The ability to match a brand’s existing first-party customer data to a media owner’s authenticated audience is going to become increasingly valuable as third-party identifiers, that have previously provided much of the connectivity between brands and media owners, become redundant. 

Facebook and Google were the first companies to offer a service that allows advertisers to find their existing and lapsed customers within their audience through a matching process. Others, such as identity vendors, have attempted to offer similar functionality to advertisers. However, these solutions are built on outdated technology that requires advertisers to centralise their data into the third-party’s environment, where it is commingled with other data sets. 

This process of centralisation creates two key challenges for each party:

• When data is transferred into a third-party environment and commingled with other datasets, the owner of that data loses control of the data and others are able to reap commercial benefits from that data. 
• Following various high profile data leakage and misuse stories, consumer awareness is at an all-time high. As such, brands and media owners are expected to more closely safeguard the privacy of their customers, and transferring data to another company is not aligned with this priority
  

These two challenges have led to both advertisers and media owners to question how they’ll power data-driven marketing strategies in the future, as they look to move away from centralised solutions.

A decentralised approach to audience matching

A decentralised marketing infrastructure, such as that provided by InfoSum, unlocks the ability to match customer data to authenticated audiences, without either party having to sacrifice the privacy of their customers, or the commercial value of their data. 

Within the InfoSum marketing infrastructure, each company’s first-party data is held in its own isolated, secure and private Bunker. Rather than requiring the data within these Bunkers to be moved, InfoSum creates anonymous mathematical models of the data which can move between each Bunker and drive audience insights. 

One of the pieces of analysis you can conduct is to match the individuals in your customer data, against media owners. But because of InfoSum’s privacy-by-design approach, no data is passed between each party, and individual identities are never exposed. 

This empowers advertisers and media owners to match their audience data and build highly targeted custom audiences, without risking the commercial value and security of the data, or the privacy of customers. 

The benefits of decentralised audience matching

Now that advertisers and media owners are able to safely and securely collaborate across their first-party data sources, let’s look at three key benefits of matching first-party data to a media owner’s authenticated audience. 

Reach existing customers

Being able to identify and communicate with your existing customers through marketing activity is incredibly useful when looking to upsell. As we approach the release of the next-generation of video gaming consoles, both companies and the various video game developers should be looking to identify and target existing customers with their next-gen offerings. 

Through a direct audience match with media owners, these companies can not only find their current customers, but they can also use the knowledge the media owner has to tailor the messaging further. 

For example, Channel 4 currently use InfoSum to power their BrandMatch solution that enables the functionality we’re discussing. Channel 4 holds rich audience insights on its All 4 customers that these companies can use to both tailor creative, but also further segment the audience depending on their interests, for example, sports games vs. action-adventure games.

For more details on delivering high performing marketing across connected TV, download our guide.