A LiveRamp founder thinks Publicis got a very good deal.
Following Publicis’ $2.2 billion acquisition of LiveRamp over the weekend, former CEO and cofounder Auren Hoffman shared a lengthy reaction on X, calling the transaction “a steal for Publicis” and arguing the company still holds enormous untapped potential.
Here’s the full post:
Why This Matters:
What OG founders say after a deal is always interesting.
Ultimately, per Hoffman, it feels like LiveRamp spent the last decade prioritizing shorter-term gains over longer-term innovation. Still, it kept a strong market position, and the core product remains solid.
Per him, LiveRamp is one of the most important infrastructure companies in adtech, particularly because of its central role in connecting data across the ecosystem. That’s where its value comes from.
Hoffman also pointed to several areas where he believes Publicis could unlock additional value, including improving onboarding to reduce complexity. But increasing customer connections — getting existing customers to connect more data and partners — seems like the most important and smartest opportunity.
Here’s what he said about that:
“the most important LiveRamp metric The number of connections per customer is the most important metric for LiveRamp. That number is surprisingly low.
Most customers only have a small number of connections using the LiveRamp system, not because they don’t want to use LiveRamp but because either LiveRamp is way too expensive or takes too long or it’s too bureaucratic or too burdensome (or usually all of the above). Now that there is going to be new ownership of LiveRamp, hopefully they can focus more on the product and customers can go from, let’s say, 10 connections in LiveRamp to 400 connections, 500 connections, even 1,000 connections. That’s how we know LiveRamp is really doing a good job.”
He also discussed expanding LiveRamp beyond large enterprise customers into more self-service and midmarket use cases. (This is part of a broader trend we’re seeing where adtech companies need to move beyond enterprise to truly scale.)
Experts React:
Here are more great takes on the deal from across adtech X:
Our Take:
It’s interesting to think about LiveRamp’s future in a post-AI and agentic era. On one hand, having a company focused on data connectivity feels incredibly important — hence this deal.
On the other hand, when you think about identity solutions like RampID, for example, you have to wonder whether identity remains as central if AI dramatically improves contextual advertising. We’re probably overstating the latter risk, but it’s still something worth thinking about. No?
