“Data is the new oil”

• Brands are transitioning from channel-specific strategies to audience-centric workflows spanning retail media, CTV, and social platforms.
• With third-party cookies being phased out, brands must rely on first-party data orchestration for instant campaign optimisation and compliance.
• At the same time, AI presents new opportunities to deliver real-time, personalised context-aware customer experiences. 

These shifts in the media landscape all make data the focal point of attention.

Businesses are joining forces to gain a better understanding of customers or connect with them in different moments. While these new alliances may be the stories making headlines, some of the most powerful opportunities to drive innovation and growth may lie with multi-entity organisations. 
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‍The Untapped Potential of Internal Data Collaboration
‍Multi-entity organisations, such as media groups with multiple titles or retailers operating a number of brands possess a unique advantage: the ability to collaborate on data from each entity within their ecosystem. This internal data collaboration offers several key benefits:

1. Enhanced Customer Insights: By sharing behavioural and socio-demographic data across entities, organisations can create a more complete view of their customers or target audience. This enriched understanding enables more accurate targeting and personalisation.
2. Simplified Privacy Initiatives: Since data remains within the central organisation, internal collaboration simplifies privacy concerns compared to sharing data with external parties.
3. Coherent Customer Experience: For marketing purposes, internal data collaboration facilitates a more unified customer journey. 

Consider a multi-brand retailer with two entities both selling baby products. If one brand has just sold a customer a car seat and the second a baby monitor, the third will detect that customer is likely to be either expecting (or has recently welcomed) the arrival of a new baby to their household. The third brand could then offer him a promotion on nappies.

‍Enhancing Media Sales
‍Media companies and their sales houses can offer larger audiences and more precise and relevant segmentation to their commercial partners. With improved performance from clients’ ad campaigns they can command higher CPMs, driving increased revenue.
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‍5 Key Steps to Breaking down the Barriers to Internal Data Collaboration

‍Whilst the potential of these internal data collaboration strategies is immense, implementation often poses a significant challenge for most large enterprises.The various local and international entities often operate with different technologies, taxonomies, and approaches to privacy. Reconciling these differences can be complex and time-consuming, but not impossible!

1. Develop a common data strategy to align all entities around common goals, standards, and privacy practices. 
2. Implement adaptable solutions: Solutions such as our Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), can accommodate the unique needs of each entity while facilitating seamless data sharing. A CDP can help the organisation to centralise data, control access and enable them to query, and activate data from different sources.
3. Establish commercial agreements: From an organisational perspective, even though these entities belong to the same company, it is often necessary to establish inter-entity commercial agreements to structure revenue attribution from data, particularly when it comes to advertising targeting data. 
4. Set up clear data governance: This is also crucial to define the rights and responsibilities of each entity, establish data usage frameworks and ensure that subsidiaries have appropriate privacy policies and consent mechanisms.
5. Train and prepare your teams: Finally, this must be underpinned by training to support the new processes and ensure that teams across different entities can work effectively with the new data collaboration technologies.

Real world impact
‍Using mediarithmics’ cross-CDP solution to unify data from its various brands one of Europe’s largest retail giants was able to achieve a 360° view of customer behaviour to optimise its direct marketing strategies. By matching online data with in-store purchase receipts, they are now able to turn anonymous profiles into identified users. By doing so, the group avoids the cannibalisation of marketing efforts across its entities by focusing on consumer behaviour, not just purchase intent.
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‍The Future of Internal Data Collaboration
‍As organisations continue to recognise the value of their internal data assets, we expect to see a growing emphasis on breaking down data silos and fostering collaboration across entities. Those who successfully implement internal data collaboration strategies will gain a significant competitive advantage, delivering more personalised experiences to their customers and unlocking new revenue opportunities.

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