What are data clean rooms and why do they matter?

Introduction

Kathryn Failon is VP, Data & Measurement at Cint. In our latest article, she explores the increasingly important world of data clean rooms.

A data clean room journey

My data clean room journey began at the 2024 RampUp conference in San Francisco, which is where I first started hearing chatter about the subject in earnest. This can be attributed in part to the event host, LiveRamp, a data collaboration platform, having acquired Habu, a cross-cloud clean room specialist, to the tune of $200M just a few weeks prior. 

For an industry that had been pretty quiet on the mergers and acquisitions front in recent years, that was certainly one way to get people talking. Kudos to their marketing and PR teams on that one.

While the deal was not isolated insofar as companies advertising their investments in this fresh on the scene technology, it was one of the largest to date.

Companies like AppsFlyer, a mobile marketing analytics platform, and Optable, an identity management platform, had announced data clean room capabilities in 2022, and Amazon’s AWS Clean Rooms entered GA in March 2023. But the acronym DCR – and this is an industry that loves acronyms – didn’t really enter the mainstream lexicon until 2024.

That was the year when Netflix, Roku, Disney, and NBCUniversal began publicizing their partnerships with cloud-based data platform Snowflake. It was also when Google’s clean room solution BigQuery entered Google Analytics. Data Intelligence platform Databricks also launched with Samsung Ads in Australia and announced an agency partnership with Canvas Worldwide. 

Fast forward to April 2025, and WPP purchased clean room start-up InfoSum for a whopping $150M. Investments like that made it clear that DCRs were here to stay. 

Although I have taken a personal interest in the subject over the past few years to help set up Cint’s first DCR workflow with a client, they have yet to fully infiltrate the daily lives of my colleagues, team members, and clients. 

When asked to describe what a clean room actually is, I’ve been met with many puzzled looks and uncertain responses to the effect of “something to do with privacy and data,” which is not that dissimilar from how my parents would describe my job to anyone who asks them what it is that I do for work.  

As we start 2026, and as more companies look to collaborate with disparate data sets in a manner that is privacy compliant, a refresh is beneficial: What is a data clean room, and why are they important? And then more specifically, how does Cint use data clean rooms now, and what is next for Cint on the clean room front? 

There’s no doubt that the media measurement landscape will be impacted, and I look forward to navigating these changes with everyone in the months to come. Let’s dive in.

What is a data clean room?

A phrase that I learned over the summer that resonated for me is that a data clean room is a “strategic collaboration platform.” It offers a privacy-safe environment where user-level data is anonymized, which allows all parties to rest assured that they can combine datasets while remaining in compliance with various state and country laws. 

Why are data clean rooms important?

As we’ve established, data clean rooms are essential tools for privacy-compliant collaboration between organizations looking to share insights, allowing customers to merge and analyze partner datasets for more detailed consumer insights.

With securely combined data on their side, customers can accurately measure campaign return on investment (ROI), deepen and refine specific audience targeting, and ultimately uncover deeper customer attributes and behaviors without compromising user privacy.

Not only do well-functioning data clean rooms offer organizations and their customers protection from falling foul of aforementioned privacy regulations, but they also provide the added benefit (to advertisers and marketers alike) of enriching data. This gives customers an even better chance to adapt their campaign strategies and ensure that optimization is both possible and seamless.

How does Cint use data clean rooms?

Cint currently supports clients who are interested in implementing data clean room workflows and collaborating within these environments. Through our integrations team, we work closely with partners to ensure data is accessed and analyzed in a way that aligns with both client objectives and privacy requirements.

Cint is equipped to help clients navigate the technical and operational complexities of clean room adoption. As demand continues to grow, we remain focused on making these workflows scalable for our partners.

What’s next for Cint and clean rooms?

Data clean rooms may have entered the industry conversation through splashy acquisitions and high-profile partnerships, but their staying power is rooted in something far more fundamental: the need to collaborate with data in a way that is scalable, privacy-first, and future-proof. As regulations tighten and third-party identifiers continue to erode, the ability to safely combine insights across organizations is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement.

While the technology itself can feel abstract or intimidating, clean rooms ultimately facilitate insights without compromising trust. As adoption continues to grow across the media landscape, understanding how and when to use clean rooms will become an increasingly critical skill set.

Cint is well-positioned for this next phase. With experience supporting clean room workflows, we’re committed to helping clients navigate this evolving landscape with confidence. The clean room conversation may only have gone mainstream in the last couple of years, but its impact on measurement is just getting started, and we’re excited to be part of what comes next.