Data Clean Room

A data clean room is a secure, closed environment (think data lake in cloud storage), that allows multiple parties to collaborate and share data in a privacy-safe manner. Data Clean Room technology enables involved parties to define and subscribe to a specific set of rules to govern the use of the raw data. These rules essentially dictate what data can enter and leave the closed environment, and what data is accessible to each party.

Within the marketing landscape, this means brands (marketers) can share and match first party data with partner data (networks and data providers) to derive the marketing insights they need all whilst protecting user privacy. Marketers and partners can completely control their data; who gets to access it, what is shared and when.

Historically marketing efforts have faced minimal regulation, but as we’ve seen in the last 5 or so years this has changed drastically. Consumer privacy was not being prioritized and thus an emergence of privacy regulatory policies were introduced like COPPA, GDPR, and CCPA. Additionally, advertising giants like Facebook and Google, otherwise known as the “walled gardens”, started scaling back the marketing data they shared and applied restrictions to the user level data made available to marketers.

With all of these layered regulations and data accessibility limitations, marketers not only need to ensure they are compliant with all privacy policies, they also need to continuously adapt their marketing strategies with the variable data sets they’re allowed to derive insights from. If you’re a marketer today, you’re dealing with a pretty unstable set of rules that change every time you try to play the game.

Other privacy-first movements like SKAdnetwork create additional data limitations, and while this was a major industry disrupter, it’s just the beginning! The deprecation of cookies and Facebook’s adoption of the Install Referrer, all just further signs that partners are listening to their users and investing heavily in making their platforms privacy-first. This is a big win for user privacy, but it adds a layer of complication for marketers.

There hasn’t been a balance between user privacy rights and the needs of marketers. Data clean rooms introduce that balance into the ecosystem. Data clean can allow marketers to navigate the sea of regulation – keeping them compliant, but also it can enable marketers and partners to develop deep and secure data relationships that open up additional levels of insights that are still user privacy-safe. Remember the concept of mutually agreed upon rules of what data enters and leaves the data clean room? Partners can still protect user privacy by ensuring user identifiable data doesn’t leave the clean room – marketers can run their analysis within the environment while the data is still encrypted. Balance data control and ownership, user privacy, and actionable insights and optimization KPI’s.

Many providers are looking at data clean room technology, and MMP’s (mobile measurement partners) are no different. MMPs facilitate mobile measurement and attribution and often, such as in the case of Singular, also collect additional data sets for the purposes of rich analytics.

Singular is responsible for collecting a multitude of data sets. There are aggregated data sets such as ad spend, creative, and bid data, which is then combined with device-level impressions, clicks and events. Advertisers often send additional first-party data, for example subscription information, so that ultimately Singular can calculate and visualize the KPIs that matter most towards optimization.

Singular sits at the intersection of multiple data sets and policy constraints and requirements that MMP’s need to accommodate. This naturally positions Singular to invest and double down on data clean room technology to provide marketers and their partners alike with secure data environments that empower all parties and still puts users first.