Quick and streamlined access to data is critical for businesses to run successful marketing and advertising campaigns. However, many businesses find it challenging to share data both internally between teams and with external partners, vendors, and stakeholders. Data collaboration has the potential to assist companies in unlocking new growth opportunities and delivering better experiences that align with today’s sophisticated customer journeys. Increased focus on customer data privacy, cookieless tech platforms, and the decentralization of data are driving companies to consider data collaboration solutions that adapt to the changing advertising landscape.
Ascend2 and Habu recently conducted a study to understand the owners of data collaboration initiatives, their data collaboration practices, and their future plans. A key finding was that data collaboration is critical for building rich first-party data sets. Data collaboration among businesses will also increase in the foreseeable future.
The following are the findings in detail.
See more: Most businesses that participated in the survey were data-driven. As third-party cookies stare at their eventual demise, many were building a robust first-party data asset. About 68% of survey respondents considered their company endemically data-rich, while just 3% considered themselves data poor. This supports the focus companies have placed on their first-party data strategy.
While companies are focused on building a first-party data asset, they also realize the importance of leveraging other data. This is reflected in the 59% of businesses that consider themselves as having a high level of experience and maturity with data collaboration.
How people would rank company’s current level of maturity and experience with data collaboration
Source: State of Data Collaboration Report
Multiple Stakeholders Are Responsible for Data Collaboration
Data collaboration touches several roles within a company. Cross-function buy-in and support are also necessary for a collaboration strategy to be successful. While about 37.2% of respondents responsible for data collaboration in their organizations were from business teams in product, marketing, and sales roles, 63.8% were from technical teams with data analysts, specialists, and engineers primarily owning the initiative.
Data clean rooms have become a common vehicle for collaboration. As their adoption grows and more solutions offer business-friendly tools, there may be an increase in more business users owning the responsibility.
Companies Are Leveraging Data Collaboration
The data collaboration industry is still maturing, and several existing approaches are evolving. However, several businesses are already adopting data collaboration solutions to uncover new insights and provide better analytics to their teams. About 68% of respondents indicated their organization had collaborated with another business within the last 12 months to share data and insights. Furthermore, respondents said that the most common data collaboration use case was analytics and insights, followed by securing access to data and enriching existing data.
The primary use cases for data collaboration today
Source: State of Data Collaboration Report
Data Clean Rooms Show Strong Adoption
Data clean rooms are new data collaboration solutions. However, 47% of respondents said that their companies already used data clean rooms. Companies in the retail, CPG, and media and entertainment industries showed the highest adoption of data clean rooms.
However, for the companies that still haven’t used these solutions, it may be possible that they are unfamiliar with the concept or they are evaluating use cases. Then there are heavily regulated industries like healthcare, where new technology adoption takes time. That said, as the data collaboration market matures, data clean room adoption may also increase.
Privacy Is the Biggest Blocker of Data Collaboration
Data collaboration comes with its share of roadblocks. According to the study, the biggest obstacle to data collaboration was privacy. This is not surprising as businesses try to protect their customer data, and any breach can lead to serious consequences. Besides privacy, the other common blockers are readiness of partners, access to data, technology, and legal implications.
Building a data collaboration practice is not just about getting a partner on board. Companies may be looking for solutions that can scale across partners. In such cases, new solutions that can help companies easily onboard partners and identify and deploy use cases at scale are vital in unlocking shared insights.
Data Collaboration Delivers Value
Data collaboration has gained importance in recent years. This is because companies try to differentiate themselves with unique premium data to get a holistic view of their customers and deliver experiences according to consumer expectations. While many companies have hesitated to share their rich data assets in the past due to privacy and security concerns, data clean rooms make it possible for them to do so in a privacy-safe and secure way to benefit them, their partners, and customers.
See more: Share and Bolster Data in a Privacy Safe Way With a Clean Room
Companies Intend to Further Drive Data Collaboration Practices
About 70% of respondents expected the level of data collaboration to increase in their companies over the next year. Further, about 80% intend to collaborate with other businesses to share data or insights over the next 12 months.
The CPG, retail, and media and entertainment industries are seeing the biggest increase in collaboration as they look to enrich their customer profiles and improve measurement by turning to the high-quality data being offered in their data clean room environments. With the increase in data clean room adoption across businesses and industries, the numbers may grow even more in the coming years.
A Foundation for the Future
As companies are compelled to embrace the rapid changes in the marketing and advertising ecosystem, data collaboration will be critical for a data-driven strategy to drive mutually-beneficial growth between businesses and deliver better consumer experiences. Moreover, with the increasing adoption of data collaboration solutions like data clean rooms, the number of collaborations is expected to shoot up in the coming years. It will enable brands and their partners to join hands to better understand, target, and measure customer behavior and accelerate the time to insight without compromising data privacy and control.
Have you implemented data collaboration? What benefits and challenges have you seen? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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