Acxiom foundation and early years Acxiom was founded in 1969 as Demographics, Inc. by Charles D. Ward in
Conway, Arkansas.
1990s In November 1997, Acxiom acquired Buckley Dement, a provider of healthcare fulfillment and professional medical lists. In May 1998, Acxiom made the announcement that it would acquire one of its competitors, May & Speh.
2000s In 2003,
Wired Magazine criticized the company for only accepting third-party consumer opt-out requests from the
Direct Marketing Association. In early 2004, Acxiom acquired part of Claritas, a European data provider. In 2005, Acxiom acquired Digital Impact for $140 million and integrated its digital and online services into its business. In 2005 Acxiom was a nominee for the
Big Brother Awards for
Worst Corporate Invader for a tradition of data brokering. In early 2006,
EMC Corporation acquired Acxiom’s information grid software in a $30 million deal. EMC later declined to exercise an option to acquire additional resources from Acxiom and discontinued work on the software. On May 16, 2007, Acxiom agreed to be bought by investment firms
Silver Lake Partners and
ValueAct Capital in an all-cash deal valued at $3 billion, including the assumption of about $756 million of debt. However, in October 2007, citing poor credit markets, the companies terminated the deal. The company also announced that Chairman Charles Morgan was retiring upon the selection of a successor. On January 17, 2008, Acxiom named John Meyer (from
Alcatel-Lucent) as new CEO and president. On July 11, 2008, Acxiom acquired
ChoicePoint's database marketing solutions division.
Early 2010s In 2010, Acxiom acquired part of GoDigital, a Brazilian direct marketing and
data quality company. In October 2010, the company launched AbiliTec Digital, a web-based tool to match digital identities to traditional name and address data, such as that collected from loyalty programs. On July 27, 2011, Acxiom named Scott E. Howe, as the company’s chief executive officer and president. In December 2011, Acxiom announced the sale of its background screening business, Acxiom Information Security Services (AISS), to Sterling Infosystems, now SterlingBackcheck. In 2012, the NY Times reported that the company had the world’s largest commercial database on consumers. In 2013,
CNBC announced that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating Acxiom and eight other companies to learn how they collected and used consumer data.
Acquisition of LiveRamp On May 14, 2014, Acxiom announced that it had acquired LiveRamp, a data onboarding company, for $310 million. LiveRamp was co-founded in 2011 by
Travis May and
Auren Hoffman LiveRamp's services combined customers' CRM and loyalty program data with other available data sources, to better segment and target consumers. Acxiom kept the business operating under the LiveRamp name under the leadership of
May. In December, Acxiom acquired the Boston-based advanced-advertising unit of Allant, a third-party data shop focused on advertising and marketing. In November 2016, LiveRamp acquired two data and identity-matching startups, Arbor and Circulate, for more than $140 million combined. The company also announced the launch of IdentityLink, a method of anonymizing consumer's identities as they are tracked across multiple platforms. In August 2016, Acxiom sold its
marketing automation solution, Acxiom Impact, for $50 million, to New York City-based marketing firm Zeta Interactive, now
Zeta Global. The company was also named in
Glassdoor's top small company to work for. By 2017, LiveRamp was reportedly worth $1.5 billion. In January 2017, Acxiom launched Audience Cloud, an anonymous targeting tool that allowed demographic segmentation of customers without revealing their actual identities. On March 10, Acxiom announced that it was moving its headquarters back to
Conway, Arkansas after selling its corporate office building in
Little Rock, Arkansas. The building was acquired by
Simmons Bank. In May, LiveRamp announced a consortium formed with two other ad tech companies, AppNexus and MediaMath, to compete with Facebook and Google in the area of programmatic advertising, the term used to refer to the use of automation software to buy advertising. In February 2018, LiveRamp acquired Pacific Data Partners, an aggregator of anonymized business data. Also in February, Acxiom announced a reorganization from three divisions into two - a Marketing Solutions group and its LiveRamp business. In May, the company announced international expansion into Brazil, Netherlands, and Italy, and released Global Data Navigator (GDN), a portal for identifying available data elements by country. In June 2018, Consumer research firm GfK MRI has partnered with Acxiom. In July, advertising company
Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) announced they were buying Acxiom's Marketing Solutions (AMS) business for $USD2.3 billion. The deal did not include the LiveRamp business. Also in July, LiveRamp announced a partnership with tracking software company Sonobi to help publishers sell targeted digital ads. The sale of the Marketing Solutions business to IPG closed in October, and Acxiom officially changed its name to LiveRamp, and its ticker symbol to RAMP. The Acxiom brand was transferred to IPG alongside the AMS business unit. In April 2019, LiveRamp acquired consent management platform provider Faktor. In July, LiveRamp acquired the Boston-based television analytics company Data Plus Math for $150 million.
2020s In January 2020, the company launched its own consent management platform, called Privacy Manager. In March, the company launched Safe Haven, a tool allowing advertisers and media owners to share customer data while following privacy laws. In July, LiveRamp acquired Acuity Data to enhance Safe Haven’s retail trade analytics capabilities. ==Products and services==