Daniella Harkins.
As the industry gears up for privacy reforms this year – impacting what information advertisers can collect about consumers and also the where, when and why of doing it – data collaboration is emerging as an option brands can use to uncover insights while remaining on-side with incoming regulations.
IAB Australia defines data collaboration as using technology to combine and analyse data sets within an organisation or with external partners to enable everything from uncovering new consumer insights and enabling accurate cross-screen measurement to expanding reach and creating brand-building media networks.
Most typically, this collaboration would come about via a data clean room – described by IAB as a secure environment which allows two or more participants to leverage data assets for specific, mutually agreed upon uses, while guaranteeing enforcement of strict data access limitations.
LiveRamp’s SVP of GTM, Daniella Harkins, said the decentralisation of data in today’s world can make it difficult for brands to access the insights they need in order to understand their customers.
“If you think about the different types of brands that are trying to leverage their data about consumers, some of them have a tremendous amount of data and some of them don't, but consumers still expect like the same relevancy and personalised experiences either way,” she said.
“Thinking about how to use that data, as well as how to centralise and get access to the right data, is one of the biggest challenges that the industry faces today. There's no shortage of data, but the challenge oftentimes becomes how do you link that data in a compliant way that allows you to use it to inform your marketing activity?”
For both LiveRamp – who in the past 18 months has developed a property audience collaboration product with REA Group, enhanced News Corp’s Customer Match advertising targeting capabilities, created an identity solution with media agency Hatched and expanded its partnership with Pinterest to offer a better global integration for advertisers - and other adtechs in the industry, this has translated into an increased demand from clients around data solutions that prioritise privacy while still allowing for collaboration.
Harkins said attribution and measurement continue to be issues for marketers to wrangle with - if a brand is spending a certain percent of their media budget with CTV providers, as an example, how can they more effectively tie that CTV ad exposure back to a conversion point?
“How can you bring together and gain access to data that a brand's never had access to before to be able to carry out those advanced analytics?” she said.
“We see it a lot with media networks wanting to provide access to their data to be able to monetise it - how can they do that in a secure environment that doesn't require any sort of leakage of that data?”
Brands collaborating to add either first-party or third-party data to existing, internal datasets can use that added data to generate a greater understanding of their customers, allowing them to then tailor products and services to their customers’ needs.
The IAB said this is why marketing is one of the most prevalent applications of data enrichment.
“It solves key challenges by providing additional attributes about current customers and identifying new audiences that are likely to become high-value customers,” said the industry body in its Data Collaboration Platforms Explainer document.
“Data enrichment can transform a business’ basic customer data into a more complete picture of demographic, geographic, psychographic and purchasing behaviours.”
Harkins – who made the trip out from her home base of the US to Australia at numerous points last year, including to speak on panels at News Corp and IAB events – said the beauty of the local market is the agility that it possesses and the openness it has to test and learn.
“In terms of brands and publishers being data-forward, I think Australia is in a pretty good spot,” she said.
“I think there's a risk tolerance here, which I view as complimentary, because you need to have some of that tolerance to be able to do the testing and learning in this market. The speed with which the market is embracing collaboration is arguably faster than I've seen in other markets and the data-first mentality is exciting as well.”
Despite the first portion of agreed recommendations from the Privacy Act Review being introduced by the government last year, the opening tranche of the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 didn't include anything around first-party and third-party data collection, definitions of personal information or how a 'fair and reasonable test' would apply to the use of such information.
Prior to the initial legislation coming into effect, the advertising industry was cautious and confused, with the Australian Association of National Advertisers’ director of policy and regulatory affairs, Megan McEwin, telling the audience at AdNews’ Brisbane L!VE that "it's so complicated and so confusing, I don't think any of our members feel like they're really on top of it yet."
Harkins said that due to fear from marketers and advertisers around what will eventually be unveiled, many are afraid to implement any proactive initiatives due to a degree of too much uncertainty and risk, with some choosing to wait until more guidance becomes available.
“What I would say is look to other markets - the likes of GDPR in the EU and CCPA in the US state of California - and how they have navigated some of the change in regulation,” she told AdNews.
“If I was a marketer, I would start looking for partners and brands that already work in those environments. There's a competitive advantage to be had if you are working with partners that are focused on the ethical use of data and that are thinking about regulation, privacy and security from the ground up, in terms of building products that are already operating in those markets.
“When you don't know, the unknown is oftentimes the scariest part, but if we look at how the regulation has played out in other markets, there's a little bit more of a framework for brands to get comfortable to be able to still move forward in a time of uncertainty that we're in right now in this market.”
Looking ahead to what CMOs are focused on for 2025, Harkins said that the partnership ecosystem has become incredibly complex, and the changes in the consumer journey paired with the power of data to fuel and drive that ecosystem, is a topic that she’s hearing is on the mind of marketers constantly.
“Inherently, collaboration has to be part of that - when they think about their partnership ecosystem, they're thinking about how they can get more out of that partnership ecosystem, which will lead to what we call multi-party collaboration,” she said.
“How can you make all of these different partners consistent and standardise how you engage and work with all of that data?"
AI is also top of mind for a lot of CMOs, as they're trying to figure out what the applications of the technologies that are going to drive business results are versus just being 'noise' in the market.
"How do we take inherently technical applications and apply natural language to them to make them much more marketer friendly?" she said.
“I think that's extremely powerful and I think a lot of CMOs are looking at that, trying to figure out what that right application is.”
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