How clean rooms are cleaning up measurement

Companies can’t navigate this complex measurement landscape with just their own first-party data. Collaboration is how stakeholders are sustaining the data-driven activation and measurement needed to evaluate and optimize media dollars. When done right, data collaboration unlocks new consumer insights while protecting consumer privacy. 

Data clean rooms are rapidly emerging as the tool of choice for better measurement, but like any tool, they require education and standardization for the industry to take full advantage.

The emerging realities of clean room adoption

Clean rooms have become a privacy-centric mechanism for brands and publishers to uncover new insights. Yet, policies around data access and usage vary by data owner, creating complications for advertisers seeking a standardized approach to data collaboration.

As clean room use and adoption continue to grow, several truths are emerging to set the ecosystem on a path to clarity. 

For instance, while the quality of data is higher when each party is responsible for managing its own data, third-party cookies and pixels have never allowed data owners to manage data quality. Every brand, publisher, agency, data provider and analytics vendor also needs to access data that lives in every cloud, making cross-cloud collaboration critical.

For collaboration to scale, the connectivity of privacy-forward identifiers is critical, putting hashed emails on the chopping block. However, there also needs to be flexibility in privacy tooling to meet the needs of multiple parties. Data owners setting the bar high can maintain opt-outs and deletions from one place, while those still maturing can make their compliance strategy more nimble. Less data replication and data movement also speed up processes.

As more businesses recognize the massive business benefits of collaborating, scale and consistency will increase. As will the evidence that clean rooms improve measurement to deliver better customer experiences and fuel growth.

Multi-party clean rooms are emerging to enhance collaboration

Different patterns of clean rooms have surfaced in advertising, and each delivers value in different ways. As companies get comfortable with one-to-one collaboration, multi-party opportunities are materializing that will reimagine much of how organizations do measurement.

A growing number of publishers and retailers are standing up templated, one-to-one clean rooms for two parties to collaborate with standardized audience insights, overlaps and attribution queries. These data owners make it easy for brands or agencies to execute streamlined implementations for pre-campaign planning and in-campaign measurement. Collaborating a brand’s audience or conversion data with a publisher or retailer’s consumer data and advertising exposure data brings new insights to life with charts and graphics delivered in a visual, simplified way.

More creative, ad hoc analytics are also being built in advanced clean rooms. In place of standardized templates, advanced one-to-one clean rooms deliver customized outcomes. This makes them ideal for strategic planning between two partners for co-marketing, incrementality testing and A/B testing. This customization has a marginally slower setup than standardized options, but the payoff is substantial. This is the approach many retail media networks are taking as they extend inventory onto social platforms.

Mulit-party measurement clean rooms is a new category that is surfacing. These environments create a neutral space for three or more parties to collaborate, unifying and curating higher quantities of data with a standard set of rules around what is shared and how. Multi-party clean rooms are a win-win for buyers and sellers. Publishers and retailers can safely share exposure and/or conversion data with transparency, privacy adherence and control over their data, while brands can access previously inaccessible data and insights, including cross-screen reach and frequency, multi-touch attribution, activation and incrementality.

Data consumers and owners are unlocking opportunities with clean rooms

Regardless of which clean room playbook a company deems best suited for its objectives, there’s an immense value proposition accessible today that will fuel business growth tomorrow.

As data consumers, brands should get first-party data ready to collaborate with the world’s largest publishers. Clean rooms are enabling CTV providers, social platforms and walled gardens to offer rich insights about customers and prospects with tremendous transparency and optimization of ROAS. Additionally, agencies use clean rooms to scale templates and create competitive differentiation by bringing partners together to deliver new value.

Meanwhile, data owners including publishers, retailers, commerce networks and third-party data providers derive their own value from clean rooms. For instance, publishers showcase the value of inventory and audiences through standardized clean room approaches that appeal to all advertisers. They can also offer more transparency and optimization while maintaining adherence to evolving privacy laws. 

Similarly, retailers partner with publishers and suppliers to bring highly-valued data assets together in a privacy-enhancing environment. With clean rooms, retailers expand managed service businesses and prove the value of retail media spend by collaborating with social platforms. They can also establish self-serve access for thousands of suppliers to build audiences and improve measurement, all while ensuring consumer privacy.

Building on retailer success, banks, airlines and rideshare companies can also build commerce media networks that deliver high-quality audiences and closed-loop measurement. Finally, through clean rooms, third-party data providers offer more flexibility in data usage, allowing new approaches to innovative audience creation and measurement while maintaining consistent monetization models.

There is a promising but still-ripening opportunity for analytics providers too. As AI and advanced analytics methods become business differentiators, there’s no need to employ an army of data engineers and robust data management infrastructure. As data owners invest in clean rooms and supporting governance infrastructure, analytics providers can focus on adding value with measurement and insights.

The future of data collaboration

The advertising ecosystem stands at a pivotal moment where the need for advanced measurement and data collaboration has never been more critical. Clean rooms offer a powerful solution and their full potential will be realized by the early adopters. By embracing them, every part of the ecosystem can unlock unprecedented insights, fuel business growth and stay ahead of the competition.

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