Why connectivity is critical for clean rooms to turn signal loss into signal gain

However, as the need for data collaboration increases and approaches to collaborating proliferate, it’s essential to remember that data’s journey doesn’t end with clean rooms alone. Data and insights must be connected across the ecosystem to activate wherever customers are and drive meaningful business outcomes.

Beyond cookies, marketers are activating first-party data across an omnichannel landscape

In response to the loss of third-party signals, marketers have turned to a slew of new solutions and tools to help them maintain ways to connect with their audiences. The goal: create omnichannel marketing that personalizes touchpoints for every consumer and makes them measurable.

As Google is set to complete its 100% deprecation of the Chrome browser’s third-party cookie by the end of 2024, the change is expected to hinder data-driven marketing for those who are unprepared. Many may not realize that the solutions the ecosystem is turning to — ranging from identifiers, including authenticated identity, to data collaboration — offer improvements over the outdated infrastructure the third-party cookie powered in the first place. 

For example, marketers can better connect and activate more of their first-party data and engage parts of the ecosystem that no longer use third-party cookies. This includes premium platforms like connected TV, where third-party cookies were never the answer. Omnichannel marketing enables marketers to activate on all these platforms seamlessly, connecting them with every part of their customers’ journeys and personalizing every customer touchpoint for optimal engagement.

Data collaboration is revealing new insights and unlocking privacy-centric activation

In a cookieless era, companies must build robust first-party data strategies and uncover new insights. Data collaboration helps accomplish that goal, amplifying the benefits of a first-party data strategy and enabling privacy-focused partnerships to identify new audiences similar to current valuable customers. As the ecosystem collectively prioritizes first-party data, companies engaging in data collaboration are generating better insight into every corner of the ecosystem than was previously possible. 

It’s important to remember that just gaining a signal isn’t enough — insights lack business value if acting on them is difficult. While data collaboration naturally brings to mind combining and analyzing data sets, expanding reach is crucial. Rather than approach data clean rooms as bunkers, successful marketers take the insights generated within clean rooms and activate them across the ecosystem, wherever their customers spend time, all while treating data hygienically and maintaining privacy. 

A capable data collaboration platform provides a safe place for collaborating in a privacy-centric way. It connects data to everywhere it matters, whether it’s browsers, mobile devices, social platforms, CTV or other destinations.

New tools like PAIR are equipping brands and publishers with enhanced connectivity

Google’s Display & Video 360 Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) embodies the demand for data collaboration with connectivity at scale. For example, PAIR leverages different parts of LiveRamp’s data collaboration offerings, including its clean room and authenticated infrastructure, to securely connect advertiser and publisher data. It then reconciles customers who have visited both sites and enables marketers to activate via Display & Video 360 (DV360).

As publishers, including CTV platforms, mitigate signal loss and embrace signal gain, future-forward publishers embrace data collaboration to help marketers benefit from better insights and tools. Premium publishers like NBCUniversal have partnered with Google and LiveRamp to continue enhancing connectivity via PAIR, opening up additional marketer demand via DV360.

Marketers like Omni Hotels & Resorts are leveraging PAIR’s data collaboration to improve ecosystem connectivity and are seeing tremendous results. Omni Hotels & Resorts’ PAIR campaigns showed a 4x increase over traditional cookie-based CRM first-party audience targeting in DV360, indicating PAIR delivered better-performing impressions. These results show that despite signal loss, the real story is signal gain, and savvy marketers, publishers and other stakeholders are making immediate gains today.

To future-proof first-party data strategies, collaboration platforms will be critical

While the advertising landscape is catching on that signal loss can be turned into signal gain, it’s critical to remember that it is only part of the answer. Without connectivity, the new data and insights yielded by signal gain can’t be activated.

With all of the work that the industry has collectively done to enter a better era of marketing driven by rich first-party data, it’s essential to lean into holistic solutions that allow for collaboration and activation instead of offering just a tiny sliver of the value chain. Well-connected data collaboration platforms provide the proper infrastructure and technology to drive meaningful business outcomes for all parties, making it possible to continue reaching customers wherever they are spending time, with personalized experiences everywhere it matters.

Sponsored by LiveRamp