos.
- [45:21]
C
Sure, sure we do. And you know, you asked me earlier if I could go back and counsel my younger self and I said, well, to move faster. I would also say that if I think about the last five years in particular, you know, when I first, when we first bought Live Ramp, it was like, I don't know, 15 million in trailing revenue, and now here we are at 800 million. And so it's been this crazy journey, but the technology of 10, 15 years ago is very different than the technology that's required for the future. And so, you know, for. For probably the last five years, my focus has been so much on standardization, standardization, scalability, scalability. And those things go together, standardization and scalability. And what my mantra is going forward is about flexibility, because what I realize is every holding company has their own unique recipe. They all have slightly different assets. Every CTV provider has its own unique recipe. Every DSP has its own unique recipe. And so we need to show up for all of those partners in a way that they can utilize our capabilities and maybe even customize on top of our stack and build amazing new things for the industry. And so, you know, I have a different opinion on the drama of the holding companies. I work with all of them and I really like each of them and I recognize that each of them is succeeding and trying to compete in their own unique way. And so I want to show up for them and say, however you want to compete, how can we help? And it's not just the holding companies. I want to show up and have a great strategic partnership with Trade Desk and one with Amazon and one with Circana and one with Experian. And I just think there's a tremendous opportunity. I think about, you know, Intel Inside when I was growing up and the whole campaign that they did, it's like, whatever you're doing, as long as you got Intel Inside, I'd like to think that whatever you're doing, as long as you're building on top of Liveramp and as long as you're incorporating the standard signals and the way of working that has become standard, of utilizing Live Wrap, you're going to have a better experience. And so we want to be the proverbial, you know, the wizard behind the curtain. And we'd like to be that for every company in the planet that matters.
- [48:21]
A
Well, anything to the rumors that Publicis was thinking about acquiring you guys?
- [48:27]
C
Well, first off, of course I'm never going to comment on anything related to M and A. A couple of years ago, Morgan Stanley published thing that said we were the number one takeover candidate in ad tech because we, we didn't have fair valuation for what we were doing. And so since that time, there's always been a lot of rumor and speculation. I love the fact that people are talking about us and I will never, ever comment on anything specifically.
- [49:00]
A
I thought I might have buttered you up, but fair enough. So, last question, and this is just a recent favorite of mine that I'm going to start asking a lot of people. I had the CMO of True Religion, the jeans and apparel brand, on a recent episode, and I asked her this question and her answer was, ugh, authenticity. So the question is, what is one marketing or ad tech buzzword that you wish you just never had to hear again? And why does it irritate you so much.
- [49:33]
C
Listen, it's not just an advertising thing, Allison. It's. It's an everything thing. The mantra of the customer is always right. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. And, you know, I think Henry Ford probably said it once better than I could when he said, if I listen to the customer, I would have built a faster horse. You have to listen to your customer and you have to understand what it is they're trying to do. But every time we do exactly what they tell us, we pretty much get it wrong. Because you got to build to solve the problem. You got to build for the future. Recognizing their pain is real, but their solution may not be the right approach. So it requires listening, but truly hearing. And, you know, since we're in the partner business, that's the mantra that I try to land throughout Live Ramp is listen and really hear. Solve the problem, not just do what is asked. Anybody can be an order taker.
- [50:51]
A
Sometimes the customer is just wrong.
- [51:09]
B
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