Dive Brief:

• More than half (53%) of digital marketing campaigns use third-party data from an average of 11.9 providers, according to Datonics’ recently released Programmatic Audience Targeting Survey. 
• Behavioral data, interest intent and demographic information are the top three data categories used by respondents. Audience size was the most important factor to marketers when selecting a data service provider, followed by customized offerings and customer service.
• The survey of more than 400 media strategists, planners and buyers found that 69% of respondents are fairly or deeply concerned about a disruption in their data strategy from an unexpected privacy, technological or legal challenge. 

Dive Insight:

Despite the looming deprecation of third-party cookies, loss of signal identifiers and growing number of privacy regulations, third-party data continues to play a major role in forming media strategies, according to Datonics’ latest survey. The findings suggest that marketers may have trouble weaning themselves off the mainstay digital targeting tactic even as they diversify investments into other data sources and solutions. Datonics itself is part of the Unified ID 2.0 initiative, a cookie alternative project started by The Trade Desk. 

“Third-party data remains extremely valuable to brands because of its unique ability to address various factors that other types of data such as zero, first and second-party data can’t due to scale limitations,” said Michael Benedek, CEO, Datonics, in a statement. “It is still the data that marketers are relying on to help them reach new audiences and acquire customers.”

Secure data management and privacy have become increasingly essential for advertisers as they develop and deploy their campaigns. Since Google announced plans — now delayed several times — to deprecate third-party cookies, advertisers have relied more heavily on their first-party data streams and sought new avenues to acquire such information from consumers.

However, Gartner recently predicts that consumers will be more withholding of data that’s crucial to digital marketing moving forward. To fill the gap, marketers in some categories are looking to retail media, though that channel also has its drawbacks. 

Changes to the landscape have also led marketers to adopt other options, including data clean rooms that allow advertisers and platforms to store their aggregated first-party data in one privacy-safe location. The different data pools can then be matched up to refine targeting and address other issues, including audience duplication. However, nearly two-fifths of marketers cite challenges with interoperability and customization as an obstacle to realizing the technology’s full potential, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.