Clean Rooms Unplugged – IAB Canada Data Night Recap

Last week IAB Canada gathered the Toronto community for an intimate, unplugged, no-nonsense spotlight on the latest star of the tech stack – the clean room. While the winter storm of the season was brewing outside, inside was heated with great information.  With addressability constraints looming in a cookieless future and the promise of clean rooms giving publishers and brands some attractive new options, it’s no surprise that this event was sold out. 

The evening kicked off with a level setting presentation by Evan Wood, Executive Vice President & Practice Leader, Strategic Services, Environics Analytics. The presentation covered the definition of clean rooms and explained how the new offering facilitates the use of first party data across multiple stakeholders in a privacy-safe way, to achieve greater accuracy in targeting, measurement & attribution as well as data enrichment. Quoting the recent IAB State of Data study, Evan highlighted that 61% of clean room adoption across brands, agencies and publishers occurred over the past 2 years and an additional 21% are considering them in the near future.  

Evan was then joined on stage by a panel of experts to further discuss the uptake on data clean rooms and further unpack the technology’s merits. Moderated by IAB Canada President Sonia Carreno, IAB Canada members Robin LeGassicke, Digital Managing Director, Cairns Oneil, Brad Jeffrey, Vice President, North American Sales, Optable and Mona M Afzal, Director of Enterprise Growth Marketing & Strategy, Scotiabank got right into a no-nonsense chat about what clean rooms are, how they work and what it means for the future of ad delivery and the consumer experience. 

Key Takeaways include: 

  1. Ensure data is privacy compliant – first party data must be privacy compliant at the source. It is critical to enable transparency and consent at the point of collection. 
  1. Interoperability with existing systems is key – ensure systems work together in harmony before picking a clean room partner. IAB Tech Lab has released standards for clean room interoperability which will help drive more options in the marketplace.  
  1. Shared standards and taxonomy set the stage for success and optimal integration of data sets. 
  1. Data security and trusted partners are essential across the entire supply chain. 
  1. Respecting user experiences remains at the heart of sustainable growth for relevant ads. Practicing good judgement on how consumers will experience this, or any other emerging form of addressability activation will help pave the way for growth and positive ad experiences in a cookieless world. 

IAB Canada would like to thank our speakers, sponsors and attendees who made our Data Night kick-off for this year such a success. We invite you to join us at our upcoming Business of Digital: Sight Sound and Motion where we will continue to lead the discussion on clean rooms and also encourage you to check out some of our resources on the topic and to get in touch if you have any questions.