In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, improving ad effectiveness is more crucial than ever. Through the power of clean rooms, companies can collaborate and connect data for deeper measurement insights and ad personalization while still protecting consumer privacy.
In our recent webinar, industry experts Kyle Shank, Director of Media Tech, Analytics and Ops at Hershey’s, and Tousanna Durgan, Director, Solution Engineering at LiveRamp, discussed how clean rooms can transform advertising strategies for marketers. Here’s practical advice they shared on leveraging clean rooms to boost your ad campaigns.
What Are Clean Rooms?
Clean rooms are secure environments where multiple organizations can bring their data together for analysis while protecting customer privacy. This technology enables advertisers to gain deeper insights into their campaigns by securely connecting data and analyzing performance with partners across media networks, MVPDs, CTV platforms, and more.
Connecting data with a consistent identifier in a clean room enables a brand to accurately measure true reach and performance for their audiences at a household level and gain insights to inform segmentation strategies.
The Benefits of Clean Rooms
1. Enhanced data collaboration
Clean rooms facilitate seamless data integration from various sources, including walled gardens and cloud platforms. This integration enhances the richness of the data, leading to more precise targeting and measurement.
2. Privacy-centric insights
Clean rooms ensure that organizations can safely collaborate and analyze data in innovative ways while safeguarding consumer information.
3. Scalable insights
By using clean rooms, organizations can democratize data access across teams, enabling more people to derive actionable insights.
Hershey’s Journey with Clean Rooms
Hershey’s, a century-old company with limited first-party data, faced unique challenges in understanding consumer behavior Shank highlighted three primary marketing challenges his team had and how clean rooms helped address them:
1. Transitioning to portfolio-level advertising
Hershey’s needed to shift from a brand-centric approach to a portfolio-focused strategy. Clean rooms allowed them to analyze data across multiple brands, identifying user overlaps and optimizing ad spends. For example, they could assess whether targeting the same audience across different platforms (like Meta and Snapchat) was cost-effective.
2. Maximizing first-party and third-party data
With limited first-party data, Hershey’s had to extract maximum value from available data. Clean rooms enabled them to integrate and analyze syndicated third-party data alongside their own, enhancing their understanding of consumer behavior and campaign performance.
3. Enhancing retail media strategies
Retail media is a growing investment for CPG advertisers. Hershey’s used clean rooms to integrate retail media data with their own, fostering greater transparency and more effective media governance. For instance, they collaborated with Amazon’s clean room to analyze cross-product reach and conversion rates, optimizing their retail media strategies.
“Retail media has become such a growing part of media investment on the CPG side of the house,” Shank said. “How do I actually find better ways to show the value of it beyond just the financial exchange between someone who’s my customer at one moment and then my supplier in another?”
Practical Steps to Implement Clean Rooms
1. Start simple
Begin with straightforward use cases that are easy to explain and execute. For instance, Hershey’s initially focused on basic portfolio-level insights before moving to more complex analyses.
2. Be curious
Approach clean rooms with a hypothesis-driven mindset. Use them to explore new data connections and uncover hidden insights. For example, Hershey’s used geographical data to target campaigns more effectively, driving significant improvements in ad performance.
3. Value-driven investment
Understand the potential ROI of your clean room initiatives. Ensure that every investment in clean room technology and data integration delivers measurable value.
4. Collaborate with partners
Identify key partners in your ecosystem – such as retail media networks, data providers, and other platforms – and explore collaborative opportunities within clean rooms. This collaboration can enhance data richness and provide more comprehensive insights.
“Think about your ecosystem and who’s valuable to you. Is it retail media? Is it other publishers? Is it data providers or other platforms? You could benefit from working more closely with them in a clean room. Once you have that priority set of partners, we can map out a plan for those simple use cases, moving into more complex use cases,” said Durgan.
Conclusion
Clean rooms are transforming the way advertisers approach data analysis and campaign optimization. By integrating diverse data sources in a secure environment, clean rooms offer unparalleled insights, driving more effective advertising strategies. As demonstrated by Hershey’s success, starting with simple use cases, maintaining curiosity, ensuring value-driven investments, and fostering collaboration can significantly enhance ad effectiveness. For more clean room tips and use cases, watch the webinar here.
If you’re ready for a closer look at the LiveRamp clean room, powered by Habu, check out this demo.
