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Data platform LiveRamp buys marketing startup Habu for $200 million
Source: Reuters
January 17th, 2024
Summary: Habu's interoperable data clean room tech allows companies to share and match their first-party data in a privacy-safe way. The platform is integrated with a bunch of companies, clouds, and platforms, including Google Cloud, Google Display & Video 360, Microsoft Azure, AWS Clean Rooms, and Disney, among others. Habu has been one of the more prominent startups in the booming data clean room space, which has gained significant momentum due to the deprecation of third-party cookies and proliferating privacy restrictions. LiveRamp has also been an active player in clean rooms, but this deal significantly expands its clean room footprint and client base. LiveRamp expects to pick up new customers such as non-technical mid-market organizations and international brands and publishers, boosting its global aspirations.
The cash-and-stock deal (worth approximately $200M) will also unlock new cloud and walled garden clean room use cases, according to LiveRamp, and extend its own identity products across a larger network. LiveRamp, which had $174M in fiscal Q3 revenue, expects Habu to contribute $18M in revenue in fiscal 2025.
Deal Grades:
LiveRamp: A
Habu: A-
Opinion: What a deal! LiveRamp needed a jolt. They were becoming too one-dimensional. Habu might have sold a bit early? Regardless, this deal looks like a big win for both companies:
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Habu tech can now activate media (and media dollars) at scale—a key challenge for independent data clean rooms is they are only indirectly plugged into media activation. However, media activation is where the real money is in digital media. LiveRamp, on the other hand, exists almost solely for media activation and is an industry-standard currency for audience portability.
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LiveRamp finally gets some real clean room tech—as a user-matching service, LiveRamp’s clean room (and “data collaboration”) bona fides were always a bit iffy. Well, not any more. With Habu, LiveRamp now owns leading clean room tech.
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Platform partnership unlocks, galore!—LiveRamp and Habu were already each partnered up with just about every Walled Garden clean room and cloud platform that matters. Just look at their bingo board!
This tie-up positions LiveRamp + Habu to be a really attractive “easy button” for an industry desperate to figure out interoperability, audience activation, and measurement, especially under Chrome’s looming 3P cookie deprecation deadline in 12 or so months.
Some more takes:
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Snowflake bought Samooha in December. Now LiveRamp buys Habu. Congrats InfoSum & Optable! Your potential exits just got much, much juicier.
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The future of data clean rooms = product, not company.
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Industry M&A might officially be back after a rough 2023.
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Are clean rooms basically just user-matching technology all over again (with a lil’ privacy thrown in for shits and giggles?)
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