LAS VEGAS — They may be commonly used to allow different companies to collaborate on audience data sets without sharing them – but “clean rooms” could even find use within a single company.

Clean room technology allows media buyers and sellers to match their consumer data without directly sharing it with each other. With privacy regulation and deprecation of identifiers, it is emerging as a powerful tool.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Adam Gitlin, President, Annalect, says some brands are using the software to bridge divides that exist within their own walls.

Application of clean rooms

Gitlin says he is excited about three applications of clean rooms in 2023:

  • Measuring video impact.
  • Ecommerce.
  • Clients’ internal use.

The first two are “areas where I think we’re already seeing that clean room technologies are enabling access to much more powerful data”, Gitlin says.

But clean rooms are also going in-house.

“It doesn’t actually have to be all about how to attribute performance or targeted an audience,” Gitlin says. “It could be about just how you share customer data internally.

“(For) a lot of our clients, that’s a struggle. Just going back to just plain old CRM onboarding for targeting – for some of our clients, that’s two different groups and there’s concern about what data you let out from the customer group to the advertising group.

There’s a lot of low hanging fruit there that will be pretty exciting to see clients get excited about next year or this year”

Growing maturity

In 2022, many companies were still in a learning phase on clean rooms.

But, for others who had already dipped their toe in the water, the year saw a consolidation of the benefits.

Although data clean room tech has been around for a few years now, application in media is relatively recent.

“There’s belief that there’s value in the data that companies have, and a hesitation in what to do with that data in a safe way,” Gitlin says.

“There’s a lot of folks who are concerned and rightfully so about regulation and trust and consumer trust.

“When you can utilise technology that gives you the ultimate control over what to do with that, you get excited because (they say), ‘Finally, I can now actually do something more with this data because I have control.”

Direct conversations

Annalect is a data analytics and technology company that provides marketing and advertising services to businesses.

Annalect offers a range of services, including data analytics, media planning and buying, digital marketing, and customer data management.

It is a subsidiary of Omnicom Group Inc, one of the largest global advertising and marketing communications companies.

Gitlin is a fan of clean rooms. “What it allows for … is for two or more companies to work together to get more value from their data without having to go through an intermediary party,” he adds.

“Everyone benefits from having a direct conversation rather than having to go through an intermediary, which inevitably creates a barrier to the data owner understanding the use cases better. So it’s kind of a win-win all around.

You’re watching ‘Clean Rooms: Collaboration Goes Mainstream,’ a Beet.TV Leadership Series produced at CES 2023, presented by Habu. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. For all of our coverage from CES 2023, please click here.