Cookies are disappearing — fast. Once the standard for identifying and tracking target audiences, third-party cookies have lost their feasibility in recent years due to privacy concerns. That leaves marketers and advertisers with a puzzle: how to send targeted, relevant messages to select audiences without the use of cookies or other ineffective tools? First-party data and data clean rooms can help.
Let's look at the whole picture. Cookies make it easy to identify individual users. And that super-specific level of identification has grown increasingly controversial - in some instances even illegal. Newer regulations, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have made people more aware of - and concerned about - consumer privacy issues. In turn, digital advertising and marketing practices are under increased scrutiny.
As a result, many popular browsers turn off cookies by default — or plan to do so soon. Google, for example, has announced it will phase out support for third-party tracking cookies in Chrome, though the deadline for that action has been pushed back to 2024. No matter the drop-dead date, a shift is needed.
The answer: data clean rooms combined with first-party customer data capture.
By collecting first-party data, companies can gain insight into customer behavior, preferences, and interests. This information can be used to create tailored marketing messages and campaigns that are designed to meet the individual needs of each customer. To protect this sensitive data from security breaches and misuse, companies often employ data clean room technology to ensure that only the company itself has access to this highly sensitive personal information. Data clean rooms act as an additional layer of security, safeguarding the privacy of customers and protecting their data from being shared outside the company. With this powerful combination of first-party data and secure storage, businesses have the power to personalize their customer experience and provide meaningful engagements.
Let’s dive into what data clean rooms and first-party data capture are, and how the two can work together to help you effectively reach your target audience.
What is a data clean room?
In its most basic terms, a data clean room is software that allows companies to exchange data without compromising privacy.
Think of a data clean room as a masked costume party. Everyone who’s invited shows up, but no one is individually identifiable thanks to the disguises. In the same way, a data clean room brings together data from two or more sources, keeping the information encrypted and anonymous while still allowing it to be combined, analyzed, and utilized. That aggregated knowledge can then be used for various business purposes — especially in marketing and advertising.
For example, a retailer and an online publisher can use a data clean room to share data with each other while keeping all personal identifiable information (PII) and user-level data anonymous. Both the retailer and publisher can set rules about what information can be shared — and how the data can be used. Without a data clean room, the two companies likely wouldn’t be able to share data at all, as customers generally don’t give explicit consent to share or collect third-party data. But because PII isn’t shared in data safe rooms, the two companies are able to collaborate without running into privacy concerns that come with swapping user-level data. The retailer can still run targeted advertising campaigns to specific audience segments of the publisher and receive detailed data analytics on those campaigns.
Data clean rooms are essentially privacy-preserving digital spaces. Since data clean rooms exist to preserve privacy, the analytics and reports you receive from these rooms will offer aggregated data without revealing information about any individual user. Despite the anonymity, you’ll still be able to measure everything from campaign performance to clicks and conversions. And consumers get the best of both worlds - maintaining their digital privacy while still receiving information that’s relevant and personalized to them.
What is first-party data capture?
First-party data capture is the information you collect about your customers. More specifically, it’s technology that enables companies and organizations to capture customer data at a granular level. This data isn’t just used to learn about your individual customers’ interests and preferences, but also to deliver uniquely customized messages and experiences tailored to their needs and wants.
First-party data capture records every interaction a user, prospect, or customer has with your company, whether it’s by visiting your website or app, or calling the customer service number. From behavioral insight to preferences and interests, first-party data enables marketers to build a comprehensive identity graph of individual consumers — with detailed customer profiles that power hyper-personalization. In short, a first-party data capture solution captures and unifies your customer data. Activating first-party data with digital identity, managed within an ID graph, ensures better (and more controlled) connections to advertising ecosystems.
Of course, not all data capture tools are created equal. The most robust data capture solutions offer live-time insight, identity mapping, and capture of PII, behaviors, and interactions to enable truly personalized experiences across multiple channels, domains, and devices throughout the entire customer journey.
How do data clean rooms and first-party data capture work together?
Data clean rooms and first-party customer data capture go together like peanut butter and jelly. The two synthesize to provide a much-needed solution to the loss of third-party cookies for marketers and advertisers. The first-party data capture solution collects customer behavior and preferences. Then, data clean rooms enable the sharing of that customer information in a way that’s safe and compliant with privacy regulations. This allows companies to get their messages in front of specific groups of people without compromising their individual personal data. Best of all, data clean rooms and data capture solutions are tools that work well in tandem, providing a comprehensive modern solution for a privacy-conscious market.
Data clean rooms are a great complement to first-party data capture, because in combination the two allow you to use (and expand) your audience data to run successful and smart advertising campaigns or other collaborations.
Basically, data capture empowers you with robust first-party data about your existing audience. The right data capture solution delivers comprehensive identity resolution and customer context. Data clean rooms make this first-party data more actionable by allowing you to share that data with partners, advertisers, and DSPs without risking consumer privacy or regulation compliance.
And first-party data capture enables you to resolve identities of passive users — without violating privacy concerns — while data clean rooms help you reach new potential customers that aren’t yet part of your active audience.
Data clean rooms provide a middle-ground to protect user privacy while allowing companies to reach their target audience, measure the performance of their campaigns, and accurately attribute conversions.
Why combine first-party data capture with a data clean room?
First-party data capture provides powerful information for advertising and marketing campaigns. To safely share and maximize that information, a data clean room is essential - especially in a world that’s moving away from third-party cookies and strengthening privacy laws at the same time. As Snowflake puts it, "the most popular use case of data clean rooms is to link anonymized marketing and advertising data from multiple parties."
When marketers can't use third-party cookies, they can't identify visitors and therefore can't do personalization or targeted campaigns. This in turn means conversions, sales, and ROAS suffer. Data clean rooms create a bridge between organizations and third-party vendors so they can still deliver personalization in full compliance. The right customer data solution can also deliver insight directly to the ad platforms, but a data clean room is a great option for outlying use cases.
To fully understand how customers are engaging not just with your own brand but with brands in general, you need to have an effective and secure way to exchange information with third parties. With access to this additional data, you’ll be able to identify similar audiences and opportunities, target new segments that weren’t previously on your radar, calculate customer lifetime value more accurately, and prevent wasted spending.
By combining data with partners via data clean rooms you gain additional insight into your customer’s and prospect’s interests and behaviors. For example, an upscale retailer could collaborate with an upscale hotel chain, using a data clean room to combine the user information from each of their data capture solutions. The two companies can then co-market to the combined audience — or each company gain access to the other company’s audience — to deliver targeted ads or marketing offers to specific user groups. The two companies can do all this without exchanging any PII, and ensuring all information is protected within the encrypted data clean room. This kind of data partnership is more secure than a traditional second-party data agreement and provides an additional layer of defense to ensure privacy compliance. It helps companies better understand their customers and targets, as well as run highly targeted, hyper-personalized campaigns to new audiences.
If you’re keen to expand your audience, understand your audience more deeply, or collaborate with other companies for marketing, advertising, sales, or other purposes, the best approach is to use a first-party data capture solution to manage identity resolution, and employ a data clean room to share that data safely and privately with partners, vendors, and advertisers.
Putting together a unified solution
Even as cookies go away, marketing and advertising must continue — without reverting to the unfocused, one-size-fits-all tactics of the past. Companies that want to work smarter must evolve and adapt. They need to look for ways to send targeted messages to unique audiences and expand customer understanding through second-party data while upholding the privacy of individual users.
Combining first-party data capture with data clean rooms is an effective solution. By taking the user information from different companies and combining it in a data clean room, both parties can benefit from the aggregate information without having to worry about exchanging private user information. That means continued ad personalization and targeting, even in today’s privacy-conscious environment.
As we all take steps to ensure user privacy, we must also continue to deliver tailored experiences that speak to our audience’s unique needs and wants. A data clean room in combination with a real-time, first-party data capture solution can seamlessly empower your business to do both, even as cookie technologies are phased out. Connect with us to learn more about Celebrus’ unparalleled data capture solution and how it can harness your first-party data to create meaningful, data-driven experiences.
