Data collaboration has fast become a critical pillar of successful digital advertising. As third-party cookies decline and privacy regulations tighten, businesses need new ways to securely use data to maintain core advertising use cases.
Brands, retailers, and media owners all hold valuable, rich customer data, but the true potential of this data is only unlocked when different parties can collaborate. By combining data to create richer insights, businesses can:
- Extend targeting capabilities,
- Improve audience understanding, and
- Measure campaign performance with greater accuracy.
Yet doing so is challenging — primarily due to privacy concerns and data security requirements. This is where Data Clean Rooms come into play.
A Data Clean Room is designed to facilitate secure, privacy-compliant data collaboration. It allows multiple parties to combine their data for analysis, without directly sharing the raw data itself. For retailers, brands, and media owners, this means being able to augment their first-party data by working with partners in a privacy-safe environment.
But despite being one of the hottest bits of tech in the industry over the last few years, uptake hasn’t matched the buzz.
The main use case to date has been data access (enabling other parties to gain insights from your data). Much less frequently have businesses been using data clean rooms to mix data to put those insights to action.
Data Clean Rooms can have limitations
There are a number of vendors on the market today providing Data Clean Rooms, but they often face limitations in delivering enough agility and actionability required for modern marketing.
- Pureplay Data Clean Room Providers
These typically excel in providing secure environments for data collaboration but often lack integration with wider marketing ecosystems. While their security protocols are robust, they can fall short in offering immediate activation capabilities, and need further integrations to action the outputs in real-time. - Data Lake-Provided Data Clean Rooms
Data lakes are ideal for storing and processing large datasets securely, but – again – the challenge lies in making this data actionable. These platforms often require extensive customisation, making them slow to implement and less suited for marketers who need immediate, actionable insights. - Walled Garden Data Clean Rooms
These vendors provide a closed-loop system where data can be analysed within their own walled gardens. While this approach offers access to vast datasets and can be useful for certain campaigns, it severely limits flexibility. Businesses can struggle to take their insights outside of these ecosystems, reducing the overall reach and effectiveness of their campaigns.
Agile & actionable: Integrating a Data Clean Room with a Customer Data Platform
Data Clean Rooms can be closely integrated with, or built directly inside, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to increase ‘actionability’ of the insights, and can address some of the shortcomings of a standalone Clean Room initiative. With a strong integration between these two vital pieces of technology, businesses can enjoy the following benefits:
- Data Security and Privacy by Design
Because privacy and security are embedded into the core architecture of a CDP, businesses can have confidence that their data collaboration efforts remain compliant with regulations such as GDPR. - Scalability for Large Datasets
Customer Data Platforms are designed to handle vast amounts of data while keeping customer profiles updated in real-time. When combined with a Data Clean Room, this allows for the seamless management of large datasets and the automatic updating of audience segments, ensuring that insights are always current and actionable. - Seamless Activation Across Ecosystems
One of the most significant advantages of a Data Clean Room integrated into a Customer Data Platform is its ability to activate the outputs. Because a CDP has comprehensive connections to the wider Martech and Adtech ecosystem, it can immediately put the insights to work across a full range of marketing use cases.
A CDP should be highly agnostic when it comes to integrations with Data Clean Room partners, even if the company provides its own solution. It is the strength of the integration that is important, rather than demanding that the Clean Room must be from the same provider as the CDP.
Use cases for a CDP and Data Clean Room combination
- Pre-campaign Planning
Brands can improve their pre-campaign insights for better planning by blending together media consumption data with their 1st party data. - Enhanced Audience Segmentation
By leveraging the real-time data capabilities of a Customer Data Platform, marketers can create highly relevant audience segments that reflect the latest customer behaviour. This allows advertisers to target more accurately and deliver personalised experiences at scale. - Media Reporting and Performance Measurement
With a Data Clean Room integrated into a Customer Data Platform, businesses can retrieve campaign performance data from media owners’ clean rooms, while simultaneously pulling sales data from retailers. This allows for transparent, accurate measurement of media effectiveness and customer conversion. - Maximising Targetable Reach
A Customer Data Platform that supports a wide range of identifiers enables businesses to maximise their targetable reach. By integrating this capability with a Data Clean Room, businesses can ensure that they are fully utilising their customer data across every possible channel.
Case Study:
Channel 4, the leading British broadcaster, has developed an award-winning data collaboration program. By creating a data infrastructure that integrates InfoSum’s Data Clean Room technology with mediarithmics’ CDP, it can:
- On-board advertiser data for matching
- Segment and extend audiences within their own users for activation
- Provide real-time reporting to advertisers, including sales attribution
As a result, it is able to deliver larger campaign reach and increased CPMs. For its advertisers, brand consideration is 200% higher when compared to standard demographic targeting.
Conclusion
As privacy regulations tighten and third-party data becomes less reliable, the ability to collaborate on first-party data while maintaining security and compliance is more important than ever.
A Data Clean Room integrated natively within a Customer Data Platform offers the security, scalability, and actionability that businesses need to stay competitive in this new landscape.
By unlocking the potential of shared data, brands, retailers, and media owners can enrich their understanding of customers, improve targeting, and achieve better campaign performance — all while staying compliant with data protection laws.
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