LiveRamp Is Integrating Its ID Products in Google Cloud

While Google is busy making identifying users harder within its ads business, the search giant is partnering with LiveRamp to bring the data company’s identity products to the Google Cloud. Top line Customers of LiveRamp, which offers ubiquitous identity products like IdentityLink and Authenticated Traffic Solution ATS), can now access those solutions through an interface that connects into Google’s Cloud Platform. Previously, LiveRamp would have to manually integrate into whatever measurement and analytics platform its customers were using. By embedding its identity products directly into the Google Cloud, that tedious work goes away. Anneka Gupta, president and head of products and platforms at LiveRamp, said a major goal for the company is to make customers’ workflow as easy as possible, so the partnership with Google is hopefully “the first of many” with other cloud providers and data warehouses. Between the lines Data is becoming increasingly important for both the buy and sell side, as privacy changes have put an emphasis on gather first-party data and matching that data securely. Managing all of that data is expensive and difficult to do, so companies are moving their workflows to cloud platforms. OpenX moved its infrastructure to Google’s Cloud two years ago. As activating tremendous amounts of data to serve personalized messages in a privacy-friendly way becomes the standard within the digital ad industry, having an easy-to-use data management system becomes increasingly important, said Gupta. “We see this as a critical step into powering greater data collaboration, making it easier for people to get their own house in order before they start doing more collaborations across their network,” said Gupta. Nirav Sheth, director of partnerships at Google Cloud, said in a statement that integrated with LiveRamp will help companies “gain new insights into customer data” that will ultimately create better consumer experiences. Bottom line Google’s cloud business is separate from Google’s ads business, which recently announced that it won't support third-party cookie alternatives, like LiveRamp’s identity solutions, within its buy-side, ad-tech products. Google Ad Manager, the company’s sell-side product, still supports alternative identifiers publishers use. And that data is encrypted so Ad Manager doesn’t see what publishers are passing to third-parties. Gupta said LiveRamp is in active discussions with Google around integrating ATS into Ad Manager, and that LiveRamp is in line with Google’s privacy policies.