MIAMI \u2013 When the current-day Acxiom was founded in 1969 as Demographics, \u201cpeople-based marketing\u201d was basically direct mail. Having acquired LiveRamp in 2014, Acxiom is looking to be the predominate provider of identity graphs across digital and television.<\/p>\n
LiveRamp has long been active in the digital space, using both personally identifiable and anonymous information from device ID\u2019s and cookies to provide a single identity graph\u2014for people or households\u2014across all platforms. Acxiom, meanwhile, worked with pay-TV operators to create a safe haven for matching subscriber files.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we have a scenario where Acxiom<\/a> and LiveRamp are, in fact one company and so we have these capabilities across all of these platforms,\u201d Craig Berkley, VP, Television Partner Development at Acxiom, says in this interview at the recent Beet Retreat Miami 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n MVPD\u2019s and linear TV providers use Acxiom data to inform the placement of TV commercials \u201cby indexing the commercial viewership against the segment that the advertiser is trying to reach,\u201d says Berkley. Addressable campaigns are done in a similar fashion.<\/p>\n Lacking a linear presence, OTT providers are focused on addressable video or display ads on their interfaces, \u201cbut the process from an identity perspective and from a data provisioning perspective is pretty much the same,\u201d Berkley says.<\/p>\n Acxiom\u2019s rationale for advertisers needing a single source of identity data, providing unduplicated reach among other goals, is ease and uniformity of matching.<\/p>\n \u201cOtherwise, if you\u2019re using various and sundry companies for identity in this space and identity in this space, then oftentimes you\u2019re not going to have an accuracy across all of those,\u201d says Berkley.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the difference between omni-channel and cross-channel? Acxiom believes that \u201comni-channel is what cross-channel will be when it grows up.\u201d For a full explanation, see this blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n