Data Clean Rooms

Last updated: February 14, 2024

About Data Clean Rooms

Most organizations engaging in digital marketing and advertising must share data across their internal departments and with other organizations, that frequently includes personal data of individuals. As organizations pursue deploying privacy technologies to their operations,  Data Clean Rooms (DCR) have become increasingly sought-after as mechanisms to facilitate data sharing for organizations with first party data. As per the IAB State of Data Report 2023, “64% of companies leveraging privacy preserving technologies are using DCRs.” DCRs are being used today for multiple advertising use cases:

  • Addressability and activation of audiences by advertisers
  • Consumer insights and data enrichment using both internal organizational sources as well as external data
  • Optimization and Measurement 

As the use of DCRs matures, it is necessary for the industry to come to consensus on how DCRs operate, develop a collection of canonical use cases and standards for interoperability among the participants engaging in a DCR. 

IAB Tech Lab Rearc Addressability Working Group has developed a set of common DCR principles, marketing and advertising use cases, and operating recommendations to help organizations better understand, evaluate, and implement a Data Clean Room. In addition the working group is developing standards and specifications to enable interoperability for given use cases. 

On July 5, we are releasing the Version 1.0 of Data Clean Room Guidance and first interoperability standard for private audience activation. Learn more about the final release here 

Data Clean Rooms: Guidance and Recommended Practices Version 1.0

This establishes common principles, functions, privacy enhancing technologies for Data Clean Rooms and outlines some limitations and guardrails when engaging with DCR

Open Private Join and Activation Version 1.0

This is a first in the series of Data Clean Room interoperability  standards  that describes the specification for activating matching audiences between two parties. It describes the process and privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) deployment for  implementing a matching operation between two parties and the supporting mechanisms to use the output of the operation to activate matched audience for advertising

Please email support@iabtechlab.com for questions about Data Clean Room standards.