How Retailers Can Embrace A New Era Of

Collaboration With Brands

Custom content for Habu by studioID

Across both their brick-and-mortar and ecommerce
channels, retailers have always acquired a wealth of
shopping and transaction data from their customers.
Until recently, however, they’ve lacked safe, secure
ways of sharing that data with brands and other partners.

Today, retailers are discovering and acting on new approaches to

collaborate with their partner brands, and in the process, are
creating more value for those brands.

What’s the catalyst? Data clean rooms. Data clean rooms are
enabling retailers to safely share data with partners, which not only
helps them build better, more data-powered relationships with their
retail collaborators, but it also empowers those partners to better
understand what customers are buying, and when.
“It’s about “using data more intelligently without
breaking privacy commitments. We also want to
These new insights are not the traditional ones marketers and
be in service of the CPG – giving them autonomy,
businesses have come to expect. They are based on layers and giving them access to the insights and
layers of data, in close to real time, potentially from multiple sources, performance that they expect.”
in order to discover the truths that have been elusive until now.
They enable businesses to truly understand their customers’ needs Evan Hovorka, Head of Product & Innovation, Albertsons

and wants, across a spectrum of industries. For example, not only

retail, but also media & entertainment, travel, and sports.

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This new era of collaboration also extends into the rising area of
digital retail media advertising, which has doubled between 2020 and
2022 in the US, now standing at a record $41 billion U.S. dollars.1 As
more and more retailers establish retail media networks, data clean
rooms are equipping them with a privacy-safe way to collaborate and
deliver value to advertiser brands, which ultimately helps accelerate
their ad businesses.
This Playbook Will Discuss:
How data clean rooms solve retailers’ and brands’
1
data-collaboration challenges
The rise of retail media networks, fueled
2 Data clean rooms allow retailers to securely share their
by data collaboration
3 Best practices in retail media measurement
What the future of data-driven collaboration
4
in retail looks like
Before going too deeply into the benefits of data collaboration, let’s
first dive into how data clean rooms are solving retailers’ and brands’
current data collaboration challenges.
Data Clean Rooms, How They Work,
And Some Of The Emerging Benefits!
A data clean room is “a neutral and secure data environment
that enables multiple parties to collaborate using proprietary
data in compliance with privacy regulations.”2
valuable first-party data with partner brands. In turn, this allows
retailers to build deep partnerships, gain new insights for
business opportunities, and open new monetization models.
In addition to protecting consumer privacy and proprietary
data, benefits include integrated identity resolution, campaign
measurement, audience analysis and segmentation,
customer behaviors and journey insights, and quick
deployment (action).
3
How Data Clean Rooms Solve
Retailers’ And Brands’ Data
Collaboration Challenges
As a retailer, you have superpowers and challenges when it comes to
sharing data with partners.
Your Superpower:
a giant wealth of shopping and
transaction data from customers
(which may also be powering
your retail media network)
Your Challenge:
finding a safe, secure way of
sharing that data with brands and
other partners without risk
68% Of Companies
categorized their company as
endemically data rich3
59% Of Organizations
that consider themselves
experienced with data collaboration
realize the importance of
leveraging other data (alongside
first party assets)4
A transaction data set is an incredibly rich data asset for retailers
— and one that they’d never want to put at risk. That’s why,
traditionally, CPG companies and brand manufacturers have
lacked access to it, even though it could help them reach more
retail customers and deliver more relevant experiences. In the
past, there hasn’t been a safe, secure way for retailers to:
• Safely share transaction data with brands
• Feel comfortable that the data is protected
• Establish controls in place around how the data is used
• Regulate and control which outcomes the data is used for
• Achieve closed loop measurement when customers
undergo multi-channel and multi-device journeys
• Work with and between clouds while collaborating
It has been easier and safer for retailers to just say “no” to data
collaboration, even though they recognize it could benefit all
parties; the retailer, the brand, and the consumer.
Why is data sharing such a big
challenge for retailers?
4
The Four Key Challenges Of Data Collaboration
For Retailers Are:
Technical. No IT department would agree to ship
1 terabytes of data from the retailer to the brand.
Privacy. Sharing consumer data in an unprotected
2 manner could expose confidential information
without customers’ consent.
Legal. How can the retailer be sure the brand will only
3 use the data to achieve mutually agreed outcomes?
Technological. It takes software, engineers, data,
4 scientists, and analysts to take raw data and turn it
into mutually agreed outcomes.
Data clean rooms enable retailers and brands to overcome each
of these challenges. How? By providing a secure environment that
empowers companies to unlock collaborative intelligence while
maintaining full control of their data.
Collaborative intelligence is an approach to securely work with
other’s data that removes technical complexity and accelerates time
to insight. With collaborative intelligence, any business can maximize
the value of decentralized data and drive business growth together
with partners and customers.
Let’s take a look at how data clean rooms make collaborative
intelligence within the retail and retail media network worlds possible.
“We make it so that neither party has to move any
of their data — the software connects to the data
where it is. Both parties can implement the privacy
controls that both sides agree to. They can script it so
that the only outcomes that can occur are the ones
that both partners have agreed to. Our intelligence
layer with our software makes it so the specific
agreed-upon outcomes will get automated without
either side having to build anything.”
Matt Karasick, Chief Product Officer, Habu
5
Forms Of Collaborative
Intelligence In Retail:
A Retail Media Network Vs
Retail Approach

Data clean rooms are helping retailers build better, more data-powered
relationships with their retail partners by enabling collaborative
intelligence. But what is a data clean room, exactly?

A data clean room is a secure environment that delivers advanced

analytics and insights while maintaining the highest data protection,
security, and consumer privacy for the multiple parties involved. In this
environment, many data sources are matched and analyzed, without
sharing, moving, or compromising the data itself.

6
Here are two ways that retailers are leveraging data clean rooms and
some of the benefits of each approach:
Retail Media Network
Clean rooms empower Retail Media Networks (RMNs) to securely
share first party (1P) transaction and purchase behavior data
allowing brands to get in touch with in-market shoppers at the point
Approach
of sale with more personalized messaging across all channels
owned by the retailer.
Pre-Planning Insights: Overlaying retail purchase data with a
brand’s 1P data provides a more complete view of the customer to
deliver more relevant messaging and experiences.
Examples of Measurement: With a secure way for RMNs to include 1P
Data Collaboration transaction data in their offering, brands can gain a more holistic
view of their customers to better understand reach and frequency,
attribution, and incrementality.
Retail Media Network:
Drive New Revenue Growth
Uncover new revenue opportunities and gain a competitive
advantage by securely sharing transaction data with key brand
partners for more robust analysis, measurement, and attribution.
Benefits / Value
Brand:
Improve Measurement & Sales Lift
Unlock new data and insights from retail partners to improve
targeting, media efficiency and effectiveness, journey analysis,
and attribution.
Retailer
Through data clean rooms, retailers are now empowered to share
their highly protective and proprietary first party (1P) data with
brands. With access to transaction data and purchase signals
brands are now able to enrich customer personas to better
understand shopping behaviors and other proclivities and have a
more robust view of the consumer.
Audience Enrichment: With access to transaction data and
purchase signals from retailers, brands can enrich customer
personas to better understand shopper insights, journey analysis
and closed loop attribution.
Collaborative Data Science: Brands can leverage high quality
transaction data from retailers to supercharge propensity models
and better understand loyal and lapsed customers to improve
customer lifetime value.
Retailer:
Strengthen Strategic Relationships
Privacy-protected collaboration with existing and new brand
partners enhance acquisition efforts, advise product strategy
and sponsorship opportunities.
Brand:
Increase Customer Loyalty & LTV
Enrich customer profiles to improve loyalty and lifetime value
by safely overlapping your CRM data with loyalty data from key
retail partners.
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Key Use Cases Of
Data Collaboration
For Retail Use cases will evolve and become more sophisticated over time,
but the foundational reasons companies use data clean rooms remain
solid. Three key use cases of data clean rooms for retailers are to better
monetize data assets, improve (and make possible) multi-channel and
closed-loop attribution and reporting, and expand the business
(beyond advertising) using data.

Monetization Of Multi-Channel & Closed Data-Driven Adjacent

Data Assets Loop Reporting Expansion

Onboard 1P data and Create user/category Extend the use of

create category, level reporting data and collaboration
competitive and solutions for beyond advertising
custom audience advertisers that use cases at an
solutions from 1P and includes closed loop enterprise level.
second party (2P) measurement and E.g. promotions,
data assets that can illuminates user co-marketing, R&D,
be utilized for behaviors between packaging, pricing,
targeting, scaling online and offline etc.
and suppression. channels.

8
 A Closer Look At Retail
Media Networks, Fueled By
Data Collaboration

One fast-growing area of retailers’ businesses is retail media advertising.

The idea of selling ads on retailers’ owned websites — where consumers’

conversion activity actually takes place — appeals to many brands. Inter-
estingly, the rise of the retail media network is part of the driving force be-
hind companies embracing data clean rooms. Retail media networks are
using transaction data to fuel targeting and insights for media and clean
rooms are helping retailers build better, more data-powered relationships
with their retail partners.

“By 2023, retail media will surpass

$50 billion and represent nearly
1 in 5 digital ad dollars.”

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Selling ads for their own website is one use case, but the idea of
selling ads for retailers’ owned websites is perhaps even more
appealing, because that’s where the consumer shops. It’s not often
that where you run your media is also the place where you’re trying
to drive your consumers to, to ultimately purchase. That’s a valued
attribute of some of the retail media networks out there. Most
brands would love to spend more and more of their ad dollars in the
ecosystems where consumers are doing the shopping or have the
ability to be influenced. Clean rooms empower retailers and brands
to collaborate in ways not possible before that drive mutually
beneficial value to their businesses.

Data clean rooms are fairly new, but almost half of companies
surveyed (47%) stated that their company had used clean rooms.
Businesses in industries such as CPG, Retail, and Media &
Entertainment had the highest adoption of clean rooms.5
“That kind of collaboration between the brand and
the retailer helps brands understand buying patterns,
consumer segmentation, and overall performance in
that retail channel. They can determine lapsed buyers
and loyal buyers and conduct basket analysis. They
can really understand what’s happening with the
brand’s consumer and its products in that channel,
from a sales standpoint.”

Ted Flanagan, Chief Customer Officer, Habu

10
Four Steps To Successful
Data Collaboration

1. DATA CLEAN ROOM SOFTWARE:

Over the last several years, Habu has worked with major Fortune 1000
“Neither party has to move any data — the software
brands and retailers to set themselves up for successful data collaboration.
connects to the data where it is.”
During that time we found that there are the FOUR big plays that work in
setting up for successful data collaboration between brands and retailers.
Leverage data clean room software to gain a privacy-safe
way to collaborate and deliver more value to advertiser
Following these four steps will help you and your brand partners not only
brands. Why use a data clean room ro achieve these goals?
build better, data-powered relationships with each other, but also:
A data clean room helps overcome technical, legal, privacy,
and technological issues that have plagued the industry
• Better understand what customers are buying, and when and where
for so long.
• Enable CPG companies and brand manufacturers to better market
their products in your retail ecosystem, including optimizing pricing
and sending better mixes to specific stores With a data clean room, no longer does data need to be
moved; consumer data is fully protected, legal agreements
• Accelerate ad businesses
about how the data can be used are easier to adhere to;
• Fuel your retail media network through safe data collaboration with
and fewer experts are required to make it all happen.
multiple CPGs
• Reduce the risk previously associated with data sharing
However, not all data clean rooms are created equal and
often don’t solve the same needs. That’s why the next three
Let’s take a closer look at the four steps retailers are taking to achieve
plays are so important; you’ll want to make sure that your
these benefits.
data clean room software of choice can support the rules
and controls you need, your established and future best
practices, and support agility and innovation at the same time.

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2. RULES AND CONTROLS:

“Habu automates specific, legally agreed-upon outcomes

within the clean room without either party having to
build anything.”

Develop a clear learning agenda with rules and controls

around how the data in the clean room is used (and what
outcomes it’s used for). Having a mutually shared learning
agenda with your partners and understanding the objectives
on both sides of the partnership allow you to unlock the
full value of their data or the use cases available.

Your data clean room software should include privacy

safeguards so that user-level data never gets exposed and
“[Data clean rooms] allow us to maintain the security
a governance layer that enables you to build in rules and
and privacy control that any big retail brand really
controls so all legal agreements are automatically adhered needs to maintain while also giving that custom
to, without any user intervention. bespoke access to your large partners who have
really great ideas of things they want to do with your
data but have just never been able to touch it before.”

Derek Nelson, Senior Director of Measurement and Retail Media

Network Consulting, Ovative Group

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3. BEST PRACTICES:

“The level of detail, frequency, and accuracy of measurement from data When developing your new retail measurement best practices within
clean rooms far surpasses old methods.” clean rooms, retailers should equip advertiser brands with the tools
and intelligence to understand each of the following:
Revolutionize your best practices in retail media measurement with
your data clean room as an integral tool. 1. Reach and frequency: Who did the ads reach? Where did they
reach them? How many times?
When it comes to understanding incrementality, some companies are 2. Consumer journey analysis: After people saw the ads, what did
doing things with their clean rooms like user- or geo-based holdouts they do?
and then running sophisticated analysis to come up with incrementality
3. Conversion analysis/attribution: What led the customer to
figures on what their advertising was all really worth. Neither retailers
convert? What was the transaction?
nor brands want to share the actual user level data, but they both want
to let this kind of sophisticated measurement happen. 4. Incrementality analysis/experimentation: How many sales are
a direct result of advertising?
“It’s a really good example of why you need to be in a clean room,
because neither retailers nor brands want to share the actual user level
data,” adds Habu’s Chief Product Officer Matt Karasick. “But they both
want to let this kind of sophisticated measurement happen.”

13

“So for us, the clean room became an enabler to then
collaborate more as a brand with partners like publishers,
to be able to start to figure out audience overlap, more
detailed audience analysis, as well as start to build ways
to bring brand data to our retail data and start to move
that into our retail media side.”
Mark Heitke, Director, Ad Products & Audience Strategy, Best Buy Ads
4. AGILITY AND INNOVATION:
“Sharing data without risk will soon be the norm. It’ll be easy
and fast to get started.”
The number of retailers who have a retail media business is
about to explode. And for the ones that are already in business,
the number of partners with whom they do this kind of data
collaboration to power incredible value is going to get a lot
higher. Those who have a flexible data clean room system in
place that can grow and change as the environment changes
will be in the lead.
Data clean rooms solve the problems that hinder data
collaboration, and facilitate effective measurement and analysis.
Data clean rooms make it possible for retailers to deliver
more value to brands and grow their businesses in the process.
As data collaborations become more and more commonplace,
brands and retailers will move faster — creating data
collaboration frameworks and agreeing upon outcomes at a
faster velocity. Those who do not have a retail playbook for
data collaboration will be left with second and third choices.
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Collaboration Best
Practices Recap &
Takeaways: Data Clean Room Software. No IT department
1 would agree to ship terabytes of data from the retailer
to the brand.

Rules and Controls: Develop a learning agenda with rules

2 and controls around how the data in the clean room is used
(and what outcomes it’s used for).

Best Practices: Revolutionize your best practices

3 in retail media measurement.

Agility and Innovation: Prepare for additional

4 data-driven collaboration with partners as the
environment evolves.

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What The Future Of
Data-Driven Collaboration
In Retail Looks Like

The idea of data-driven collaboration is not new. For decades, marketers Contact Habu to Learn More About Gaining Collaborative
and businesses in retail have wished there was a way to gain better data Intelligence with Data Clean Rooms
insights so they can improve the value they provide to customers and
Ready to get started? Have questions about what next step to take?
partners alike.
Habu has been working with dozens of large retailers and brands to
develop their data collaboration strategies. We’d love to share stories
Today, with data clean rooms, they can overcome the past challenges of
and help you understand how much a data clean room can do for you.
privacy and security that prevented data sharing, and gain additional benefits
of first party data monetization, cross-channel attribution and reporting,
and even extending the use of data and collaboration beyond advertising
use cases at an enterprise level. The foundations are being set. CONTACT HABU

As more and more companies begin to collaborate, the benefits of a richer

data set will layer and grow exponentially. The more data there is, the
better the insights for all. “A rising tide lifts all boats”, as the saying goes.
We predict that, over time, retailers and retail media companies will
develop more sophisticated ways to leverage collaborative intelligence
to provide even more value to customers, perhaps even in ways that
would surprise us all today.

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CITATIONS:

1. S
 tatista Research Department, Jan 6, 2023
https://www.statista.com/aboutus/our-research-commitment

2. C
 lean Room Primer: A practical guide for marketing, co-authored by Habu, LiveRamp, Neustar, Marcato Solutions,
InfoSum, Claravine, Merkle, B2B Marketing Company, Oppenheim Media Consulting

3. State of Data Collaboration Report, 2022

4. State of Data Collaboration Report, 2022

5. Habu State of Data Collaboration Report, 2022

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 Habu is a data clean room software company. We make it seamless for businesses
to generate high-value analytics from controlled datasets, while protecting the privacy
of consumers and the rights of data owners. Habu is the only solution that has a
comprehensive and intuitive data intelligence layer that enables users to work more
intelligently and efficiently across distributed industry and private partner data clean
rooms for better collaboration, decision making and results.

LEARN MORE

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