Decentriq vs LiveRamp data clean rooms compared

Today’s data-driven marketing means enterprises are constantly looking for ways to collaborate with partners while protecting customer trust and maintaining regulatory compliance. Decentriq and LiveRamp are two prominent—but fundamentally different—players in the data collaboration space.

If you're evaluating which platform is right for your organization, you're in the right place. This article offers a balanced breakdown of what each solution offers, where they excel, and how they differ across critical dimensions such as privacy and security, data clean room capabilities, integration depth, ease of onboarding, analysis functionality, and suitability for media and advertising use cases. By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of which platform aligns best with your specific use case and strategic goals.

What is LiveRamp?

LiveRamp is a U.S.-based data connectivity platform best known for its identity resolution and data onboarding capabilities — especially its proprietary identity graph built around RampID. At its core, LiveRamp enables businesses to unify fragmented customer data and connect it across media and marketing platforms, making it easier to activate audiences and measure performance at scale.

LiveRamp helps brands take offline customer data—such as CRM or purchase history—and match it to online identifiers, creating a consistent identity framework called RampID that enables audience targeting, media measurement, and advertising effectiveness. This allows organizations to activate data across an expansive network of media platforms and technology partners, including social media, publishers, and demand-side platforms (DSPs). In Europe, the LiveRamp identity ecosystem relies on the presence of emails or phone numbers.

In recent years, LiveRamp has expanded beyond identity and onboarding into data collaboration and clean room functionality through its acquisition of Habu, allowing marketers to run secure analytics across datasets. 

Key features:

• Identity resolution and pseudonymous customer profiles via RampID
  
• CRM data onboarding and cross-channel activation
  
• Third-party cookie alternatives and persistent email-based identifiers
  
• Data collaboration via Habu-powered clean room features
  
• Integration with hundreds of technology platforms
  
• Strong presence in U.S. adtech ecosystem

Common use case:

A CPG brand uses LiveRamp to onboard offline purchase data attached to emails, translate emails to RampID, and activate audiences across Google, Meta, and open web DSPs.

Background

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in the United States, LiveRamp has established itself as a pioneer in identity resolution and data connectivity solutions. With a strong focus on enabling marketers to unify fragmented customer data and activate it across digital and offline channels, LiveRamp serves a vast global client base, particularly in North America. Its platform has evolved to become a leading data collaboration and onboarding solution for many of the world’s leading brands and media networks.

What is Decentriq?

Decentriq is a Swiss-based data collaboration platform built to enable secure, privacy-preserving data sharing and analysis—without exposing raw data. At the core of Decentriq’s offering is confidential computing, a cutting-edge technology that ensures sensitive information remains encrypted even during processing. This powers data clean rooms where advertisers, publishers, and retailers can safely collaborate — enriching campaign insights and optimizing performance without ever revealing personally identifiable information.

Decentriq is especially well-suited for the media and advertising ecosystem, where the need to join fragmented online and offline customer data is critical — but must be balanced with increasingly strict data protection regulations. Whether measuring advertising effectiveness, enriching audience insights, or activating first-party data, Decentriq empowers companies to unlock previously unavailable insights across their marketing stack while remaining fully compliant with EU and Swiss privacy standards.

Key features:

• Confidential computing–powered data clean rooms
  
• Built-in compliance with GDPR, EU/Swiss law, and data ethics by design
  
• First-party data collaboration
  
• Secure, multi-party campaign analysis and targeting workflows
  
• Leading data collaboration solution in DACH

Common use case:

Samsung and Publicis Media used Decentriq to revolutionize cross-publisher advertising by securely joining audience data without exposing any user-level data. 

Background:

Decentriq was founded in 2019 and is based in Switzerland, positioning itself as a European-first platform built on principles of privacy, security, and regulatory compliance. Leveraging cutting-edge confidential computing technology, Decentriq empowers enterprises to collaborate on sensitive data sets across borders without compromising privacy. Its strong presence in the European market, along with a growing partner network, makes it uniquely suited to support businesses operating under stringent data protection regulations such as GDPR.

LiveRamp vs Decentriq – How do they differ?

While both platforms operate in the data collaboration space, their core purposes and underlying technologies are quite different.

LiveRamp is deeply rooted in advertising and marketing, focusing on data activation and identity resolution across digital ecosystems. It’s a go-to for brands aiming to leverage online customer data at scale.

Decentriq, on the other hand, is built from the ground up for privacy-first collaboration between organizations of any type, including primarily advertising. It enables companies to collaborate securely—whether internally across data silos or externally with partners—without compromising sensitive data.

Quick comparison table:‍

Decentriq vs LiveRamp – How do they compare?

Now let’s take a deeper look at how Decentriq and LiveRamp compare across key factors.

Integrations

LiveRamp boasts extensive integrations with hundreds of platforms, especially in adtech and martech environments. This makes it easy to activate customer data across media investments.

Decentriq integrates deeply with premium publishers to enable full-fidelity data collaboration—not just identity matching. Unlike LiveRamp, which focuses on onboarding identifiers like RampID, Decentriq facilitates the secure use of complete publisher datasets for advanced targeting and measurement.

🟢 LiveRamp wins in media integrations; Decentriq in secure enterprise ecosystems.

Ease of set up / onboarding

LiveRamp requires advertisers to integrate their CRM systems with its onboarding solution, which translates customer emails into RampIDs. Publishers, meanwhile, must implement LiveRamp’s ATS (Authenticated Traffic Solution) to convert logged-in users into RampIDs. This setup can be technically demanding and time-consuming, particularly outside LiveRamp’s existing ecosystem.

Decentriq focuses on ease of onboarding for business and technical users alike, with minimal setup and no need for complex identity mapping. Data never leaves your environment in raw form.

🟢 Decentriq is typically easier for secure collaboration teams and legal/compliance sign-off.

Ease of use

LiveRamp’s tools are well-optimized for digital marketers, but may be less intuitive for cross-functional or privacy-first teams.

Decentriq is designed for both data scientists and business stakeholders, offering user-friendly interfaces while maintaining technical depth.

🟢 Decentriq balances usability with enterprise-grade security.

Core purpose and use cases

LiveRamp is primarily built to resolve identity across fragmented environments. It translates offline customer data (like CRM records) into persistent identifiers (RampID) to enable targeting and measurement across major ad platforms. While its acquisition of Habu adds data clean room capabilities, LiveRamp’s foundation remains firmly rooted in identity resolution and media activation workflows.

Typical use cases for LiveRamp:

• CRM data onboarding and pseudonymization
• Identity stitching across devices and platforms
• Ad audience activation across walled gardens and open web
• Media and campaign performance measurement
  

Decentriq is purpose-built for secure, privacy-first data collaboration. It enables advertisers, publishers, and other enterprises to jointly analyze and activate first-party datasets without exposing raw data or requiring identity resolution. This makes it particularly suited for environments with strict regulatory or data governance requirements.

Typical use cases for Decentriq:

• First-party-data-based audience activation
• ID-agnostic targeting and regulatory-friendly campaign insights
• Privacy-safe collaboration for single and cross publisher measurement
• Secure data collaboration in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, finance)
  

🟢 Decentriq enables collaborative media use cases that go beyond identity-based targeting. Choose LiveRamp if your goal is centralized identity and activation across the digital advertising landscape.

Privacy and security

LiveRamp relies on a traditional pseudonymization technique called hashing.

Decentriq uses confidential computing, meaning data is encrypted even during processing, and never exposed—not even to Decentriq. This offers a zero-trust architecture ideal for GDPR-heavy environments.

🟢 Decentriq leads in privacy and compliance, especially in the EU.

Data clean room capabilities

LiveRamp offers clean room functionality through its acquisition of Habu, a platform specializing in secure data collaboration and analytics. Its approach typically involves combining RampID-enabled data across walled gardens and publishers to measure media performance.

Decentriq is built natively as a confidential computing–based clean room, making it ideal for collaborations where data privacy is paramount. Decentriq clean room focus lies on optimizing targeting based on first-party data.

🟢 Decentriq’s clean rooms focus on targeting use-cases whereas LiveRamp clean rooms focus on measurement use-cases.

Analysis capabilities

LiveRamp excels in media performance and marketing measurement, but is limited in general-purpose analytics.

Decentriq supports privacy-preserving, multiparty analysis and can handle even complex targeting use cases.

🟢 Decentriq enables more flexible, privacy-respecting targeting use-cases.

Scalability

LiveRamp is highly scalable for audience-based media activation, especially for large enterprises.

Decentriq is scalable for multi-party collaboration scenarios, including internal and external data teams working together securely.

🟢 LiveRamp scales best in media; Decentriq in secure enterprise environments.

Product roadmap

LiveRamp continues to expand toward cookieless ad targeting and cross-device identity resolution.

Decentriq is investing in AI-powered secure analytics, expanding its European partner network, and deepening privacy-enhancing technology capabilities.

🟢 Decentriq’s roadmap aligns with evolving EU regulations and enterprise privacy needs.

Decentriq vs LiveRamp – Which is best for you?

If your organization’s primary goal is activating customer data across digital advertising ecosystems, particularly in the U.S., LiveRamp is a well-established option with broad integrations.

If your goals center around collaborating with sensitive or regulated data (especially first-party data), building trusted partnerships, or complying with strict European privacy laws, Decentriq offers the right blend of security, control, and usability.

As enterprises evaluate their options between Decentriq and LiveRamp, it’s important to consider not only the technical features and pricing but also the broader regulatory and geographic context in which these platforms operate. 

For organizations based in or collaborating within Europe, understanding the implications of data sovereignty, privacy regulations, and compliance frameworks can be just as critical as the tools themselves. 

Moreover, organizations should evaluate whether their needs revolve around identity-based advertising workflows—where platforms like LiveRamp excel—or cross-party data collaboration with strong privacy guarantees, where Decentriq provides unmatched capabilities.

This leads us to explore why choosing an EU-native data collaboration platform can be a decisive advantage for European businesses navigating today’s complex data environment.

Why European businesses need an EU-native collaboration platform

European businesses face unique challenges when collaborating on customer data due to strict data privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and evolving frameworks like the Data Governance Act (DGA). Many global data collaboration platforms are headquartered outside the EU, which can create legal and compliance complexities around data sovereignty, cross-border transfers, and consumer privacy.

An EU-native collaboration platform, built from the ground up with European privacy standards in mind, offers distinct advantages. It ensures that data remains within EU jurisdiction and is processed according to the highest standards of confidentiality and compliance. This approach reduces legal risks and helps companies uphold consumer trust by respecting data ethics and privacy rights.

Furthermore, an EU-based platform often provides better alignment with local business practices and regulatory guidance, enabling companies to collaborate seamlessly with European partners, media networks, and data providers. For businesses aiming to leverage rich first-party and offline customer data while safeguarding personally identifiable information, choosing an EU-native solution is a strategic decision that supports both innovation and compliance.

Decentriq: Best for privacy-first, EU-centric data collaboration

For enterprises seeking to:

• Extract value from sensitive customer data without compromising trust
  
• Collaborate with partners across the EU or within regulated industries
  
• Unlock previously unavailable insights through secure analytics
  
• Work within the strictest data ethics and privacy frameworks
  
• Enable enterprise-wide customer understanding through flexible collaboration
  

Decentriq offers a modern, secure, and compliance-ready platform that is from the EU, for the EU.

Explore the platform or book a demo to see how Decentriq fits your use case.