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In the 2024 CMO Pulse Survey by Forrester, 90% of respondents said they currently use a data clean room (DCR) for marketing use cases. While most reported using their DCR primarily for marketing measurement, others had begun to explore other use cases—such as audience segmentation and customer analytics—and discovered a highly fragmented market in the process.
With no analyst wave or quadrant on DCRs for guidance, how can enterprises demystify this burgeoning and highly complicated market? Don’t worry. We have you covered.
Read on for insights into emerging categories of data clean rooms, as well as where and when we see them as solid or risky to future-proof your advertising and monetization strategies through data collaboration.
The Data Clean Room Market
The market is rapidly growing and evolving, but we can already find data clean room technology in different shapes and forms, with the ultimate goal of helping two or more organizations collaborate using their respective, consented first-party data in a private and secure environment.
| Independent Vendors | Data Warehouse | Walled Gardens & Publishers | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Pure Play DCR | Identity and Data Provider with DCR | CDP with DCR | Data Warehouse DCR | Walled Garden DCR |
| Vendor examples | InfoSum Habu Decentriq Optable | Liveramp Merkury Neustar | Adobe BlueConic | Databricks Snowflake Google (upcoming) | Amazon Facebook Google |
| Cookieless ID | No | Yes | No | No | No |
| ID Agnostic | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| No-Code UI | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
Legend
- Vendor examples: Illustrative representing a few vendors in the specified category.
- Cookieless ID: Represents alternative identity solutions from 3rd-party cookies provided by vendors.
- ID Agnostic: Represents the ability for a DCR to operate with any identity chosen by collaboration parties, as opposed to forcing usage of one or a few specific identities.
- No-Code UI: Represents the ability for business users to execute data collaboration use cases without relying on data engineering or data analytics teams.
Independent vendors
Pure play DCR
Pure play data clean room solutions are provided by companies focused on data collaboration use cases in a neutral and privacy-safe environment. Pure play vendors could be considered “best-of-breed” as they focus on data collaboration technology, without looking to lock clients in any cloud, identity or customer data platform (CDP) components. Their primary advantage is offering a user-friendly UI reducing dependency on IT and data teams.
| Vendor Examples | InfoSum, Habu, Decentriq, Optable |
| Cookieless ID | No, pure play vendors do not provide a cookieless ID. |
| ID Agnostic | Yes, while a common ID is required to deterministically match data sets between a brand and its collaboration partner(s), pure play vendors can operate with any chosen identifier. |
| No-code UI | Yes, these vendors differentiate themselves from alternatives solutions by providing a user-friendly no-code UI for users. |
Recommended when:
- Looking for a neutral technology not tied to any ID or any other technology choice in a client stack
- Looking to provide business access to DCR for self-serve collaboration
Avoid when:
- Solution not adopted by data collaboration partners
Identity and data provider with DCR
Some identity and data provider vendors have built data clean room technology before the category name even existed, such as Liveramp Safe Haven, for example. Others have created a solution to prepare for market demand to operate in a world without third-party cookies.
These solutions are often limited and highly technical — requiring the user to write SQL queries — and locks users into the ID solution sold by the vendor.
| Vendor Examples | InfoSum, Habu, Decentriq, Optable |
| Cookieless ID | Yes, vendors are providing an alternative ID to 3rd-party cookies. |
| ID Agnostic | No, the data clean room is built to operate with the vendor cookieless ID. |
| No-code UI | No, the technology was not built to be used by business users. |
Recommended when:
- Already using the ID from the same vendor and data partners are also leveraging the same ID
Avoid when:
- Looking to avoid lock-in using the same vendor for both identity and data collaboration
- Technology not adopted by data collaboration partners
CDP with DCR
So far, a couple of CDP vendors have built or announced data clean room capabilities. Among all the categories of clean room technology, these are the least likely to see adoption. They would require the brand and its data partner to adopt the same CDP technology, which is a big ask.
However, the market is moving toward the adoption of composable CDPs — as opposed to bundled CDPs — where customer data remains stored in a warehouse. While CDPs vendor clean rooms offer limited value on their own, they can provide businesses with a considerable advantage when collaborating with a DCR. (We’ll explore how later.)
| Vendor Examples | Adobe, BlueConic |
| Cookieless ID | No, collaboration will be done on an ID already present in the CDP data set |
| ID Agnostic | Yes, any ID can be used to deterministically match data sets |
| No-code UI | Yes, even if the UI remains technical |
Recommended when:
- Already deploying the vendor’s CDP and looking to work with very few partners who will be making the same technology choices
Avoid when:
- Looking to avoid lock-in with one technology
- Planning to work with an extended list of partners
- Looking to for a future-proof solution
Data Warehouses
Data Warehouse DCR
Brands are expanding their adoption of cloud data warehouse technology to centralize their customer data in one place. Add in Data Shares — a new way to provide controlled access to data — and you find the ingredients to easily create a data clean room for collaboration.
Warehouses are providing great technology for technical users, and a framework for data collaboration allowing their vendor partner ecosystem to build business UI on top of the infrastructure. Samooha is a recent example of a DCR built exclusively on Snowflake. With the right conditions in place, expect data warehouse clean room technology adoption to keep growing rapidly.
| Vendor Examples | Databricks, Snowflake, Google (upcoming) |
| Cookieless ID | No, data warehouses do not provide cookieless IDs. |
| ID Agnostic | Yes, collaboration can be done on any chosen ID. |
| No-code UI | No, only a technical SQL interface is provided. It’s possible to leverage partner vendors integrating directly with the warehouse technology to access a business UI. |
Recommended when:
- Data is already centralized in the same cloud data warehouse technology
Avoid when:
- Looking for business teams to access the DCR via a no-code UI
Publishers
Walled Garden DCR
The first form of a data clean room was offered by Google when they stopped sending log level data to advertisers. It was an alternative to allow advertisers to measure the performance of their ad campaigns without getting the raw data back.
Since the initial launch of Google Ads Data Hub, other walled gardens followed, and provided their own clean room technology for brands.
These are and will continue to be the only solution for brands to collaborate with walled gardens.
| Vendor Examples | Amazon, Facebook, Google |
| Cookieless ID | No |
| ID Agnostic | No |
| No-code UI | No |
Recommended when:
- Using large advertising budgets on walled gardens and looking to run some analytics from these campaigns
Avoid when:
- Limited spend or not using the walled garden channels
Publisher DCR
Premium publishers have recently announced their own data clean rooms, allowing brands to collaborate and get insights in a way similar to walled gardens. The offerings from publisher clean rooms varies greatly. It is also worth noting that publishers rarely will build their own data collaboration technology without relying on existing frameworks and vendors mentioned here. (For example, Disney is working with InfoSum, Habu and Snowflake.)
“On the open web, digital publishers have concerns about sharing data about visitors to their sites. Personal information on web visitors — stored in cookies — can seep into what’s known as the ‘bid stream,’ the trail of data that informs online ad auctions. Publishers worry ad tech specialists could identify their proprietary audiences using easy-to-crack identity trackers, and then target those consumers on other websites — perhaps at reduced rates. Not to mention, brands worry about commingling their consumer data with publishers applying that data to help a brand’s rivals.”
— Ronak Shah,
Sales Director at Slalom
| Vendor Examples | Disney, NBCU, Roku |
| Cookieless ID | Sometimes, for example, NBCU launched their own identity and data platform named NBCUnified. |
| ID Agnostic | No, most publishers will only access a subset of identities (sometimes only one option). |
| No-code UI | Sometimes, most likely to happen via the partnership with another DCR technology vendor. |
Recommended when:
- High spends on publisher channels and looking to improve performance as well as run analytics from campaigns launched on publisher channels
Avoid when:
- Limited to no spend on channels
A look ahead at the changing data clean room menu
Data clean rooms are like menu items that you can’t order alone — you need your entire table to take the same.
There is no doubt that publisher-owned data clean rooms — walled gardens and premium publishers — will be adopted. They have enough control to select the technology, and advertisers won’t have a choice but to follow. It’s also safe to say that publishers will want to be in the DCRs adopted by advertisers, and advertisers will need to go where publishers holding most of their ad budget are. As for the rest, businesses can likely expect a highly fragmented market for the next few years, before seeing a consolidation.
As we look ahead at the changing DCR market, it’s worth noting two additional types of data clean rooms will have a critical edge:
- Data warehouses — by already hosting customer data, using their DCR framework is an obvious choice.
- Independent pure play vendors have the benefit of promoting interoperability and offering a business interface, which is highly valuable to increase adoption in organizations.
Gain an advantage by collaborating with a data clean room
There’s little doubt data clean rooms will be at the forefront of your second-party data strategy. While the DCR you choose will depend on your business needs and resources, you can gain a significant edge by collaborating with a composable CDP like that offered by Uniphore.
Uniphore’s flexible composable CDP power your first-party data strategy and activates your customer experiences across every channel. That ensures your marketing data is used optimally—for any use case. That’s a serious boost of confidence in a fragmented and uncertain market.