This year, privacy has taken center stage for consumers and advertisers. Consumers have become more aware of how advertisers use data, and 86% of U.S. adults indicate that data privacy is a growing concern for them.¹
As we shift to a more privacy-centric world, advertisers are leveraging first-party data to power their TV streaming ad campaigns. Here, we’ll walk you through the differences between first and third-party data. We’ll also show how Roku makes it easier for brands to use their first-party data and reach more consumers on the biggest screen in the home, as well as on their phones, tablets, and computers.
First-party data is data a company collects directly from its customers. This data provides more accurate customer insights because it comes straight from the source. Common sources of first-party data include surveys, customer feedback, and product registrations.
Third-party data, on the other hand, does not come from a direct relationship between a company and its customers, but a third-party entity that has collected such data. It’s not always clear how third-party data is gathered, which means this data provides insights that often can be less precise and timely. For example, third-party data can be collected from website tracking cookies. These cookies may indicate a user’s browsing patterns, but they require inferences and assumptions about who’s browsing.
For these reasons, first-party data and its sourcing from direct consumer relationships provides a more precise way to build audiences and measure campaigns effectiveness.
It should come as no surprise, then, that first-party data is the key to consistent media performance in a privacy-centric economy. Advertisers are using first-party data to fuel their ads since it is the most valuable source of information about their customers. In fact, 60% of advertisers are planning to increase spending on first-party data in response to cookie deprecation.²
First-party data is essential for more than just traditional digital advertising; it has become a valuable input to TV streaming advertising, too.
OneView by Roku, the ad-buying platform built for TV streaming, enables advertisers to use their first-party data to build highly effective ad campaigns that span TV streaming (sometimes known as CTV or OTT), mobile, and desktop. In fact, OneView can help advertisers reach an estimated 4 out of 5 homes in America without relying on IP addresses or third-party data.³
Also, using first-party data in OneView will be familiar to anyone who advertises using social media platforms.
By combining an advertiser’s first-party data with Roku’s first-party data, advertisers can see data driven performance that drives business outcomes. A leading retailer did just that on Roku. The brand used first-party data to drive purchase intent 4.7x above Roku norms.⁴
Here are four ways you can use first-party data and OneView to help your business:
By combining your brand’s and Roku’s first-party data from over 60M active accounts, you can build a personalized strategy that reaches the exact customers you want.⁵ On Roku, advertisers can effectively personalize audience messages and measure the impact of their campaign with OneView.
As we progress through the streaming decade, first-party data is key to success, and Roku makes it easy for advertisers to drive powerful media performance on America’s #1 TV streaming platform.⁶
Want to learn more? Download The Performance Marketer’s Guide to Maximizing the Value of 1st-Party Data to learn more about data onboarding and best practices.
¹ 2021 KPMG survey: “Corporate Data Responsibility: Bridging the Consumer Trust Gap”
² eMarketer, May 2021 via Innovid and Digiday’s “The State of CTV Advertising”
³ Roku Internal Data, 2021
⁴ Kantar Millward Brown Brand Lift Insights, 2022
⁵ Roku Internal Data, Q4 2021
⁶ America's #1 TV streaming platform claim is based on hours streamed (Hypothesis Group, October 2021)