Criteo integrates LiveRamp’s IdentityLink into its Commerce Ecosystem

LiveRamp’s IdentityLink visualization

Criteo began as a remarketing platform, sending you an ad about red sneakers as you visited various sites, after you had looked at a product page for red sneakers at one retailer’s site.

In August, Criteo announced its Commerce Marketing Ecosystem, a network of retailers, brands and publishers that shares data on visitors’ interests and purchases across their sites.

For instance, a website in the Ecosystem might show you an ad for blue sneakers from its store because of shared data showing that you’ve looked at blue sneakers more than red ones. The Ecosystem is one of several efforts by retailers and publishers to band together in order to compete with the huge platform advantages carried by Facebook, Amazon and Google.

This week, Criteo is announcing a partnership with data platform LiveRamp, expanding on the companies’ multi-year relationship. Now, LiveRamp’s IdentityLink will be integrated with Criteo’s Commerce Marketing Ecosystem so that offline (that is, real-world) purchases can be factored into what is shown to a given visitor.

So, for instance, the visitor might now see ads for sneakers with green dots because purchase data from physical stores shows that this person once bought green sneakers, even though she looked at red and blue ones online. The offline data could also be used for attribution to determine if this ad actually led to an offline sale.

IdentityLink maintains a massive database of identified user profiles that are linked to other data sets, such as offline purchases, through persistent identifiers like email or street addresses.

Those profiles are then made available with anonymized identifiers like User ABC, who has this online history and this offline purchase history. The profile also links to cookies or mobile device IDs that Criteo can use to identify the anonymous visitor at a website.

Although Criteo did utilize some offline data previously — including some through another LiveRamp program — the integration with IndentityLink greatly expands the “seamless” availability of offline info, LiveRamp Co-CEO Anneka Gupta told me.

From LiveRamp’s point of view, she added, this partnership creates a bigger European footprint for IdentityLink, since Criteo is the first certified IdentityLink partner in France and the UK.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.