The “buyer beware” attitude that long dominated within the third-party data ecosystem is—thankfully—becoming a thing of the past. That’s because a number of industry forces are driving us toward a future where high-quality, trusted third-party data is becoming easier to find and identify. More importantly, quality and trust are becoming absolute necessities for success in data-driven marketing.
For brands and agencies evaluating their data partnerships, it’s important to understand the forces at play within the data marketplace and how those forces can help them screen potential third-party data providers and partners. So, let’s dig deeper into the reasons today’s third-party data is becoming more trustworthy than ever.
Expanding Privacy Regulations
Let’s begin with one of the most obvious reasons that today’s third-party data is of higher quality than ever before: It has to be. That’s because a growing number of privacy regulations—kicked off notably with GDPR back in 2018—is reigning in questionable data collection and use practices when it comes to consumer data.
Are all of the regulations and their implementations perfect? No. But they’re a part of a necessary force helping our industry reestablish itself on a more trustworthy foundation. And for marketers looking to vet potential third-party data providers, discussions around applicable privacy regulations and how a company maintains compliance can be a fantastic starting place when determining data quality and trust. Here at Eyeota, for example, we’ve put together an industry-leading privacy center that details how we manage our privacy compliance globally, highlights how we protect and manage personal data, and provides details on how consumers can exercise their rights as data subjects.
The Rise of ID-Agnostic Solutions
It’s become clear that, following third-party cookie deprecation by Google in the coming year, there will not be a single ID to rule them all in the future. Going forward, advertisers need to be implementing solutions that help them build connections among their data assets, rather than siloes. They need to be able to connect all data points that collect audience identifiers, such as mobile IDs, hashed email, contextual data, first-party data and more.
The need for this interoperability and ID-agnostic approach has put pressure on the third-party data landscape to make their data as clean and usable as possible—across all potential channels, platforms and use cases. As such, marketers can use interoperability as yet another gauge of quality and trust.
At Eyeota, we’re answering the need for interoperability with Eyeota Translate, an agnostic identity solution for creating global data interoperability and increased digital reach and activation. Eyeota Translate connects all areas of data input that collect audience identifiers and probabilistically and deterministically matches those IDs using Eyeota’s proprietary cross-device graph. As a result, users are able to identify and activate the right audiences, through privacy-compliant and consumer-friendly targeting solutions, without being reliant on the use of third-party identifiers or cookies.
The Embrace of Industry Certifications
Finally, when it comes to the up-leveling of trust around third-party data, let’s talk about the tremendous work being done by organizations like IAB and Neutronian, among others. These industry entities have launched powerful programs designed to evaluate and certify that third-party data sources are what they say they are, and to ensure they’re meeting the high standards required in today’s marketplace when it comes to both privacy and performance.
IAB's Data Transparency Label, a global initiative set out by IAB Tech Lab and its Data Transparency Standard Compliance Program, is intended to give every marketer, agency, data provider and publisher a clear view of the audience segments they use. (Eyeota was one of the first data companies globally to be awarded the compliance seal.) Meanwhile, Neutronian built the first independent compliance and quality certification for data providers, the Neutronian Certification Badge. To earn the certification, data providers must undergo a comprehensive audit and meet the baseline criteria for more than 50 aspects covering five main categories. (And yes, Eyeota was also awarded with one of the first Neutronian Certification Badges for its Eyeota Branded Segments.)
Today’s marketing landscape might be more complicated than ever, but the opportunity to tap into quality, trusted third-party data to help solve challenges around personalization, retention, acquisition and more has never been greater.
Eyeota is pioneering the future of trusted, quality third-party data. Want to learn more? Contact our audience specialists at datadesk@eyeota.com for more information.
