Making Sense of WBD's Clean Room Strategy: An Industry Insider's Perspective
I've worked in ad tech for several years, but at Adweek 2024 last year, I kept hearing people mention "clean rooms" in every other presentation.
Each time it came up, I'd nod and wave, pretending I knew exactly what they were talking about (spoiler: I didn't).
Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced that it would invest in its proprietary clean room solution to enhance advertiser targeting across its streaming platforms.
Given the buzz, and I thought, "Yeah, it's finally time to figure out what this actually means”.
Since WBD's announcement, I've been diving into the clean room rabbit hole to separate the hype from reality. Consider this your no-BS guide to understanding why media execs are obsessed with these things.
(If you're pressed on time, scroll to the bottom where I've included the SparkNotes take on clean rooms.)
What the Heck is a Clean Room? (And Why Should You Care?)
Think of a clean room like a super-secure, no-peeking data collaboration space:
Advertisers bring their customer and prospect data
Media companies bring their audience data
Clean rooms safely merge these datasets without exposing personal information
It's basically a digital Switzerland – neutral territory where competitors can play nice with their precious data without actually revealing their secret sauce.
For brands: This means better targeting and campaign efficiency.
For agencies: This means more precise measurement, fewer data headaches, and less reliance on third-party platforms like Nielsen, Oracle Data Cloud, and traditional DMPs (Data Management Platforms). Clean rooms at least give you a window – albeit a slightly foggy one – more on that below.
Why Are Clean Rooms Necessary Now?
Clean rooms have emerged as critical solutions to several converging challenges:
Cookie Crumble: Google and Apple's privacy shifts are reshaping digital advertising. Marketers must pivot as traditional tracking approaches face extinction in this new privacy-first landscape.
Regulation Reality: GDPR, CCPA and global privacy laws have transformed compliance from checkbox to cornerstone. Clean rooms provide sanctuary in the regulatory storm, keeping both data and legal teams happy.
Consumer Awakening: People now understand their data has value. Organizations must build trust through transparency while still delivering relevant, targeted experiences.
Measurement Maze: Cross-device engagement has fractured attribution models. Advertisers struggle to connect these fragmented journeys, with clean rooms offering a promising path through the analytical wilderness.
The Business Case for Clean Rooms (Or: How to Justify That Budget Request)
Beyond solving privacy headaches, clean rooms deliver unique business advantages:
For Advertisers and Agencies:
Precision Audience Targeting: Move beyond broad demographic buys to behavior-driven strategies that connect with consumers who actually show interest in your products.
Unified Cross-Platform Analytics: Get visibility across touchpoints to ensure you're not bombarding the same person across different platforms with identical messaging.
Enhanced Attribution Modeling: Link your ad spending to real business results with data-driven measurement, leaving the tea leaf reading to fortune tellers while focusing on actionable insights.
For Media Companies and Platforms:
Responsible Data Monetization: Extract value from your audience data without giving away the farm or compromising the trust users place in you.
Premium Value Proposition: Develop sophisticated targeting capabilities that justify higher rates through measurable performance advantages.
Competitive Differentiation: Position your clean room solutions as a strategic edge in the increasingly privacy-conscious digital ecosystem.
According to PwC's report, "Unlocking New Revenue Models for Media Companies," clean rooms are transforming media economics through innovative revenue streams, operational efficiency, and enhanced performance measurement that strengthens partnerships with advertisers.
WBD's Clean Room Strategy: By the Numbers
Warner Bros. Discovery's clean room implementation showcases meaningful performance metrics:
Enhanced Identity Resolution: Increases targetable IDs by 3.2x compared to traditional cookie-based methods, substantially expanding addressable audience reach.
Measurement Depth: According to WBD's reporting, transitioning from cookies to household-level measurement with VideoAmp resulted in 5x more tracked visitors and 7x higher sales penetration than industry benchmarks.
Improved Campaign Accuracy: In a test of 25 campaigns presented at the IAB Tech Lab, WBD measured 67% more on-target impressions compared to traditional targeting methods—a significant performance improvement.
Streamlined Data Operations: Eliminates the friction and cost associated with conventional third-party data onboarding, significantly accelerating implementation timelines and reducing operational complexity.
Why Streaming Platforms Are Leading the Charge
Streaming services have natural advantages that position them at the forefront of clean room adoption:
Authenticated Users: Login requirements create verified audience data that far outperforms cookie-based targeting
Rich Engagement Data: Beyond simple viewership, they track completion rates, pause patterns, and navigation behaviors
Regular User Interaction: Continuous fresh data signals enable more timely and accurate insights
WBD, Disney, Netflix, and Roku are all investing heavily in this technology, recognizing its strategic importance.
Impact Beyond Streaming
The clean room revolution extends across the entire media ecosystem:
Digital TV (CTV, AVOD, FAST): Enables cross-platform frequency management and audience overlap identification while preserving privacy.
Traditional Linear TV: Networks are evolving beyond basic demographics by integrating set-top box data with first-party CRM information.
Cross-Platform Strategy: Organizations can now optimize media across linear, digital, and streaming channels based on holistic audience behaviors rather than siloed metrics.
The Reality Check: Clean Room Limitations
Let's not get too carried away with the clean room hype. These solutions have serious limitations:
Budget Reality: Implementation costs are eye-watering. You need specialized talent and infrastructure that many smaller players simply can't justify on their balance sheets.
Data Quality Headaches: Even in the fanciest clean room, garbage in = garbage out. Mismatched data taxonomies between your CRM and a media platform's audience segments? Good luck reconciling those.
Practical Restrictions: Sure, you can "collaborate" on data, but try exporting anything useful. Many clean rooms severely limit query granularity and what you can actually take out of the environment.
The New Fragmentation Problem: Each media giant's proprietary clean room works differently. Congratulations, you've now got to learn five different systems with five different methodologies instead of one.
The Hidden Privacy Paradox: While positioned as privacy solutions, many clean rooms still rely on some form of identity resolution that raises the same fundamental privacy questions we've been wrestling with for years.
Hot Take: This Isn't Just About Privacy—It's About Control
Look beyond the privacy narrative and you'll see a power play at work:
Data Gatekeeping: Media companies now decide who accesses their audience data and how
Measurement Control: Platforms influence how their advertising effectiveness gets evaluated
Strategic Partnerships: They're curating which measurement providers get preferred status
After years of advertisers relying on neutral third-party measurement, this shift represents a major power realignment. Media buyers will need sophisticated strategies to maintain leverage and ensure measurement objectivity.
What This Means For You
Clean rooms are becoming table stakes for targeting, measurement, and cross-platform attribution faster than you can say "privacy compliance."
If you're an advertiser: Start figuring out how to make your first-party data work harder in these new environments. Not all clean rooms are created equal, so evaluate which media partners actually have valuable data worth mixing with yours.
If you're a media company: If you don't have a clean room strategy yet, what are you waiting for? This is your chance to monetize audience data while wearing the halo of "privacy-first" marketing.
If you're an agency: Time to become the clean room whisperer. Develop expertise across different implementations or watch your value proposition erode faster than a sandcastle at high tide.
Final Thoughts: The Clean Room Journey Continues
Clean rooms represent a significant evolution in how we approach audience targeting and measurement in a privacy-focused world. They're not perfect – nothing in ad tech ever is – but they're quickly becoming as essential to modern advertising.
I'm continuing to learn and adapt as this technology evolves—and I'd love to hear your experiences and questions as we navigate this shift together. Just don't ask me to explain it again at the next industry happy hour.
About the Author: I'm Shannon, an Account Executive at Extreme Reach with previous experience in media agencies and ad tech data analytics. My cross-industry background gives me a unique perspective on data and measurement trends and healthy skepticism about industry buzzwords.
SparkNotes: Clean Rooms Explained in 60 Seconds for Those That Have Places to be
What are clean rooms? Secure environments where advertisers and media companies can combine their data without revealing sensitive information to each other.
Why they matter now:
Cookies are dying
Privacy regulations are increasing
Consumers demand better data protection
Cross-platform measurement is broken
WBD's results: 3.2x more targetable IDs, 67% more on-target impressions, and significantly improved measurement compared to traditional methods.
Who should care:
Advertisers: Optimize your first-party data strategy now
Media Companies: Develop your clean room capabilities or get left behind
Agencies: Become the clean room expert your clients need
The reality check: They're expensive, limited by data quality, restrictive in what insights you can extract, and create new fragmentation problems.
Behind the curtain: This is as much about power and control as it is about privacy, with media giants establishing authority over measurement and data access.
This was very interesting to read, and I didn't know such a thing as a 'Clean Room' existed. Thank you for sharing and writing!