Meeting the Moment as Marketers

Reflections on LiveRamp RampUp 2024

RampUp 2024 was electrifying. The last week of February, 2,500 leaders from the world’s most innovative companies came together in San Francisco to think through shared challenges, exchange ideas in person, explore new collaborations, and learn from our speakers. LiveRamp invests in this event every year, but this year the momentum felt even more palpable. It was clear: We are at an inflection point, an exhilarating—and sometimes terrifying—moment for marketers.

Much of the way we’ve marketed is being upended. After years of delays, the third-party cookie is finally going away. The media landscape is changing. New technologies are replacing the old, none more than AI, which is changing the game entirely.

Delivering an inspiring keynote at RampUp, Jeremiah Owyang emphasized that thousands of AI marketing tools are set to emerge—quickly—and power is shifting. Humans will rely on AI agents to make decisions and purchases. Consumers won’t visit websites directly. AI’s impact will be felt from strategy to content to influencers to search to paid media to overall experience. What’s more, the rate of change we’re experiencing right now will only accelerate.

This is without a doubt a unique moment in my marketing career. I know it can be overwhelming and even scary for many—change is always hard and there is a lot that is unknown.

However, as LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe said in his opening remarks, “We’re so lucky to work in this industry at this moment in time.”

I could not be more excited, and here’s why.

Delighting Customers and Building Brand Loyalty

New technologies already give us the chance to deliver customer experiences we could only have dreamed of in the past. At RampUp, we heard tons of compelling examples of how data collaboration enables brands to know their customers better, and to tailor messaging and offers to their needs and preferences. For example, 欧莱雅 and Ulta Beauty shared how they are working together to remove friction from the experience of researching and purchasing beauty products, empowering their customers to discover the perfect products for them and buy exactly when and where they want to.?

We also heard how data collaboration helps brands reduce frictions along their customers’ journey, and surprise and delight with exceptional experiences. Matt Wolf , Chief Data and Analytics Officer for the National Basketball Association (NBA) , talked about how many different ways fans interact with the brand, whether they’re watching games on TV, buying tickets, participating in a fantasy basketball league, or playing video games. A fan doesn’t know—or need to know—that many of these experiences are with brand partners. With data collaboration, the NBA is working toward a more seamless experience, so a fan feels the exhilaration of a live game, no matter the touchpoint.

Meanwhile, Steve Rommeney , Associate Global VP of Engineering, Capabilities, and Platforms at Eli Lilly, talked about how permissioned, privacy-centric first-party data contributes to the company’s goal of making life better for people around the world, discussing how Lilly is able to move from providing therapeutics at one point in the customer journey to serving customers along their full health journey.

These are just a few examples of what’s already here. There is so much more to come that will cement loyalty to brands by making life easier, better, and more delightful for their customers.

Ultimately, though, no matter how incredible the experiences a brand creates are, no brand can succeed over the long term without customer trust. Here too we’re entering a new—and better—world, where privacy is non-negotiable. The digital advertising ecosystem is being rebuilt, transforming from one built around the third-party cookie to one that puts consumer privacy and transparency at the forefront. This is game-changing for marketers seeking to make an authentic connection with their customers.

Growing Healthy Businesses

With many of the signals our industry has relied on losing effectiveness or disappearing altogether, from mobile identifiers to third-party cookies, there has been the assumption among marketers that business would suffer. This is a myth that RampUp speakers were eager to bust. Technology has evolved to the point that new solutions can help teams deliver better brand and business results than ever before. Paul Blackburn , Director of Commercial Data, Video, and Product at NewsCorp Australia, told an audience, “Technology like LiveRamp’s has caught up to the point where it’s signal gain, not signal loss.”

We recently shared a case study on our partnership with Omni Hotels & Resorts and Google PAIR. The test campaigns showed a 4x increase in conversion rate over cookie-based campaigns. And 微软 , having adopted LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, increased its CPMs by more than 40%, demonstrating the power of authenticated inventory. Our clients around the globe are seeing that championing privacy is not just the right thing to do, it’s good for business.

Proving the results of our efforts has been a thorn in marketers’ side for as long as there has been marketing. I could not be more thrilled for us all that we are unlocking exciting new possibilities in measurement, empowered to measure things we never could. Connected TV was one of my favorite examples covered at RampUp. Those of us who ran TV advertising in the past know it was a leap of faith. Many companies shifted their budgets entirely to “performance” tactics that were more quantifiable.

Now, however, 87% of US households have at least one CTV device. As Ryan McConville , EVP of Ad Platforms and Operations at NBCUniversal, told RampUp attendees, “We have always known that when we serve a TV ad, companies sell more products, but now through first-party data, clean rooms, and data collaboration with different partners, we can start connecting those dots. We can attribute sales to campaign ad exposures and see how ad exposures are helping marketers at every step in the funnel.”

Meeting the moment

There’s certainly risk at any inflection point. Keynote speaker Peter Sheahan made this point painfully clear in his presentation, “Turning Disruption into Competitive Advantage,” sharing lessons of five large corporations that had lost 35% of their enterprise value in 45 days because of a seismic shift in their industry that a CMO claimed they “never saw coming.” No one wants to be that leader. As the digital ecosystem transforms around us, how do we ensure that’s not us?

Peter Sheahan talked about the importance of not only being aware that the world is changing, but accepting it and taking ownership for leading the organization through the change. Showing the humility to open our minds to new approaches. Choosing burning ambition, not waiting to take action until we are jumping from a burning platform.

Many of our speakers echoed the importance of not getting mired in what worked in the past, and instead leaning into the change, testing now, partnering with those around us. As Lynne Kjolso , VP of Global Partner and Retail Media at Microsoft said, “We all have to work together. We all have to be willing to partner together. We’re going to get to that future together but it’s going to take a lot of experimentation, a lot of iteration.” The brands that survive and thrive will be those that collaborate.

This is a career-defining moment for marketers. We can bury our heads in the sand and say we never saw change coming, but how much better is it for us to take ownership and lead boldly into the future!? On the last day of RampUp, Stephen Yap , Head of Google Marketing Platform for the Americas, posed a provocative challenge: “Meeting this moment is monumental. How often in your lifetime are you asked to rebuild an entire industry?” I’m on board—are you? Let’s meet this moment, and let’s do it together.