Data Clean Rooms (DCRs) are practical solutions for businesses that need to analyze sensitive information without breaching privacy. With regulations like GDPR and CCPA in full force, companies must find ways to extract value from their data while adhering to strict compliance rules.
DCRs offer a solution by giving insights from large datasets without accessing raw, sensitive data directly. Similar to a pivot table in Excel, DCRs aggregate and anonymize data, letting marketers and analysts work with protected information without exposing Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
As consumers become more privacy-conscious, businesses must adapt. When using DCRs, companies can stay compliant while gaining the insights they need to optimize marketing, targeting, and strategy.
Mastering digital marketing with data clean rooms
DCRs play a key role in balancing privacy and performance. Marketers can analyze customer behavior, assess campaign effectiveness, and refine audience segmentation without jeopardizing user data.
When integrating first-party data with external datasets, businesses can generate deeper insights, build more targeted campaigns, and improve overall performance across advertising platforms.
With DCRs, companies can also unify reporting across different channels like TV, CTV, social media, and search, providing a holistic view of campaign success and giving better decision-making based on accurate, privacy-safe data.
Advertisers are constantly searching for better ways to measure success, identify new opportunities, and enhance customer engagement. DCRs provide them with a privacy-first tool that delivers all of these benefits.
When using anonymized datasets, advertisers can develop actionable insights without breaching privacy regulations. DCRs help marketers onboard audiences, analyze post-campaign performance, and refine targeting strategies, all while keeping sensitive data secure.
Why clean rooms are the future of marketing and data collaboration
Advertisers have long sought access to high-quality insights that drive better campaign outcomes. Myles Younger, Head of Innovation at U of Digital, emphasizes that DCRs are uniquely positioned to meet these expectations.
When offering anonymized data insights, DCRs provide advertisers with a safe space to explore customer behavior and campaign effectiveness, all without exposing private user data. It makes sure of a balance between innovation and compliance, delivering value to advertisers who need reliable performance metrics.
Own your data, protect your insights
Decentralization is a key feature of modern DCRs, particularly for publishers and ad ops teams. Therran Oliphant from Thirdwave highlights how keeping first-party data within on-premise environments, rather than moving it to the cloud, is key for data safety.
Decentralized data control helps businesses to protect their data while collaborating with external partners on shared insights. This method makes sure of the effectiveness of campaigns without risking sensitive information, giving companies peace of mind in an increasingly privacy-regulated world.
Data clean rooms balance performance with privacy
Companies are under increasing pressure to collaborate on data-driven projects without compromising privacy. Data Clean Rooms provide the ideal environment for this by balancing performance optimization with the need for strict privacy controls.
As businesses shift towards first-party data strategies, DCRs become more important for ensuring data security while enhancing marketing and operational outcomes. Whether for audience segmentation, campaign measurement, or multi-channel performance analysis, DCRs provide a compliant solution for managing sensitive data.
The top 7 data clean room solutions marketers can’t afford to miss
1. AWS clean rooms
AWS Clean Rooms offers a flexible, easy-to-use platform for businesses looking to collaborate on data while maintaining privacy. With privacy-focused tools, AWS Clean Rooms facilitate secure collaboration without the need to move or share sensitive information.
Businesses can quickly set up DCRs to analyze customer insights, optimize advertising strategies, and conduct research. Partnerships with Fox, Comscore, and Amazon Ads further highlight the platform’s strength in delivering privacy-compliant solutions.
The ability to work with sensitive data in a secure environment, without moving it between platforms, is an advantage of AWS Clean Rooms. Additionally, partnerships with The Weather Channel and Lotame allow businesses to generate insights faster while staying compliant with privacy laws.
2. InfoSum
InfoSum’s DCR solution uses patented “non-movement” technology, making sure that sensitive data never leaves its original environment. This decentralized system allows companies to collaborate on insights without transferring or exposing private data, providing unmatched security.
Key use cases include audience planning, activation, and measurement, making it ideal for companies that prioritize privacy.
InfoSum integrates with identity providers, improving match rates across datasets. Notable clients like Netflix, Samsung Ads, and WPP’s Choreograph rely on InfoSum to maintain privacy while making use of multi-party data collaborations for better audience targeting.
3. LiveRamp and Habu
LiveRamp’s DCR technology focuses on data protection and governance, giving businesses confidence in the security of their data. The recent acquisition of Habu improves LiveRamp’s ability to facilitate clean data sharing across multiple platforms, improving collaboration across clouds and walled gardens.
Marketers can now manage their campaigns across TV, CTV, and social media with LiveRamp’s unified performance view. Such capabilities make it easier to gather insights from multiple channels while keeping data protected.
4. Google Ads Data Hub
Google Ads Data Hub integrates first-party data with Google’s event-level ad campaign data, allowing marketers to generate actionable insights that optimize campaign efficiency. Privacy checks make sure that data is grouped across multiple users, keeping results anonymous and compliant with privacy regulations.
When combining Google’s ad data with first-party data, Google Ads Data Hub enables better audience targeting and improved measurement. A recent integration with Viant Technologies further strengthens its first-party data onboarding capabilities, offering marketers greater precision in campaign planning.
5. Snowflake’s data clean rooms
Following its acquisition of Samooha in December 2023, Snowflake has incorporated advanced DCR technology into its ecosystem. Snowflake Clean Rooms are accessible through the Snowflake Marketplace without extra fees, making them a highly attractive option for companies of all sizes.
Snowflake’s partnerships with Netflix and Snap show its success in providing a comprehensive, secure platform for data collaboration. With built-in privacy features, Snowflake ensures sensitive data remains protected while supporting deep analytics and AI/ML integrations.
6. Optable
Optable’s DCR solution offers businesses a secure environment where multiple parties can collaborate on data without revealing underlying information. Key features include permissioned access, which makes sure all parties must consent to operations, and Data Collaboration Nodes (DCNs) that give customers control over their own data-sharing environment.
Optable lets companies configure their data-sharing preferences within their own secure DCNs. For those looking for more flexibility, Optable provides an open-source utility that non-customers can use to manage their data independently.
7. AppsFlyer’s clean room
AppsFlyer’s DCR stands out by offering advanced custom business logic and self-owned buckets, giving marketers more control over their data. When helping users run tailored queries, AppsFlyer’s DCR lets businesses analyze their data in a way that best suits their specific needs.
AppsFlyer supports integration across a range of digital channels, including social media, search engines, display ads, and video platforms. Comprehensive integration provides businesses with a holistic view of marketing efforts, making sure of compliance with GDPR and CCPA.
Key takeaways, data clean rooms are easier and more powerful than you think
Many companies hesitate to adopt Data Clean Rooms, mistakenly believing they are too complex or new. In reality, the core processes that DCRs support, like audience segmentation, audience onboarding, and post-campaign attribution, have existed for decades. The difference lies in the improved privacy and security features that DCRs offer, making them an essential tool in today’s privacy-focused market.
Data clean rooms will be the foundation of tomorrow’s marketing strategies
As businesses shift towards first-party data strategies, Data Clean Rooms will play an increasingly important role. DCRs provide a secure, scalable way for companies to collaborate on data and generate insights without compromising privacy.
For companies that want to stay compliant while maximizing the value of their data, investing in DCR technology is a necessity.
