Transcript
Hi, Dave. Good morning. Vihan Sharma. I’m the Chief Revenue Officer of LiveRamp.
Really excited to be here because, this is a project I think we discussed about a year ago, in Cannes with your team, and I’m really excited that we are talking about this going live today.
Yeah. Hi, Vihan. Good morning to you as well. Very excited to be here. Yes. Dave Slowik, EVP of Global Media here at Circana.
And, yeah, I do remember this conversation at Cannes. You know, it’s always hard to convince people that a week on the beach in Cannes can be one of the most impactful weeks of the year. But it’s true if you do it right, and I think we did do it right. I remember this conversation well.
Thrilled that we brought this to life, and excited to kick it off today.
Yeah. I mean, like, look, you know, from our side, really, thank you for the partnership. I’m really, excited that you are, the first, partner who’s actually bringing CPG data, into the LiveRamp clean room. The discussion we had was very much around, you know, how do we actually use this data and drive meaningful business impact for, the customers who are really, interested in hearing more and learning more about their business.
It’ll be great for, you know, us to actually maybe think about the journey. It has taken us a year, so, a year is a long time, but this is not a simple thing. So, you know, like, Dave, it’ll be really awesome to hear from you the journey on your side. What what what is, the initial success look like, and how are you seeing this, evolve, evolve in the future?
Yeah. No. Not a simple thing at all. You’re right. Quite the undertaking to get this right.
And I think you’re right. It’s been great to watch our teams work together and really, again, bring this to life and get it in a place that I think is going to be fantastic for our mutual clients. So I think thinking about, you know, what you said, basing this on performance and outcomes for our shared clients, that really is where this conversation started. And I think that we are hearing that more and more in the marketplace, people asking for those outcomes, wanting to measure to those outcomes.
And as we know in CPG, first party data can be limited.
So thinking about a robust strategy for third-party data for turnkey data to help people get that business intelligence and to help them infuse that data into their strategy is really important. It was a really important part of this to us. So what we hope this delivers on is creating a really cost effective way for people to get data driven insights, come in again, query our data, get some of these templates, start to understand some of the insights they can find to create precise consumer segments, target in a new way to hopefully deliver efficient outcomes in the end. That’s kind of our vision for it and where we hope to see it going.
Let me flip to the other side of the table, though. Do you agree? Do you see it the same way, or do you see differences in the value proposition?
No. I do. Like, look, you know, we we have worked with you, for a long time. And I think one of the I would say, like, there are three key areas where this answers a lot of questions we hear from our customers.
I think number one is the sheer scale. Right? So, Circana really provides a multi retailer view of what’s happening across the CPGs business. Right?
I think that’s kind of, one of the core differentiations here. I think the second thing we see is there are always audiences which are available across the ecosystem. Right? But those audiences don’t really tell a story or the consumer journey or the journey of the category, yeah, on that front.
And having this notion of insights, which is based on this unique dataset, which is across retailer, allows CPG brands to really understand what’s happening in their category, and allows them to build unique audiences, which they can then go and activate to answer any key challenges they might be facing across, their business. And I think that is really what is exciting here. It’s moving away from this notion of static audiences, to actually building out audiences, which are based on actual customer problems which drive, meaningful business outcomes for, for for the CVG brand. At least, that’s kind of how, we look at it.
Yeah. I love that. You’re right. It’s a way to make it easier to access that type of data. And I think that an important part of that journey bit that you mentioned and the quality of the data that’s in there, I think I should mention, this is our loyalty card data. So this is one hundred percent deterministic.
This is known purchasing households. Right? So no modeling in here, nothing like that. This is all that quality source data. So I think you’re right. It gives people a chance to come in and build strategies from that that can be really powerful.
We will we love, the notion of deterministic. As you know, LiveRamp has been, kind of at the forefront of trying to go and say, we should always look at deterministic audiences and deterministic measurement. And having, this unique data actually allows, to bridge that gap. You you know, I think, Dave, one of the things we kind of did not discuss, but, like, you know, there’s been a lot of evolution, in your business over the last, years.
And, although you’re very, very well known in the CPG ecosystem, you have other datasets which are really relevant and valuable for customers beyond. Right? So, like, tell us a bit more about that. Like, what is your vision?
Is what we are trying to do actually meaningful for other types of data as well?
Yeah. How much time do we have? I could talk about this all day. That’s great. Thank you.
You’re right. I think you guys have been at the forefront of thinking of these kind of deterministic audiences. And you’ve certainly been great partners in helping to amplify the other data that we have available, which I’ll talk about now. I like to take a step back when I start this conversation and talk about the sheer breadth that we’re talking about with Circana.
So we actually track over five point eight trillion in confirmed purchase behavior at the consumer level, five point eight trillion, which is a huge number, obviously. And it gives us insights to your point. CPG has always been our calling card. And we certainly have that.
But we’ve now moved beyond that into other interesting places like consumer health care, places like general merchandise industries, thinking of luxury beauty or apparel or consumer technology, food service. The list goes on and on and on. We’ve been building this out significantly as the years go on. And what we want to do is create a place where, regardless of what vertical or industry you’re in, you can come to us and get some level of insights about your data.
So again, I mentioned consumer health care. We’ve certainly seen an increase there, with our loyalty card data. We’re also creating things like Circana, complete consumer. And so that is a way that we have known omnichannel insights across a panel of two hundred thousand receipts, and that panel is static.
So again, just another example of a huge data set that we can then draw on using that now receipt level data from a large panel. So we’re trying to really think holistically about this, and then, of course, make that data available to marketers via these media products. So CPG is our calling card, but you’re right. We’ve gone much broader than that over the years, for sure.
That’s awesome. Yeah. I, you know, I I think, for us, this is obviously a brand new thing. Obviously, over the last year, we kind of discussed how we made this, a joint value proposition. And I think, thinking about going beyond, CVG and, actually bringing other datasets live is really, an exciting, value prop.
Yeah. Totally agree. Totally agree. Alright. I wanna go back to something you said earlier about clean rooms.
Making it easier, getting more people involved. Because, obviously, you have a lot of experience with clean rooms, and I think LiveRamp in many ways has been driving the narrative, over the past couple of years with things like the Hibu integration. Who do you see as the ideal beta candidate for a solution like this?
Let’s see. That’s a great question. Right. I I think an ideal candidate here will be, somebody who kind of understands the value of the data. Right?
Because I think a lot of your customers, know how valuable your data is.
Right?
And I think the challenge usually is is that data is available in a very static kind of a world. Mhmm. I think we are looking for customers who wanna go beyond just audiences, who kind of want to start by understanding what is the business problem they are trying to achieve. Right? And, like, the business problems don’t have to be very complicated.
They can be very simple. Just like understanding of lapsed customers or, who are new to category but not really buying in your with your brand. I think, like, those are some insights which are not readily available, today in the classic ecosystem of data that we work in. So anybody who’s really interested in kind of shifting, their media strategy from being hundred percent audience based to much more a business outcome, approach, I think that’ll be kind of, like, the ideal candidate. Second, I think, even if you made this data available to people, like, you need to have resources, you need to have, you know, folks who are willing to, kind of go and make sense of it. And so you do need, somebody, or a customer and their teams who are kind of, looking to iterate, to learn, to test and learn, what’s happening, in their in their universe and how they can leverage these insights to kind of create a unique differentiation for them. So, more forward thinking, you know, kind of customers.
And finally, a lot of the times when we talk about data, the cost kind of becomes very prohibitive. Right? I mean, we nobody wants to just go and say, hey. I’m going to spend millions of dollars here, to have access to data and have the cost of ownership of, like, getting multiple people, data analysts, data engineers. Here, what we are kind of bringing to the table is a templated way for companies to kind of start leveraging data with minimal upfront cost. Right? And I think that is kind of very unique.
So, three things would be people who are, like, really kind of trying to go beyond, just an audience strategy, but, like, looking at business performance, people who are, you know, forward facing and, like, kind of trying to iterate and learn. And finally, people if they were worried about very large upfront in investments, that’s no longer the case. So really excited to, for us to actually bring this to, to the market as I think there will be a huge adoption, across, our customer bases.
Yeah. I love that. Because I think at a high level, you’re right. You know, we see people when they use our data really well get closer to business insight and business outcome and then be able to do everything in between.
But to your point, it’s not just plucking an audience. It’s starting with an insight that you have, you know, or something that you can build. And it’s removing that friction layer that can sometimes be there of, do we have the data science to do it? I think that the clean room and the tools involved, right, make that much, much easier.
So I love that. I totally agree.
And and, you know, I think, like, some of the things we actually thought about is, this has to evolve. Right? I mean, I think, I think we both our companies believe in iterative, evolution of solutions.
And so, you know, my question, Dave, to you would be, like, where do you see this going next? Right? So we start here. We, we are seeing good traction in the market. We believe this is going to be a great start and a great shift in strategy, for a lot of our customers. But how do you see this, kind of evolving, in the future?
Yeah. I’ll pick up on some of the themes that you mentioned earlier because you were spot on. I think the first bit in the near term, I think we see people, once they start to get comfortable with the data, in this retail intelligence product that will have start to get comfortable with the data and the insights and what they can actually pull out of there. I think the easiest near term step is to do exactly what we talked about.
Start to create audiences from that. You know, from these verified purchase based segments, part of the beauty of the data, part of the beauty of having it in this environment is its flexibility. Right? Almost any use case you can think of, you can probably create some type of segment for.
Right? Do you wanna drive acquisition via a conquesting segment? Do you wanna find brand loyalists and you have a retention plan? You can do both of those things.
And I think the other piece that’s near term is you can then start to analyze all of that in real time while it’s in that environment. So from insight to activation to then modeling and then measuring that almost in real time, that can all happen there. You know? And then you feed it back into the feedback loop to optimize and reassess and do it again.
So I think in the near term, it’s about activation. It’s about audiences. It’s about figuring out how you can take that next step after getting the invite, insight. And then I think over the longer term, it looks like, you know, people, again, start to understand the power of the data, the power of the insights.
What if they started their own cleanroom, brought their first party data in, started to find interesting intersections with our data, maybe other second and third party data sources. You know, we see that world starting to come into focus more and more. I think that’s probably the longer term for us as well.
And then when you think about getting those deeper insights and being able to do some of the things we talked about earlier, like modeling and analyzing and etc., you start to get very close to this outcome-driven world that we want to be in. So hopefully, that’s fairly close to nirvana for marketers. Do not start at the inside, go all the way through to activation and modeling, having it in this environment. Everybody knows LiveRamp’s world-class integrations across our industry. So you can take that from idea to activation just like that. We view that as a really powerful piece of it living in this environment. So over the long term, I think that’s where we wanna see people go.
That’s a that’s a great vision. And, like, you know, I’m, grateful, to you and your teams who actually, leverage LiveRamp as a partner to actually drive that vision, to reality. Yeah.
You guys are amazing partners for us. So why don’t we wrap with I’ll ask you the same question. What’s your vision in both the near and longer term for the solution?
That’s, that’s a really great question. I think I would say kind of three things. To to your point, I think, like, we believe that the economy tomorrow is gonna be a we there’s a lot of talk about AI, I think. Right? And everybody kind of, wants to, dabble in in this, kind of an ecosystem.
We believe that the, the signals that consumers want or the brands and advertisers want to have, they are across a wide variety of, ecosystems, and they need an architecture where they can securely connect their own data, to, data which is coming from Sukana, but also other signals which help them kind of map the full customer journey. And so this notion of allowing the clean room to evolve from this notion of one to one, kind of connections to a more a world where this is much more of a multi party world where the advertisers feel like they can, gain access to specific signals, to map the customer journey, to actually be able to, iterate on that.
I think that’s kind of number one where we see this, evolution happening. Number two, I think when we talk about AI, there’s a lot of, kind of discussions around, you know, what is the value of the data. Right? And we fundamentally believe that data owners like Serkana and others, right, who absolutely provide a huge value, and that value has, to be contained or maintained in a way where there are the right governance capabilities, right value tracking, and telemetry available.
Right? So we really see, the clean room to evolve in a place where, data owners who are signal owners, are going to actually control how their data is used, how their data is valued, and they have the potential to actually track how that data is used. Right? And then, at the very end of this, like, if you can’t understand what that’s what each signal actually drives in value, it, kind of doesn’t, fill the promise.
So, the third element would really be, kind of the value equation. Right? So what signal is driving what outcome, I think is a very important notion for any of the advertisers and their agencies. And we believe, that the architecture that we’re building, in partnership with, customers like you, who, you know, we will drive, a kind of a new vision of what this economy looks like in the future.
And, I think AI without signals is, you know, is not really as powerful as everybody’s making out to me. So I think there’s a huge future here ahead, for all of us to, kind of rearchitect this industry, and ensure that the value of the data owners really is captured, by the data owners themselves.
Yeah. Could not agree more. And good AI is driven by good data. Right? Yes. Point understanding the outcomes and understanding what’s actually working is the critical piece to then optimizing, refining, reassessing budget allocations, and all of the things we know that that can drive efficiency and outcomes over the long term.
So I think this is a really elegant solution. We are thrilled to partner with you, Anna. I think it’s a nice version of both of our best capabilities.
Hopefully, there’s a lot of, value to unlock for the market. Really looking forward to getting this kicked off together.
Yeah. We do. I look forward to seeing you in Cannes and, seeing the initial feedback from customers. I’m really excited about, what lies ahead.
Here we go. Exciting times.
Thank you.
Alright. Thank you.
