Misplaced Pages

Data clean room

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Secure exchange of first-party data

The data clean room (DCR) is a secure, intermediary, cloud service used among companies to mutually agree on sharing sensitive first-party data, which is data that is collected directly from customers and consumers. Otherwise, organizations would use anonymized and obfuscated data to help preserve sensitive first-party data, such as personal identifiable information (PII). With organizations using other organizations' first-party data (third-party data) through DCRs, some say "third-party data has now become a first-class citizen in the information ecosystem".

On July 5, 2023, IAB Tech Lab, a non-profit consortium that develops open technical standards for the ad-supported digital economy, released a set of common principles and operating recommendations on using DCRs.

Motivations

The creation of DCRs was needed after the deprecation of third-party cookie data with Apple's AppTrackingTransparent (ATT) framework. In 2023, IAB Tech Lab released the Open Private Join and Activation (OPJA) specification to help with clean room interoperability among clean room providers.

The demand for data clean rooms has also increased because of the Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law, potential fears from data breaches such as the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and how some advertisers don't know the data they are purchasing.

Examples

In 2019, The Hershey Company pitched the idea of a data clean room to retailers to help "get data needed to see whether its ads encourage people to buy its chocolate bars." The data clean room would allow retailers to store their loyalty card data along with ad exposure data. However, retailers resisted the idea, instead wanting the data to be in a closed platform.

In 2023, Pinterest announced that it will be using a data clean room solution from LiveRamp with Albertsons.

Colt Technology Services has a travel platform that integrates with third party data so that employees are able to see emissions data and help them decide on choices for more sustainable travel.

Benefits

Using DCRs allow organizations to collaborate with other organizations and their data in hopes to deliver "new business opportunities and enhanced customer experiences" and is possibly "changing the way organizations collaborate, analyse and derive insights from data, enabling them to unlock new opportunities for growth and success". This data collaboration is also done where participants in the exchange are unable to see each other's raw data.

Privacy conerns

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), DCRs do not necessarily mean these solutions are private and thus could lead to privacy washing. Privacy washing occurs when a company claims to prioritize data protections for its customers' data, but actually fails to implement best practices for securing the data. In other words, DCRs may facilitate the exchange of data between untrusted parties.

Corporations who operate clean rooms argue against these privacy concerns. Matt Karasick, VP of product at LiveRamp, claims that when DCRs are implemented properly, privacy policies are adhered to. He also emphasizes that when using DCR automated data protections, no consumer data is shared using clean rooms. Vlad Stesin, co-founder and chief strategy officer at a DCR company Optable, also comments that DCRs "need to be part of a broader approach to data collaboration" in order to both adhere to privacy needs and create business value.

More criticisms of DCRs include more accurately describing them as "secure" rather than "private" due to data clean rooms being owned by data companies that have their own identity graph data to connect to.

Companies

A list of some companies that operate and offer data clean room solutions include:

  • InfoSum
  • Habu (acquired by LiveRamp in 2023)
  • Optable
  • Amazon AWS
  • Samooha (acquired by Snowflake in 2023)

See also

References

  1. ^ Schiff, Allison (2024-11-18). "The FTC Thinks Data Clean Rooms May Have A Few Dusty Corners". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2024-12-09.
  2. ^ Bridgwater, Adrian. "Third-Party Data Is Now First-Class". Forbes. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  3. Hercher, James (2023-07-05). "IAB Tech Lab Blesses Its First Set Of Data Clean Room Specs". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  4. ^ Boyle, Alyssa (2023-01-19). "How Albertsons Is Piloting Pinterest's New Clean Room". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  5. "Data Clean Rooms: Separating Fact from Fiction". Federal Trade Commission. 2024-11-13. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
  6. Joseph, Seb (2023-03-20). "WTF is a data clean room?". Digiday. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  7. Joseph, Seb (2019-02-05). "Hershey's is pitching a 'clean room' for data sharing to retailers". Digiday. Retrieved 2025-01-14.
  8. Joyce (2021-05-03). "Privacy-Washing: What Is It And How To Stop It From Happening To Your Company". California Lawyers Association. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  9. AdExchanger (2024-10-25). "Don't Hate, Collaborate; Getting Closure On Disclosures". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  10. Bruell, Alexandra (2021-08-17). "InfoSum Raises $65 Million as Companies Prioritize Data-Privacy". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  11. Hercher, James (2024-01-18). "LiveRamp Acquires Habu, As Walled Gardens Put The Squeeze On Indie Data Collaboration Tech". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  12. Vargas, Anthony (2023-04-18). "With Data Fragmentation On The Rise, Clean Room Optable Secures $20M Series A". AdExchanger. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  13. Bridgwater, Adrian. "AWS CEO Selipsky: We Are Making Cloud Easier To Use". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  14. "Snowflake Acquires Samooha". www.snowflake.com. Retrieved 2025-01-02.

Further reading

Categories: