Realizing Data’s Potential: A Guide for Data Owners

Across the advertising ecosystem, many stakeholders are impacted by Google’s impending third-party cookie deprecation. Perhaps none are affected more than the data owners who help brands and agencies reach target consumers through curated audiences. These audience providers play a pivotal role in connecting brands with the consumers most likely to benefit from their products. So, what steps can these data owners take to ensure their ability to continue servicing their clients effectively?

First and foremost, data owners need to prioritize compliant data collection. Building and nurturing direct relationships with consumers is crucial. Collect first-party data that is wholly consented through direct interactions such as loyalty programs, newsletters, surveys, and other engagement tactics. Additionally, improving data collection methods on owned platforms ensures that the data is accurate and reliable while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations.

Once the data set has been evaluated for compliant collection practices, it’s then possible to begin future-proofing audiences that may have been created from the data. This  can be achieved through clean rooms or strategic partnerships. There are pros and cons to both. Clean rooms provide a secure environment for data analysis without sharing raw data, ensuring privacy. However, for most organizations, a strategic partnership is likely the most efficient choice - especially if the partnership is with a technology partner, rather than another data owner.

A technology partnership can enable several desirable advanced capabilities including:

• Look-Alike Modeling: Using first-party data to find and target new audiences that resemble your existing customers.
• Semantic Audiences: Creating audience segments based on the meaning and context of content, ensuring relevant ad placements.
• Contextual Targeting: Transforming audiences or data into contextual targets, placing ads based on the content being consumed rather than tracking individual users.

In addition, select technology partnerships offer the added benefit of future-proofed wider reach by distributing new segments across multiple platforms using the identifier most preferred by the platform, regardless of whether or not the identifier is a cookie or an alternative identifier such as ID5 or UID 2.0 without the data owner needing to take-on the management of alternative identifiers or platform preferences.

By starting with compliant data and selecting the right technology partner, data owners have the opportunity to help their clients navigate the transition to a cookieless world. And, by taking these steps, they can maintain their relevance in the advertising ecosystem, while realizing their full data potential in a world without cookies.