Third Party Data That Doesn’t Suck
Why you still need to make room for third-party data in your marketing data strategies
There is a lot of speculation out there about third-party data going away, especially with new privacy laws coming into force and the crumbling of the cookie in 2022, when Google is due to sunset third-party cookies. So is this really the end of third-party marketing data?
Using third-party data in a privacy compliant world
While many new global data privacy laws have been created in the past few years, many more are being written daily. CCPA is already in force and there's due to be a "CCPA 2.0", the California Privacy Rights Act in 2023. Any good marketer worth their salt will of course be concerned about data compliance, however, privacy doesn't equal the end of third-party data. The end may be nigh for sub-standard data providers but ethical data companies like LBDigital have been preparing accordingly for years.
So how do you know if you’re working with an ethical, privacy compliant provider? Before you choose a data provider to work with you should ask the following:
What is the source of the data you're buying?
Is it compliant with CCPA and other privacy legislation?
What is the opt-out and privacy policy?
Is the data identifiable or anonymous?
Is the data provider an aggregator or compiler?
As long as the answers are in line with regulations, you are good to go. LBDigital for example only provides data that is opted-in to receive third-party offers and we make sure all opt-out requests are honored. You can find more information on our data and sourcing on our about page.
Third-party data post the third-party cookie apocalypse
Cookies may be crumbling but there are many more ways to skin a cat. Even before Google made the announcement they were sunsetting third-party cookies in Chrome, numerous other types of marketing data points were available. Take for example MAIDs, IP addresses and hashed emails (hems). Maids are an excellent way to track and reach mobile users, and while the IDFAs may no longer be available for marketers, there are many more options available. Digital marketing and identity platforms have been working on this for a while, and have come up with alternatives such as unique anonymized identifiers.
A silver lining in the cookie crumble may also be the possibility to explore channels that don't rely on cookies to serve advertising but instead use another type of third-party identifier for targeting purposes. Think about digital audio for example. If you were looking to run a brand awareness campaign on a podcast platform, you wouldn't rely on cookies to reach your audience, instead you'd use IP addresses. Similarly, if you wanted to run a CTV or OTT campaign, cookies wouldn't help there either. You'd have to use third party CTV IDs to segment your audience properly. And have you ever considered in-gaming advertising? That's another cookie-less advertising environment in which you can still run highly successful marketing campaigns using a different type of third-party data.
Is third-party data still relevant for marketers?
We've looked at two potential threats to third-party data and seen that despite the scaremongering, third-party marketing data will still survive. The only factor that could threaten the use of third-party data in marketing campaigns is if marketers were to decide third-party data was no longer needed to reach their audiences.
Third-party data use cases: data appending to enhance your existing files
Interestingly, it seems the pandemic has only made the need for third-party marketing data more apparent. After all, third-party data allows marketers to have a more comprehensive view of their customer’s attributes and behaviors. This includes demographics, transactions, interests, behaviors, lifestyles, and more. The more you know about your clients, the more effectively you can communicate with them.
Yet, this year many people have changed what they do, how and how often. This is evidenced in the following quote from Alexandra Theriault, Chief Customer Officer at Lotame:
“As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s lives were upended, their habits altered, their regular routines disrupted. That meant the historical view of a customer from first-party data is now outdated.”
Therefore, if marketers want to continue serving personalised, relevant ads, it's likely they'll need third-party data to provide that piece of the puzzle. Additional data from providers like LBDigital is particularly useful for brands to track changes in customer behavior before it becomes known via their house file. Learn more about our customer audiences and how they could help you to connect with your customers.
Third-party data use cases: audience expansion campaigns to find new prospects
If you're working in a start-up, looking to launch a new product which has a different target audience to your existing product line or are a specialty marketer with a particularly niche target audience, you will most likely see third-party data as your marketing savior! In these cases, you may find that your own customer and prospect data is not large enough for you to grow your business and third-party marketing data is an essential tool to help you expand your audience.
There are different ways to do this:
You may know your audience and their different attributes well enough to select a pre-existing audience from our taxonomy which you can filter and segment to your needs.
You may not be able to find an audience that fits exactly to your needs or you may not know your audience's attributes exactly. For this we'd recommend a custom audience which we can build with you based on specific keywords.
Finally, for a niche audience, you may choose to augment the data you have in your CRM by working with a data aggregator to find more customers that look like your best customers via a lookalike model, which is a common practice for marketers needing more reach.
Learn more about our prospect audiences for audience expansion.
From our perspective at LBDigital, there will always be a place in the digital marketing world for high-quality and scalable third-party data. What's more, it’s clear that advertisers that do not include outside data in their marketing plans are at a huge disadvantage compared to those that do.
Talk to us about your marketing data needs
If you're determined to get the most out of your marketing dollars by running marketing campaigns supported by reliable, accurate and compliant third-party data, get in touch! We'd love to talk about your specific needs and help you to find a solution that saves you marketing spend.
