Data Collaboration Takes Center Stage in the Privacy-First Era, InfoSum’s Wetzel

The deprecation of cookies, the rise of retail media networks and the ever-present spectre of privacy – while they may seem like separate trends, these industry topics are converging on one, over-arching theme – data collaboration.

That is according to Lauren Wetzel, Chief Operating Officer of data collaboration platform InfoSum, who says her panel discussion at a recent industry event was “packed” with executives keen to understand more.

“It brought up the topics of privacy, it brought up the topics of cookie deprecation, of retail media networks,” Wetzel says, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “Even though the topic was data collaboration, it actually brought in a lot of the other topics that I know are going to be covered in depth in other panels.”

This was a lot of fun! Thanks @LUMA_partners and @tkawaja for the opportunity to chat Data Collaboration today! And thanks @LouPas for being such an amazing driver of the convo! pic.twitter.com/YCSWSUWrsK

— Lauren Wetzel (@LaurenFWetzel) May 14, 2024

The panel discussion may have assembled many distinct industry themes. But, for Wetzel, that only underscores how many of them depend on collaboration.

“For me, it was really exciting,” she says. “InfoSum is in that data collaboration space. And so for us to have the opportunity to speak, to talk about what our clients are doing, to talk about the performance…

“It’s amazing to be at this conference this year and see how much the topic of data collaboration collaboration has really just accelerated and become that much more important.”

Wetzel’s company, InfoSum, is one of the many vendors helping brands, media owners and others to bring together disparate data sets for collective insight and activation, in a privacy-compliant way.

InfoSum uses a decentralized architecture, in which a client’s first-party data stays in its own “bunker”.

Clients can then query the data sets of multiple partners to find insights, without commingling personally identifiable information (PII).

InfoSum this year announced a new technology called Private Path which allows companies to analyze their data while still protecting privacy. It also launched a data clean room solution with Samsung Ads Australia.

The topic of data collaboration is closely linked with identity, another issue at the forefront of executives’ minds, as they contemplate the deprecation of traditional digital identifiers like cookies and mobile IDs.

“It brought up the topics of identity, how identity and collaboration need to work together,” Wetzel says of her panel discussion.

“There were a lot of questions around measurement, attribution, how clean rooms and data collaboration platforms can really help power that for the ecosystem.”

This video was produced at the LUMA Partner DMS 2024.