Leadership change at LiveRamp

LiveRamp, the leading data connectivity and identity resolution platform, hired Hannah Barnett as a senior executive, bringing her experience from Mail Metro Media, the commercial arm of Associated Newspapers. Barnett joins LiveRamp's UK and European operations, where her publisher-side expertise is expected to strengthen the company's relationships with media owners navigating the post-third-party-cookie landscape. Her appointment reflects LiveRamp's continued investment in its go-to-market capabilities across the EMEA region as demand for privacy-safe data collaboration tools intensifies. Hannah Barnett previously served in a senior commercial role at Mail Metro Media, one of the UK's largest digital publishers, giving her direct insight into how publishers are managing audience data, monetisation strategies, and identity challenges. This background is particularly relevant for LiveRamp, whose Authenticated Traffic Solution (ATS) and data collaboration platform are designed to help publishers and advertisers connect first-party data in a privacy-compliant manner. Her hire signals LiveRamp's intent to deepen publisher engagement and accelerate adoption of its identity infrastructure among UK media owners. This leadership move is significant in the context of the broader industry shift away from third-party cookies and toward authenticated, first-party data ecosystems. LiveRamp competes with players such as The Trade Desk's Unified ID 2.0, ID5, and Lotame in the identity resolution space, and bolstering its publisher-facing team with credible industry veterans is a strategic priority. The appointment underscores the growing importance of publisher relationships as the currency of the open web transitions toward consented, people-based identity solutions.

The hiring of a senior executive with deep publisher-side experience reinforces LiveRamp's strategy of positioning itself as the preferred identity and data collaboration partner for media owners in the UK and Europe. As the deprecation of third-party cookies — though delayed — remains an industry inevitability, publishers are under pressure to adopt scalable first-party identity solutions, and LiveRamp's ATS is a leading contender in this space. Barnett's familiarity with the commercial and editorial priorities of large digital publishers could accelerate LiveRamp's penetration into the UK publisher ecosystem, where relationships and trust are critical sales drivers. From a competitive standpoint, this move strengthens LiveRamp's EMEA team at a time when rivals including ID5, Permutive, and UID2 are also vying for publisher partnerships. The appointment may also signal increased commercial activity in the UK market, potentially including new publisher integrations, data clean room deployments, or expanded Safe Haven partnerships. For advertisers and agencies, a stronger LiveRamp publisher network translates to broader reach and more addressable inventory through authenticated identity signals. More broadly, this leadership change reflects a wider industry trend of talent migration between publishers and AdTech vendors, as the lines between media and technology continue to blur. Publishers increasingly need AdTech expertise, while AdTech companies benefit from executives who understand the operational realities of media businesses. This cross-pollination of talent is accelerating the maturation of privacy-centric identity solutions across the open web.