In the post-cookie world, companies will need to find equally effective ways to collect, share and analyze data for marketing purposes, without compromising privacy.
One solution is Data Cleanroom, a service that enables brands to share data and information with partner organizations while maintaining the privacy of those whose data is shared.
To find out more, TechRadar Pro spoke with Barak Witkowski, executive vice president of products at marketing analytics firm AppsFlyer, which recently launched its own data cleanroom in partnership with Intel.
He precisely explained how these services work and provided an overview of the techniques and technologies that will allow marketers to comply with data privacy regulations for years to come.
What is a data clean room?
A data cleanroom is software that enables brands and their partners to share data and learn from each other while fully preserving user privacy by not sharing any personally identifiable information or raw data with each other. Think of it like Switzerland for data.
Currently, there are two types of data cleanroom solutions available in the martech industry: walled garden solutions and stand-alone solutions, both of which have their own advantages and limitations.
What are the benefits to consumers beyond the compliance benefits to brands?
Consumers have become accustomed to a certain level of user experience when interacting with brands, such as viewing personalized and relevant content within an app, which has traditionally been facilitated by access to user-level data, such as cookies on the web or identifiers on mobile devices. devices.
However, exchanging data at the user level just because that information is based on that has created the privacy problem that exists today. Consumers want to know how their data is being shared (rightfully so), and new privacy regulations reflect that change.
With AppsFlyer's Privacy Cloud and other data cleanroom solutions, consumers can still get the value and experience they expect from brands, without privacy concerns about how their data is handled.
There should be no compromise between customer experience and privacy. Any compromise from either party is a win-lose situation, especially for the end user.
With the impending demise of third-party cookies, what role will clean rooms play in meeting the demand for privacy and marketing information?
Data sharing (between brands and partners) has always been the foundation for accurate and actionable measurement, enabling both parties to grow their businesses and provide a better experience for end users. However, until now, this data exchange has been done only on the basis of user-level databases.
Data clean rooms are a solution that maintains the high value and customer experience that cookies, credentials, and other user-level data currently enable without privacy concerns.
They allow brands, app developers, ad networks, etc. to collaborate, share data, and generate insights, which is essential to creating an exceptional experience while preserving user privacy. Brands will be able to define their own business logic, compliance and data governance, to ensure that sensitive data is secure and private at the user level, exactly as it should be.
Are there use cases for data clean rooms outside of the marketing industry?
Data clean rooms are used in various industries. They are generally secure environments where multiple parties can collaborate on sensitive and restricted data sets. Applications of this concept can be found in healthcare and life sciences, insurance, fintech, and other areas where sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), needs to be shared between multiple parties. to perform analysis and generate information.
How is AppFlyer's solution different from others on the market?
AppsFlyer's Privacy Cloud enables our customers and partners to track and comply with all privacy rules and guidelines, while getting the accurate information they need to grow their business.
Other existing data clean rooms have certain limitations. For example, Walled Garden data cleanrooms do not have cross-channel access, which means that owned data is primarily shared with their own datasets. Other standalone data cleanroom solutions may be limited to the granularity of their own data and have small ecosystems of partners. More importantly, they lack the expertise to generate the insights the marketer needs, something AppsFlyer has been doing successfully for the last decade.
AppsFlyer Privacy Cloud is multi-channel and offers the best measurement features marketers need, access to AppsFlyer's integrated ecosystem of partners, aggregated reporting, and is suitable for both business users and marketers.
As part of this, we entered into a long-term collaboration with Intel to work on privacy-preserving cryptographic solutions such as homomorphic encryption (HE) and private set intersection (PSI).
What is the meaning of homomorphic encryption in this context?
Homomorphic encryption makes it possible to generate aggregate information about encrypted data, without even decrypting it. It remains fully encrypted at all times. Therefore, it is a "zero trust" technique, in the sense that even the operator of the data clean room does not have access to the raw data.
Like other forms of encryption, homomorphic encryption uses a public key to encrypt data. Unlike other forms of encryption, it uses an algebraic system to allow functions to be performed on the data while it is encrypted. Then only the person with the corresponding private key can access the unencrypted data after the functions and manipulation are complete. This allows data to be and remain secure and private even when someone else is using it.
Tell us about the collaboration with Intel
Our collaboration with Intel goes beyond simply using the company's hardware, it is Intel's complete PSI/HE stack as well as its hardware solution, and will allow us to develop and advance cryptographic solutions while maintaining confidentiality.
We realized that with the scale of our data, the amount of computation required to run these cryptographic solutions is simply not realistic. By partnering with a strong leader like Intel, who shares with us the vision of innovation around privacy-preserving cryptographic technologies, we will be able to develop a scalable solution for the ecosystem faster.
These solutions will make AppsFlyer Privacy Cloud more comprehensive by giving all parties the ability to use "zero trust technologies" where sensitive data does not enter the cloud until it is encrypted.
What other technologies does AppsFlyer see as playing a role in a post-cookie marketing ecosystem?
We see two advancements that are increasingly important in a world without user-level credentials: incremental-based solutions and predictive analytics.
With access to user-level data, marketers have always been able to "match" a desired action (ad click, impression, etc.) with a conversion. But as we move away from user-level data, this will become harder to do, and we'll see more emphasis on measuring incremental lift. This will allow marketers to understand the real impact of their investments, discovering which conversions are the result of marketing efforts and which would have occurred organically. Incrementality-based solutions use test and control groups to isolate many affected variables and help marketers optimize accordingly.
Predictive analytics will be especially useful for any iOS-focused mobile marketer, but not exclusively. Following Apple's update to iOS 14.5, which essentially made the identifier known as IDFA obsolete, the company introduced its SKAdNetwork framework. In this framework, marketers have a very short window to measure campaign performance and make decisions: 24 to 72 hours. Predictive technologies will allow marketers to take advantage of early engagement signals generated in this initial window and predict long-term campaign performance accordingly.
Both of these solutions are revolutionary advancements that will be powerful tools in any marketer's arsenal.