TORONTO, ON– Environics Analytics enters an exclusive partnership with LiveRamp to bring its platform to Canada, advancing data collaboration options – including audience targeting and cross-channel measurement – for advertisers, publishers and agencies.
The partnership with LiveRamp means LiveRamp’s cloud-first Data Collaboration Platform powers next-generation data blending for application across the widest range of use cases—within organizations, between brands, and across their global network of premier partners.
Under the terms of this partnership, EA will be the sole provider of LiveRamp’s suite of products and
services in Canada, which will be integrated with EA’s data collaboration and clean room
environments. The addition of LiveRamp’s platform accelerates the capability for industry
stakeholders to successfully navigate today’s challenging marketing environment. The combined
solutions will increase the use of first-party data: leveraging LiveRamp’s privacy-centric identifier,
RampID, enabling audience targeting at scale, along with activation across the media ecosystem and
transparent measurement on the impact of advertising spend.
All products and services will be managed by EA, adhering to the principles in its comprehensive ISO
31700-1 (Privacy by Design) Certified data and governance framework.
Market Dynamics & Challenges
The LiveRamp partnership and EA’s expanding capabilities in data collaboration are a direct response
to the significant disruption taking place in today’s marketing environment, changes which impact all
stakeholders.
• Advertisers – With disappearing cookies and deprecated location signals, advertisers are losing
the ability to effectively target and reach relevant consumers, particularly on the ‘open web’
(e.g. non-walled gardens). Where such campaigns are being executed, advertisers face a
perennial (and growing) blind spot around measurement and impact of their advertising spend,
especially when it comes to cross-channel analysis. Advertisers know that they need to be
building a robust first-party data strategy, leveraging these assets for both internal analysis and
external monetization. Yet the combination of legacy internal data silos and Canada’s changing
privacy environment are leading many of these organizations to pull back or move more slowly
in the absence of assured privacy-safe options.
• Publishers – Signal loss impacts audience addressability for publishers who need a way to
connect advertisers to audiences and their ad inventory. Platforms that are not walled gardens
need strategies for adding value and attracting advertisers, differentiating their audiences and
attracting a growing share of ad budgets. And like advertisers, they need to do so in a way that
maximizes their reach while protecting the privacy of their audiences. Key to their success is
measurement of ROAS across screens and platforms.
• Agencies – Agencies experience the same challenges as advertisers and publishers. The loss of
legacy targeting capabilities means that an identity solution that is privacy compliant, effective
in reaching the right consumers and can be used for scaling audiences and measuring
outcomes is paramount.
• Today’s marketing environment is challenging. Marketers are feeling the heat, from privacy
considerations to fragmented media channels, all while there is mounting pressure from the Csuite to show the impact of ad spend. This is why industry stakeholders are seeking viable
options for data collaboration.
The Imperative for Data Collaboration
Organizations need a new way of thinking and operating – and that involves combining multiple
sources of data. Only by leveraging first-party data and collaborating with partners – whether with
other brands or publishers – will organizations be able to see the full consumer picture… and new
revenue opportunities.
To quote Travis Clinger, Chief Connectivity & Ecosystem Officer of LiveRamp, “Alone, you can’t
compete. But together, when you start to collaborate…you have something that is far more powerful
than any single player, by themselves, has.”
Done right, data collaboration leads to improved understanding of the consumer, greater targeting
efficiency, audience scaling, incremental reach, visibility into cross-channel impact and, ultimately, a
better return on ad spend (ROAS). The value to industry stakeholders can be tremendous. So why
aren’t more organizations pursuing data collaboration initiatives? Because data collaboration can be
complex, costly and risky.
In 2021, Environics Analytics recognized that data collaboration was an emerging key strategic
imperative for organizations. EA also recognized that data collaboration in Canada required not only
technical but also robust data security and governance processes to address Canada’s unique
environment. To date, EA has made significant investments in its ‘made-in-Canada’ clean room
environment and data collaboration services (EAVault), including:
• Technology Infrastructure – Best-in-class, interoperable and agnostic across cloud providers,
enabling access to data from all environments, including Azure, GCP, AWS, Snowflake,
Optable, DataBricks, and CDPs.
• Application Layers – Modular application layers that combine EA expertise, workflows and
data with partner technology. From data hygiene and audience enrichment to statistical
analysis and campaign measurement, the applications are flexible and use-case-dependent.
• Governance and Security – Enhanced Privacy by Design compliance (including ISO 31700-1
certification) with oversight by EA’s Data Governance Office.
For the past several years, clients have successfully leveraged EA’s clean room and other managed
services in this secure, neutral environment to collaborate with industry partners using their firstparty data for customer overlap analysis, sponsorship evaluation, advanced audience targeting and
activation, as well as campaign measurement and ad exposure attribution.
And EA’s widely-used third-party data (DemoStats, PRIZM, SocialValues, ShopperChoice along with
the many Opticks behavioural databases) are all blended into the mix. This ensures common
attributes and a consistent lens on audiences end-to-end – from insights to activation to outcomes
measurement. ENVISION, EA’s marketing and location analysis SaaS platform, can sit inside the EA
collaboration hub – providing 1000s of workflows and reports that enhance data collaboration
analytics.
EA’s Clicks and Bricks Monitoring Reports based on MobileScapes (human movement data),
ClickScapes (web browsing behaviour metrics) and EA Geofences (footprints of 150,000 POIs) add to
the many ways brands and agencies can measure results. Combined with exposure data these tools
answer the question “did my spend drive more consumers to my site or store?” at both a granular
level (market or trade area) and in near-real time (e.g. last Thursday after 6 pm).
Unlocking the Full Potential of Data Collaboration
Building on EA’s solid foundation, the partnership with LiveRamp is an exciting development that
extends even more opportunities to organizations in Canada.
The addition of LiveRamp’s Data Collaboration Platform to EA’s portfolio immediately provides clients
with access to proven technology used by hundreds of clients around the world. LiveRamp’s platform
and services help clients accelerate use cases that drive enduring brand and business value.
As the exclusive provider of LiveRamp technology in Canada, and complementing its existing range of
services, EA will offer the following products to the market:
Enterprise Identity
Internal data silos and channel fragmentation are major obstacles to innovation and the development
of an effective first-party data strategy. It is no surprise that 62% of leaders say improving access to
fragmented data is a top priority for the coming year. Organizations can now break down internal
data silos to fully leverage their first-party data by accessing LiveRamp’s robust, continuously-learning
knowledge base to create the most accurate, connected internal customer view possible. Whether
managed by EA or hosted within the client’s own environment, this enterprise identity engine is a
privacy-centered solution that allows companies to build their enterprise identity infrastructure with
a consistent identity framework and clear identity rules that protect privacy and align with business
priorities as a company grows. And EA’s made-in-Canada privacy framework ensures that the solution
is not only compliant but stays ahead of “where the puck is going to be”.
For external campaign targeting, activation and measurement, clients can connect their data to
RampID, LiveRamp’s privacy-centric identifier for connecting the digital ecosystem. Using a local
encoding function to protect PII, clients can create RampIDs for applicable customer identifiers (such
as emails, phone numbers, names and addresses) themselves or they can use EA’s managed service.
All sensitive data stays with the client (or within EA’s secure data collaboration environment) and only
the non-identifiable RampID and any associated attributes are used for audience addressability.
The LiveRamp Data Collaboration Platform
LiveRamp’s platform integrates with EA’s existing technology infrastructure to maximize the value of
data. This cloud-first platform powers next-generation data collaboration across the widest range of
use cases–within organizations, between brands, and across a global network of premier partners.
With connectivity to global and Canadian-specific platforms, clients can safely activate their data,
deepen their audience understanding and enrich their audience segments with new collaborative
partnerships. To provide marketers with additional scale in the media environment, LiveRamp also has
integrated Google’s PAIR and The Trade Desk’s UID2.0 (among others) into its platform.
Clients can also access – either through EA as a managed service or via a self-serve UI – a range of
measurement reports and marketing analysis beyond impressions and clicks. The platform’s robust
analytics engine provides brands with visibility on incremental reach, closed-loop measurement,
journey analytics, revenue impact and more. Bringing together event-level conversion and exposure
data helps advertisers measure the business impact of everything they do.
The LiveRamp Clean Room, Powered by Habu
LiveRamp’s January 2024 acquisition of data clean room software company, Habu, created the
industry’s only interoperable platform for data collaboration across all clouds, walled gardens, and
media partners globally. For the first time, companies can have one simple platform to measure
campaigns across all programmatic and media channels as well as walled gardens, including Amazon,
Google, and Meta (Facebook), and connect data seamlessly across clouds, warehouses, and clean
rooms, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Snowflake, and now Azure and Databricks.
EA will offer this platform to its customers and add LiveRamp’s enhanced clean room technology into
its existing clean room environment for accelerated data collaboration capabilities for Canadian
organizations. Connections to existing EA partners like Snowflake and Optable will be maintained.
LiveRamp’s solutions, differentiated by privacy-centric identity, a premier ecosystem of 900 global
partners, and the ability to collaborate flexibly wherever data lives, will help brands and partners grow
their business, build deeper customer connections and gain a powerful competitive edge.
Authenticated Traffic Solution
LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution addresses the key challenges facing publishers in a
cookieless, privacy-centric environment. Available at no cost and easy to implement, ATS establishes
scaled identity for addressable audiences without third-party cookies through trusted and transparent
first-party authentications consumers have with publishers. By authenticating their inventory,
publishers can offer transparent, advanced audience targeting for advertisers and agencies,
generating more advertiser demand and improving their monetization capabilities, including:
• Increasing recognition rates on inventory, resulting in higher fill rates
• Commanding higher CPMs
• Leveraging premium programmatic offerings for increased yield
• Enabling proper measurement & attribution credit with 100% measurable impressions
The Authenticated Traffic Solution offers a scalable, proven solution for delivering better outcomes
for publishers. More than 18,000 publishers’ domains are live with the Authenticated Traffic Solution
and are accessible to marketers at the person-level via RampID. The Authenticated Traffic Solution is
supported by more than 80 SSPs and 80 DSPs, locally and globally, and live in 22 markets across
North America, LATAM, Europe, and APAC. There are already close to 16 million authenticated IDs
available in Canada.
The Time is Now
Data collaboration as a core tenet of a first-party data strategy has never been more important. Not
only does it address major challenges impacting all stakeholders in the marketing and media
ecosystem – especially brands trying to effectively reach consumers – but it opens a new universe of
opportunities.
EA has created the environment, the products and services and the processes to successfully navigate
data collaboration among partners. And we have the data, analytics and media expertise to get
results.
The partnership enhances data collaboration capabilities for advertisers and brands, agencies,
retail/commerce media networks, and media owners, publishers and platforms across the country.
Now, more than ever, stakeholders can access an unparalleled suite of technology, products and
services to power first-party data strategies, unlocking incremental revenue opportunities through
secure, transparent and future-proof data collaboration.
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