Publicis-LiveRamp skepticism spreads to the U.K. and Europe as ad leaders voice neutrality concerns

The reaction to Publicis’ acquisition of LiveRamp has so far hinged on one word: neutrality, or rather the loss of it.

But one industry veteran thinks that argument is missing the main point.

“Hardly anyone is discussing the true question. Will this acquisition improve effectiveness for advertisers? The answer is no,” said Nick Manning, co-founder of Manning Gottlieb OMD, now an independent advisor.

His view reflects a broader sentiment in Britain's ad industry: the neutrality that made LiveRamp valuable has effectively disappeared, taking much of its appeal with it.

“LiveRamp's value was being Switzerland, the layer a retailer, a publisher and a rival holding company could all plug into without asking who owned the pipes. Once the parent represents specific brand advertisers, that question cannot be unasked,” said Paul Wright, Uber Advertising’s former head of EMEA and now a strategic consultant and advisor.

Industry watchers across the U.K. and Europe see the deal as another step toward a more fragmented advertising landscape, eroding one of the last remaining neutral intermediaries in a market increasingly dominated by closed ecosystems such as Meta and Amazon.

Outside of the U.S., where LiveRamp generates most of its revenue, the situation is further complicated by a patchwork of data and privacy regulations.

“In regulated markets like the U.K. and Europe, trust, transparency, and independence remain critical,” Colin Grieves, managing director UK and Ireland, marketing services at Experian, said. “Neutrality in data infrastructure is defined as much by market perception as technical design. Ownership changes inevitably shift how that neutrality is perceived and ‘felt’ across the ecosystem.”

Publicis and LiveRamp have already pushed back against claims that the acquisition compromises neutrality. But Wright pointed out that the precedents were “unforgiving”: after IPG and WPP acquired Acxiom and InfoSum, respectively, the clients of both ad tech firms became increasingly uneasy, he said.

Advertisers rush to contain the fallout

Just days after the announcement, agencies and advertisers are already reassessing their ad-tech strategies, looking for ways to reduce dependence on a Publicis-owned LiveRamp.

“As agencies reassess their strategies, brands and publishers will follow suit – placing the same emphasis on control, flexibility, and avoiding dependency on any single ecosystem,” said Grieves.

All this is happening as more advertising workflows become automated, increasing the value of the data used to inform and optimize those systems, said Grieves.

“The neutral middle is gone. Omnicom has Acxiom, WPP has InfoSum and Open Intelligence, and Publicis now has LiveRamp alongside Epsilon, CitrusAd and Lotame. Each holding company is pulling clients onto its own data layer,” said Wright.

For rival agency groups,the acquisition may accelerate efforts to build or adopt alternatives. “They will look for alternatives because they don’t want to put money in Publicis’s pockets, which some already do via Epsilon,” said Manning.

Indeed, Omnicom is already moving away from LiveRamp’s RampID and developing its own ID solution. Grieves added that there will also be greater scrutiny of governance and transparency, particularly in Europe, where clients will demand stronger controls around data usage, auditability, and separation of interests.

Retailers are watching closely

The acquisition is also raising concerns among retail media networks.

“First-party data is a retailer's crown jewels,” Wright said. “The deal forces a structural question: if the identity layer is owned by a holding company that also represents the brands buying your media and advises competing retailers, where is the firewall?”

Although British and European retailers have lived with a similar tension for years — CitrusAd, part of Publicis, powers onsite retail media for the likes of Tesco and Carrefour — the LiveRamp deal could intensify those concerns.

According to Wright, some retailers have already begun to reconsider their partnerships. “A retail media client of mine told me within days of the announcement that they would now review their position and reassess which platforms to partner with,” said Wright.

The reaction underscores the strategic importance retail media now holds for retailers. “I don’t think the retailers have worked so hard to create new, meaningful revenue streams, to see the potential for some of the control of that shift away from them,” said Grieves. 

As the latest consolidation reshapes the digital advertising landscape, brands, agencies, and retailers are finding out – perhaps unwillingly – the importance of one value they now all have in common: neutrality.

“Neutrality will hold in the contracts and probably in the engineering. It will not hold in perception, and in this business, perception is the product,” Wright said.