Data Interoperability - AdTech

Interoperability - Clean Room Must Have 

A new world dawns and the rise of the Clean Room era is well and truly upon us, fuelled by more accessibility to data, privacy-first platforms and, more importantly, a more open ecosystem, even with walled gardens.

But what does this mean, are all clean rooms created equal? Certainly not, and (4) key pillars are essential to a successful rollout or selection of a clean room for any brand or organisation.

Interoperability = Identity | Activation | Data Collaboration

Let's take a more in-depth look at these pillars.

Interoperability - What does interoperability stand for, and why is this important? In the most rudimentary sense being interoperable means you can interact on many levels and with many partners without losing the intrinsic value of the initial/base layer of data. For example, a record against a consumer. 

eg. Contact, Jane Doe is a record with key flags attached to it, purchase behaviour/history, Opted-in, eMail, address, Lifestyle/Stage etc.

On its own, it has enormous value to an organisation to map LTV, Full Funnel Marketing, Propensity to purchase, and direct addressability through Direct Mail and Direct Contact channels. However, on its own, it is siloed; it sits in one channel, a CRM, CDP, possibly or data lake, there is an argument that a CDP may have an element of interoperability, but few offer breadth to see its actual true omnichannel value.

Interoperability also offers the new dawn of convergence between data engineering and data science with performance marketing, giving these (2) departments much closer ties; how do we extract value from our existing data, and deliver more value to our customers?

A true clean room should offer and deliver the capability to make the Jane Doe data asset interoperable on many levels.

Identity - Interoperability should allow you to resolve in a privacy-first world the evolved identity of a customer and widen the breadth, understanding and knowledge of that customer, as with a  recent survey by Accenture, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognise, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations. Therefore, having an interoperable platform that resolves an identity down to an Identifier is a win for marketers.

Collaboration - Interoperability should allow brands to be able to work with many partners, both data partners like Circana, CACI, Experian, Dynata, Mastercard etc, under a common identifier that truly links Jane Doe across the ecosystem; true interoperability delivers this on a deterministic level, not a probabilistic one. 

eg. Jane Doe exists in both the CRM, Experian, and Circana datasets therefore, we bring all 3 data sources together as (1) record. 

This is also true for partners, eg. take a CPG looking to work with a Retailer, end consumer point, usually offline and bricks and mortar purchase. In an interoperable world, a CPG should be able to join offline loyalty purchase data to a data lake record used in activation - therefore closing the loop. Collaboration inside a clean room opens up so many more possibilities for brands to utilise “data science” to truly understand their customers better and remove the unwanted noise in marketing communications to customers who simply are not interested. After all, marketing aims to delight and engage with new and existing customers.

Activation - This is the killer, this is the one that cause’s so much confusion in the ID World; many view ID-based targeting as the next new thing, but not all IDs are created equal in-fact you wouldn't be wrong if you thought ID’s fall short, and there is good reason for this. Without interoperability ID based targeting becomes a channel game, therefore, falls short of the ability to achieve true addressable reach, coupled with a lack of interoperability means your learnings, breadth and omnichannel KPIs cannot be hit.

A true clean room should offer interoperability across the entire ecosystem, an identifier that not only allows you to bring the data together but also allows you to be ankle to onboard/activate the same base layer of audience data agnostically on any platform, Social, CTV, VOD, Programmatic, Search etc.… If an ID-based solution only serves to deliver against 1,2, or 4 channels or in a single channel, it is not interoperable. 

As we race toward the final demise of the cookie (yes, I mentioned it, and many would say, oh god, we are still talking about cookie depreciation), clean rooms will be an absolutely essential part of the marketing stack as brands will have to move towards a resolved identity, and to be truly effective, it will have to be interoperable across many layers of the MarTech/AdTech ecosystem. We are in a time where activation sits across (2) areas of addressability and, for some brands, the struggle between addressable reach and deterministic targeting is a real battle; however, PAIR from Google is here, the race towards a cookieless world is reaching the final hurdle, and deterministic targeting (as a norm) will be here all too soon.

In summary, not all clean rooms are created equal, and the (4) key pillars of Interoperability = Identity | Activation | Data Collaboration are essential base layer criteria in the assessment of any clean room solution for any brand embarking on a clean room journey.