The hottest new tech tool designed to enliven digital advertising while staying within privacy rails requires a big cost – but can come with a big up-side.

That is according to a leader from the digital ad industry’s umbrella body, which just commissioned a big survey on the topic.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Pam Zucker, Chief Strategy Officer, IAB, explains how “clean rooms” are getting adopted.

Big investment

Clean rooms allow companies to use and share data in a controlled and secure environment, ensuring that sensitive information is protected and that the privacy of consumers is not violated.

They are used for tasks such as audience insights, audience segmentation and activation, and measurement and attribution.

“Most companies that are using data clean rooms are investing over $1 million in data clean rooms,” Zucker says. “That’s a really big investment.

“You need to be very intentional about how you’re going about it and how you want to use it, because it’s a really big investment in time and people.”

Survey results

With its State Of Data 2023, IAB commissioned Ipsos to survey 203 brands, publishers/retailers and agencies on their use of clean rooms and other privacy-preserving tech (CDPs, CMPs and DMPs):

  1. Uses: While most clean users are leveraging them for privacy controls, far fewer are using their less-known capabilities in attribution, ROI/ROAS measurement, media or marketing mix modeling, propensity modelling and predictive analysis.
  2. Investment: Nearly half of clean room users (49%) have six or more employees dedicated to the technology. Most are spending a minimum $200,000 per year.
  3. Challenges: Half of clean room customers say leveraging results is a challenge.
  4. Fuel: New privacy laws and loss of data signals drive the need for privacy software.

Get interoperable

Despite the challenges and the investment requires, for companies that can invest, there is time and incentive to get involved, Zucker says.

“We’re in the early stages of data clean rooms,” she says. “So, if you haven’t started yet, don’t worry, there’s plenty of time to get involved.

“With the deprecation of cookies and the loss of other signals, this is a way to ensure that you still have that information in a privacy compliant way.”

But Zucker is also cautious that new clean room tech doesn’t repeat the same “fragmentation” problems that have plagued other ad-tech.

She adds: “We need to make sure is that the data clean rooms have interoperability from one publisher to another, so a marketer can really understand how their total campaign works and be able to do measurement and media effectiveness from a totality of their campaign.”

You’re watching ‘What’s Next: Scaling CTV Through Industry Collaboration,’ a Beet.TV Leadership Series produced at IAB ALM 2023, presented by Index Exchange. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews