Peaklight

The data clean room (DCR) is a secure, intermediary, cloud service used among companies to mutually agree on sharing and collaborating on sensitive first-party data, which is data that is collected directly from customers and consumers. Otherwise, organizations would use anonymized and obfuscated data to help preserve sensitive first-party data, such as personal identifiable information (PII). Organizations and groups that may use data include brands, publishers, advertisers, and groups within a company. Each group involved will create a contract that governs what each participant can and cannot do with the additional data. With organizations using other organizations' first-party data through DCRs, some say "third-party data has now become a first-class citizen in the information ecosystem". Early data clean rooms started as data-sharing products within walled gardens, including Google's Ads Data Hub. And in 2018, this product was the only way to use Google ad data in Europe due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On July 5, 2023, IAB Tech Lab, a non-profit consortium that develops open technical standards for the ad-supported digital economy, released a set of common principles and operating recommendations on using DCRs.