Permutive hires former LiveRamp agency chief David Rifkin

Permutive has named David Rifkin, formerly GM of agencies at LiveRamp, as general manager of demand side sales to strengthen ties with brands and agencies. The move comes as the company pushes deeper into the agentic advertising era and tries to expand addressable reach for buyers.

Why it matters: - Permutive is trying to help agencies and brands navigate a market where addressability is getting harder and buyers are looking for new ways to reach audiences. - The hire adds a veteran agency executive to a company that is pitching direct access to publisher-side signal and data collaboration tools. - Permutive is also signaling that it wants to play a bigger role on the buy side as the ad industry shifts toward agentic operating systems.

What happened: - Permutive named David Rifkin as general manager, demand side sales. - Rifkin most recently served as GM, Agencies at LiveRamp. - His role will focus on building and maintaining relationships with brands and agencies. - Permutive announced the move on Sept. 30, 2026.

The details: - Permutive describes itself as an agentic data collaboration and activation platform. - Rifkin spent 10 years at LiveRamp. - At LiveRamp, Rifkin helped lead the evolution of the company’s agency business as identity, data and measurement changed. - Permutive says its data collaboration tools give brands, agencies and holding companies richer signals for targeting. - Permutive says those tools can triple addressability and unlock the 70% of consumers that are no longer reachable through open web programmatic. - Permutive recently announced a partnership with TransUnion that lets advertisers activate TransUnion audiences across Permutive’s publisher network. - Permutive says that partnership expands addressable reach across the open internet and improves media accuracy and performance. - Permutive’s technology processes user data in real time and is built on edge computing. - The company says its platform helps publishers and advertisers reach audiences in a privacy-first way.

Between the lines: - The hire appears aimed at translating Permutive’s publisher relationships into stronger demand-side adoption. - Rifkin’s background at LiveRamp gives Permutive a senior operator with direct experience selling into agencies during major shifts in identity and measurement. - Permutive is betting that agencies want alternatives to ad-tech intermediaries and more direct pathways to supply. - The TransUnion deal and the Rifkin hire point to a broader effort to make Permutive a central layer for addressable advertising rather than only a publisher-side tool.

What's next: - Permutive and Rifkin will work to deepen relationships with brands, agencies and holding companies. - The company will likely lean on its publisher network and TransUnion partnership as it courts more demand-side adoption. - Permutive expects agencies to keep rebuilding their addressability stacks as agentic advertising matures.

The bottom line: - Permutive is staffing up for a bigger push into the buy side just as agencies rethink how they find and target audiences in the agentic era.