• by Laurie Sullivan , April 20, 2022

Roku this week dove into data cleanrooms, offering brands and agencies a way to collaborate with them using encrypted first-party data. The concept -- built for streaming television -- is intended to make planning and measuring campaigns easier without the use of cookies.

“This is in the early stages, but we are actively running campaigns through the cleanroom,” said Louqman Parampath, vice president of product management of advertising at Roku, which has 60 million active accounts. “We believe over time this will be the way first-party data will be used for connected TV.”

Brands and agencies using cleanrooms are typically those that already buy a lot of media on Roku. Omnicom Media Group, Dentsu, Horizon Media, Icon Media Direct, and Camelot use Roku’s cleanroom today on live campaigns.

The cleanroom directly integrates with OneView, Roku’s ad platform built for TV streaming, making it easier for marketers to go from planning to buying without additional steps, third-party fees, or missed audiences.

“This approach puts privacy and transparency first,” Parampath said.

The news, announced Tuesday, enables brands to load their company’s data into a secure environment, creating a secure connection between Roku data and the advertiser’s data. This allows brands to match their own data to Roku’s without sharing or exposing any identifiable data.

Brands can query match the data and run analyses to understand potential campaign reach, current audience delivery, and advertising impact on product sales and sign-ups. Roku’s cleanroom is built on top of Snowflake and its Media Data Cloud technologies. Audience segments are created using the data.

Parampath said the available data in the cleanroom changes per advertiser. “We’re still discussing those details, but the point is advertisers bring their own data to match against Roku’s. None of the data is identifiable.”

Roku’s clean room will also be available to measurement providers in the Roku Measurement Partner Program, which includes more than 20 certified partners helping marketers understand the impact of ads on the Roku platform. Foursquare, a location technology platform, is using Roku’s clean room so that brands can better personalize and attribute their ad campaigns in OneView across devices and platforms.

The ads targeted to consumers on OneView, an omnichannel demand side platform (DSP), can reach their audience on CTV, display and mobile.