The French advertising giant Publicis Groupe has entered into an agreement to acquire San Francisco-based LiveRamp, a global data collaboration platform, for $2.167 billion in an all-cash transaction, based on an acquisition price of $38.50 per share.
LiveRamp, which has over 1,300 employees, offers a data collaboration network for AI-powered marketing that enables companies to unify, manage, and activate data across the digital ecosystem.
Currently, it connects over 25,000 publisher domains and 500+ technology and data partners across 14 markets, and enables thousands of brands, retailers, media platforms, and data providers to collaborate and connect their data.
"LiveRamp joining Publicis Groupe is the latest demonstration of our commitment to investing in new talent and innovation, ahead of market shifts,” said Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe. “After acquiring Epsilon in 2019 in the name of personalization at scale and enabling our clients to take back control of their data from the walled gardens, by shifting from cookies to identity, once again we are looking ahead to what’s next. By building the future of data co-creation, we’re empowering our clients to generate new, exclusive and proprietary data, to build the smartest, most differentiated AI agents on top of the leading LLMs.”
This, he added, “will be valuable for our clients’ business growth” and create “a new addressable market for Publicis.”
“With LiveRamp, Publicis will become a leader in data co-creation, an important capability in the age of artificial intelligence and an enabler of agentic business transformation,” added Carla Serrano, Chief Strategy Officer, Publicis Groupe. “With this acquisition, for a total enterprise value of $2.2 billion, the Groupe furthers its investment in technology, data, and AI-services to unlock new opportunities for the agentic era. In doing so it will expand its addressable market, allowing it to raise its 2027-2028 objectives on net revenue and headline EPS growth at constant currency.”
The purchase price represents a 29.8% premium to LiveRamp’s closing share price on May 15th, 2026, the last trading day prior to the announcement of the agreement. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of both Publicis Groupe and LiveRamp.
Following the acquisition, LiveRamp will continue to be led by CEO Scott Howe, who will report directly to Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun. LiveRamp will continue to operate as a neutral, interoperable platform.
The transaction is expected to close before year-end 2026, subject to regulatory approvals, approval by LiveRamp's shareholders and other closing conditions.
