The AdTech industry is buzzing with discussions about cookie deprecation and effective strategies to tackle it. One of the commonly suggested solutions is the utilization of clean rooms alongside responsibly sourced first-party data.
Above all else, the industry recognizes the importance of respecting consumer data and complying with all privacy laws. Additionally, the industry acknowledges the need for a change in our historical practices. This shift benefits everyone involved, as consumer data is more secure than ever. Tremendous investments have been made to ensure the utmost security of consumer information.
Clean rooms are one of the tools that enable companies to use data securely, ensuring the content that you see is as relevant as possible.
Two ways the AdTech industry is addressing cookie deprecation
The days of sending data directly to partners for usage or for using only third-party data for marketing efforts are gone. Now, the emphasis is on responsibly collecting first-party data and using clean rooms to enrich first-party data to enhance marketing efforts.
First-party data
The industry is starting to lean into first-party data gained through transparent means. This valuable information provides organizations with deeper insights into their customers, allowing for more personalized and effective interactions. By embracing the power of first-party data, either on its own or enriched via partner collaboration, you can cultivate stronger relationships, build trust, and deliver tailored experiences that resonate with your customers on a deeper level.
Clean rooms
Many data lakes and warehouses offer this service, ensuring their clients can not only store their data with them but can connect it with other partners in a secure environment and extract more information through the combined data sets versus their data on its own.
Brands and their partners recognize that they need to work together, and a clean room provides a secure environment to share their first-party data without exposing their sensitive data to their partner.
So, while we’re losing third-party cookies, brands and partners can still get value from first-party data by using a clean room to generate audience insights, segmentation strategies, personalized experiences and offers, media plans, and measurement and attribution.
Three ways data clean rooms can improve
Data clean rooms are a great way to facilitate data collaboration while ensuring sensitive data is not exposed.
Data clean rooms are not yet easy to use nor are they inexpensive. They require investment, both financially and resource allocation-wise, and you are not guaranteed to yield great match results. Let’s dive into three areas for data clean room improvement.
High cost
According to the IAB’s State of Data 2023, nearly two-thirds of data clean room users spent at least $200K on the technology in 2022. In addition, one-third of data clean room users expect the price of data clean rooms to rise in 2023. The high cost of this solution can make it inaccessible to smaller companies in the advertising space.
Resource intensive
Nearly half of the companies using data clean rooms have a team of six or more dedicated to the technology, according to the IAB’s State of Data 2023, while nearly a third of companies using data clean rooms have 11 or more employees focused on the technology. Data clean rooms are not turnkey solutions.
Inefficient matching
Even if companies are using clean rooms does not mean that they are automatically going to achieve great success. Identity fragmentation, data hygiene, and differing identifiers can suppress client match rates in clean rooms, leading to significant investment and a lackluster output.
How to get the most return on your clean room investment
The finish line for data collaboration in clean rooms is not just having a relationship with a clean room. Instead, you should incorporate an identity resolution solution in your clean room. By adding an identity solution to your clean room, you can:
- Resolve and match all your identity data, regardless of the identity data that you or your partner have, giving you a larger data foundation to analyze.
- Generate more valuable insights and information, leading to a better experience for your customers.
- Join data sets to create smarter activation and targeting strategies and produce more holistic measurement.
Experian can help you get started with identity resolution and data clean rooms
If you are investing in data clean rooms, that means you are committed to the best in data practices. Experian recommends going the extra step and that you also invest in finding an identity resolution solution. By doing this, you can see better match rates.
Experian offers this capability and has existing relationships with three clean room partners, Amazon Web Services, InfoSum, and Snowflake. In addition to collaborating in clean rooms, we offer collaboration in two other secure environments.
Contact us today to discuss how we enable identity resolution in clean rooms or to chat about our other collaboration capabilities.
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With the increase in alternate channels such as social media, many may think that email is no longer a valuable way to create engagement with consumers. On the contrary, email marketing is still one of the most effective tools for marketers — especially when it is paired with mobile. Experian Marketing Services sends more than 10 billion emails each month on behalf of major brands around the world, which gives us the unique ability to monitor trends in email performance and engagement over time. We report email marketing trends as well as the key performance indicators that shaped the success of the Experian Marketing Services clients’ email programs each quarter in our email benchmark reports. Mobile holds potential for email engagement One of the most noticeable trends that we’ve found in our research is that both mobile device usage and email engagement have increased. According to our Q3 2014 Email Benchmark report, the research also states that 53 percent of emails were opened on a mobile or tablet device in Q3. Although we can see an increase in both engagement and mobile usage, it is too early to tell if they are directly correlated. However, marketers should be paying attention — make mobile your priority, and you may have the ability to stay ahead of upcoming trends. “Because people are so connected with their devices today, it only makes sense that they would want to use their mobiles and tablets to check their emails in real time,” says Shelley Kessler, Manager, Reporting and Analytics, Experian Marketing Services. “This is why it is so important for marketers to adopt mobile optimization into their marketing plans. Without it, their overall engagement and click rates will significantly drop and they may ultimately lose their audience.” Catalog brands see email success with tablets To put the importance of mobile into perspective, let’s dig deeper: During Q3 2014, the majority of email opens occurred on mobile phones or tablets for catalogers, consumer products and multichannel retailers. Specifically, for multichannel retailers, 60 percent of all of their emails occurred on a mobile phone or tablet and 50 percent of their total clicks. Meanwhile, catalogers had the highest percentage of tablet use with 18 percent of email opens and 13 percent of clicks occurring on tablets. Mobile can help create a relationship On a daily basis, a digitally connected customer’s inbox will be overwhelmed with hundreds or even thousands of different messages from marketers. To stick out from the crowd, marketers should be thinking of other ways to engage consumers. Shelley Kessler suggests creating a direct mobile messaging program: “Start a mobile messaging program if you have not already done so. If you have not developed a mobile database, start asking for customers’ mobile numbers in addition to email addresses and other basic information.” By utilizing mobile in ways that have not been done before, marketers have endless opportunities to get ahead of the curve. To learn more about these trends as well as others, download a free copy of our Q3 2014 Email Benchmark Report. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Q4 2014 Email Benchmark Report from Experian Marketing Services which will publish at the end of February.
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