LiveRamp Drives Major Revenue For Acxiom; AOL Releases Revamped Alto Mail

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With Great Data …

… Comes great responsibility. When Acxiom acquired LiveRamp in 2014, it became a core data aggregator and onboarder in the digital marketing space. Since then, LiveRamp has driven major revenue for Acxiom, and investors are taking note. Several have boosted their shares in the company, and stocks have soared by 50% over the past two years, writes Kate Kaye at Ad Age. Acxiom also has a unique kind of “co-opetition” with agencies and other vendors. “We’re not creating our own monolithic marketing stack,” said CEO Scott Howe. “Rather, our intent is to power and connect their stacks to the world.” For a while it looked like Acxiom might be pushing the boundaries on that promise with Acxiom Impact, an email marketing service in direct competition with CRM giants like Salesforce and Oracle. But Acxiom sold off the division to Zeta Interactive in August to avoid pushing any buttons. More.

You’ve Got Mail

One of AOL’s first post-Verizon products is the revamped Alto Mail, an email management app that connects to any email client (Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, iCloud, etc.). Between AOL and Yahoo (err…pending), Verizon bought a good-sized chunk of online accounts, but it still has an undersized share of smartphone-based email activity. Alto’s user pitch is to recognize timely or important emails from across your accounts and alert you accordingly. It’s also built for commerce, plugging into app-based businesses like Uber or OpenTable, as well as things like travel reservations and package deliveries. “AOL Alto will remain free to users, but there is an opportunity down the line to generate revenue off of brands who wish to engage more directly with consumers via email, according to the team,” reports TechCrunch. More.

On The Reg(ulation)

EU regulators are concerned about Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition. Salesforce is aggressively lobbying against the deal, arguing that Microsoft will bundle LinkedIn data and its own services, reports The Wall Street Journal. Hopefully you aren’t tired of regulatory news, because “these are the early days of what stands to be a transformation that will take decades,” writes The New York Times. Expect much more attention on social and digital platforms, because “the data assets are already being battled over. Without them, people can’t build products.”

Privacy Card

The ANA is in a huff about Facebook’s video metrics blunder, but if the MRC were let behind the garden walls, would it even matter? Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of ad tech, reiterated the user privacy argument that the company has used to insulate itself from outside measurement for years. “We protect the identity that people have put into Facebook. … That gets criticised as being closed,” he told The Drum. “I think that’s privacy protective. And I think that’s a responsibility we have to people.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!