If you work in the tech industry, when you hear the term “clean room” you are probably thinking about “a controlled environment where pollutants like dust, airborne microbes, and aerosol particles are filtered out in order to provide the cleanest area possible. Most cleanrooms are used for manufacturing products such as electronics, pharmaceutical products, and medical equipment.” Data clean rooms however, are metaphorical and anonymized rooms where big companies like Google, Amazon, Target, etc., meet with brands and share aggregated data to get some helpful knowledge on their audiences, which includes you, in order to better market products to this audience. Apparently these rooms are secure in that your information is anonymized and only specific brands are allowed in the room at a certain time.
“The PII data sent to the clean room is hashed for transmission and once it enters the clean room it is secured and encrypted, protecting it from unauthorized access. Brands have full control over the clean room, while partners can get a feed with hashed PII data as an output. This anonymized data can then be shared in a compliant way with… media/publisher platforms like Facebook and Google.”, (Bharadwaj).
In our current world where companies are being forced to crack down on user privacy by legislation, these clean rooms are the newest alternative to data tracking for marketing analysts and advertisers. Ideally, these clean rooms are the best of both worlds. While in the rooms, both parties can get valuable data without violating privacy laws.
How does this affect your business?
If you are a brand that would like to gain more insight into your target market audience, these may be an option for you. If not, you can just feel better about knowing that your data is being used more legally and securely. From a marketing standpoint, clean rooms may be the future of cookies and we may be on the path to a more secure future of gathering and sharing data.
Sources
Bharadwaj, Madan. “Q: What Is a Data Clean Room?” Measured®: Marketing Attribution & Incrementality Testing, Measured Inc., 21 Sept. 2021, www.measured.com/faq/what-is-a-data-clean-room?utm_source=google-search&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=&utm_campaign=DSA%2BAll%2BPages&hsa_acc=5204827894&hsa_cam=2040768455&hsa_grp=72142793437&hsa_ad=356516632043&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=dsa-19959388920&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnaeNBhCUARIsABEee8WCoxzXum2eVaKMwdriaM_mi2ZkHc36ZEGvdZLO_XMWwSWbC5ZUxmcaAqZSEALw_wcB.
Barwick, Ryan. “Clean Rooms, Explained: How They Became the Buzziest Tool in Ad Tech.” Morning Brew, 22 Nov. 2021, www.morningbrew.com/marketing/stories/2021/11/22/clean-rooms-explained-how-they-became-the-buzziest-tool-in-ad-tech?utm_campaign=mkb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew&mid=f29cd6ec3cdaedfdb6a79182edd7be01.
“What Is a Cleanroom? – Angstrom Technology Cleanroom Solutions.” Angstrom Technology, 26 Aug. 2021, angstromtechnology.com/what-is-a-cleanroom/.
