Crosswise launches cross-device ID service, teams with LiveRamp

Advertisers exploiting the Web want to know who you are, how you are using the Internet, when you shift from a laptop or tablet to a smartphone and back again, and even when you enter a store. It’s an actual business labeled cross-device user ID. And it enables fuller understanding of each person’s use across those multiple devices.

Armed in real time with confirmed user IDs, advertisers can shoot straighter, target better, and achieve improved results as users move around with their fixed and mobile devices. With this objective in mind, Crosswise is launching Cross-Device ID Solution as a standalone service.

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With the Crosswise service, customers gain the capability to generate ads for multiple screens tied to a user’s ID with no conflicting media along for the ride. “Other cross-device solution providers are focused on selling media campaigns directly to agencies and advertisers,” Crosswise cofounder and CEO Steve Glanz told VentureBeat. “Licensing their data to other ad tech companies while simultaneously selling direct campaigns to the same customers creates a conflict of interest. Crosswise provides exclusively a data solution with no attached media, ensuring the most accurate solution without any conflict of interest.”

Above: Crosswise Tel Aviv team with Steve Glanz front row center

Glanz also said that the Tel Aviv-based company’s user ID service employs a comprehensive deterministic data set. “Statistical models are only as good as the data on which they are based, and as the only company with access to this deterministic data, our customers benefit from the industry’s most accurate solution.” He declined to identify the firm’s data partners, saying, “Crosswise provides a quality score based on validated first party data.”

Customers include demand-side platform companies (DSPs), data management platform companies (DMPs), programmatic marketing platform providers (PMPs) and ad retargeters. These firms are among the prime movers of targeted advertising in the mobile space and thus benefit from cross ID as  consumers approach shopping cart decisions.

Crosswise earns money when customers license access to the company’s data and API. 

Crosswise also announced a related comprehensive partnership with LiveRamp of San Francisco to enhance statistical models. The deal includes the ability for Crosswise to distribute data to LiveRamp’s network of 100-plus digital marketing application partners, and access to the Cross-Device ID Solution service for LiveRamp’s onboarding customers.

Speaking for LiveRamp, CEO Auren Hoffman said “Cross-device identification is a strategic opportunity for marketing application providers in 2014. We were attracted to Crosswise because of the caliber of the team, the technology, and the opportunity to enhance their cross-device technology and provide connections to other digital marketing applications.”

Crosswise, founded in 2013, has 10 employees. The company received about $2 million in funding from Giza Venture Capital, Horizons Ventures, OurCrowd and leading angel investors. Chief competitors are Drawbridge and Tapad.