Digiday covers the latest from marketing and media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. More from the series →Earlier this week — on Tuesday evening to be precise — several ad execs from both advertisers and agencies gathered at the Il Teatro restaurant in Cannes, France, to talk about what should happen now that LiveRamp is likely to be acquired by Publicis Groupe.
If that deal goes through, plenty of companies want to fill the gap it leaves behind, including the dinner’s host: Hightouch.
“I really believe that the market and the ecosystem need a neutral party, and that’s the position that we’ve been playing in, and now we’re really trying to rise to the occasion with the recent news,” said Tejas Manohar, the company’s co-CEO.
Manohar and everyone else, it seems. The idea that this week, when the gut of the ad industry descends on the south of France for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, is the perfect moment to lay claim to LiveRamp’s old throne as the default independent data connector for audiences wasn’t lost on others.
As soon as Publicis announced the deal last month, pitch decks got shredded and redone, invite lists got redrawn as seating plans got reordered, and new marketing collateral was spun up. All to capitalize on the concern the deal caused.
