Publicis Groupe reached a deal on Sunday to acquire LiveRamp, the latest in a series of data sets by the advertising giant.
But unlike the acquisition of Epsilon in 2019 and Lotame in 2025, the announcement of the acquisition of LiveRamp says much more about the potential of agentic AI.
LiveRamp is a data collaboration platform that provides identity resolution, secure data collaboration, data cleanrooms, cross-platform measurement, and first-party data enablement. It provides interoperability between clouds, retailers, publishers and advertising platforms, connecting more than 25,000 publisher domains and more than 500 technology and data partners.
The shorthand for much of this work is “data co-creation,” which simply means that LiveRamp helps companies connect multiple high-value data sources across partners in a secure environment to create new first-party data assets.
Proprietary data to power AI agents
As popular LLMs become commoditized, companies’ proprietary data assets generate increased value for those who own them. The goal here is to use anonymized, integrated, dynamic, and co-created data to train AI agents to make decisions and respond to users within a defined governance framework.
The trend of advertising agencies buying data platforms kicked into high gear a year ago. WPP bought InfoSum and Publicis Groupe took over Lotame.
At Publicis, the acquisition of Lotame was an opportunity to expand the company’s data universe. It added a massive identity graph, audience marketplace capabilities, publisher relationships, and more.
LiveRamp’s role at Publicis will be to operationalize and activate this expanded universe.
Publicis Groupe will acquire LiveRamp in an all-cash transaction, based on an acquisition price of $38.5 per share (a premium of 29.8% based on LiveRamp’s closing share price on May 15, the last trading day before the deal was announced).
LiveRamp will continue to be led by CEO Scott Howe following the acquisition. Howe will report directly to Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun. LiveRamp will continue to operate as a neutral, interoperable platform and provide open access to the entire ecosystem. The companies said in a statement that no current or potential customers will be denied access to or limited in the use of their services.
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