The news: LiveRamp has expanded its data collaboration partnership with Pinterest to offer improved integration for global advertisers. The arrangement now covers multiple regions, including North America, South America, select European markets, and Asia-Pacific regions.

• Originally announced at CES in January, the integration permits marketers to easily incorporate Pinterest data via LiveRamp's platform to enhance ad measurement and analytics.
• The initial collaboration uses LiveRamp’s data clean room (DCR) technology, facilitating enhanced measurement without compromising data protection.

Clean room 101: DCRs allow secure, privacy-compliant data sharing between advertisers and partners.

• They are offered by walled gardens like Pinterest, Meta, and Google, ad tech platforms including the aforementioned LiveRamp, InfoSum, and Snowflake. Increasingly, media players like NBCUniversal and Disney are hawking their DCR offerings.
• DCRs use cases include omnichannel data hygiene, audience analysis, ad targeting, and performance measurement.

Yes, but: DCRs are becoming essential for advertisers, but currently require expertise and a dedicated team.

• As of November 2022, only one-third of DCR users employed measurement-related functions, per the IAB.
• Key areas to monitor include education—with the IAB Tech Lab providing guidance—and interoperability, which requires consistent adoption across platforms for effective measurement.
• Many are platform-specific, requiring manual data consolidation.

Why it matters: With third-party cookie deprecation looming in 2024, the partnership supports cookieless campaigns, ensuring data protection and that info isn’t transmitted outside organizations.

• Brands can tap into audiences from major retail media networks, such as Carrefour and Albertsons.
• Pinterest, with over 465 million monthly users, offers a prime platform for advertisers, especially as users actively seek brand inspirations.

Our take: The evolving economic landscape necessitates that every marketing dollar be addressable and measurable.

Pinterest clearly recognizes this, with the word “advertising” coming up exactly 60 times on last week’s earnings call—and it is likely to take additional steps to court incremental ad dollars in months to come.

Go further: Read our new report, Ad Measurement Trends H2 2023, which discusses clean rooms and more.