AppsFlyer is building a marketplace so advertisers can share user-level data with third-party vendors without, well, actually sharing any user-level data with third-party vendors.
The marketplace, which offers functionality similar to that of a clean room, is the most recent addition to AppsFlyer’s Privacy Cloud, the company’s suite of products for privacy-focused measurement, activation and reporting.
The marketplace is now in a closed beta with a small handful of customers, with plans to open up more widely at some point next year.
To prove the concept, AppsFlyer is in the process of acquiring two analytics startups, which will be the first two applications available in the marketplace. AppsFlyer plans to announce those acquisitions within the next few weeks but was unable to share more information until the deals are fully finalized.
The privacy/AI paradox
AppsFlyer already offers a separate data clean room product within its Privacy Cloud aimed at large enterprises that want to do data collaboration.
But the purpose of the marketplace is a little different. It allows businesses to more easily test and integrate with smaller vendors and software plug-ins without having to worry about security and compliance issues. (Because, clean room.)
“Over the last two years, we’ve seen a lot of innovative services have a hard time growing their business because data scrutiny is increasing,” said Oren Kaniel, CEO and co-founder of AppsFlyer.
At the same time, companies rely on an increasing number of vendors, including those with AI services, to support their own innovation. “This creates a paradox,” Kaniel said.
In other words, AI models are hungry for data at a time when the concept of data minimization – which involves limiting the amount of data companies collect to only what’s necessary and directly relevant – is being codified into privacy laws around the world.
“What we’re doing is opening a marketplace so that companies can analyze data without copying, sharing or moving it while also maintaining compliance,” Kaniel said, “and this is possible because the data is not leaving the cloud.”
Not sharing is caring
AppsFlyer is decently positioned to offer this type of service because its customers already store and process a lot of their first-party data within its platform.
As an attribution provider, AppsFlyer has insight into metrics like app installs, opens, where users came from, user acquisition costs, the creative and targeting parameters that were used in an acquisition campaign, in-app purchases, how much time people spend in an app and user lifetime value.
“We see all of the steps along the user journey and connect the dots so that our customers can combine product analytics and marketing analytics,” Kaniel said.
To provide its core attribution services, AppsFlyer has long had integrations with ad networks, marketing clouds, analytics service providers like Mixpanel, marketing automation platforms like Braze and all of the usual-suspect, large ad platforms, including Meta, Google and TikTok, et al.
But via the marketplace, scrappier startups will be able to offer their services and analyze customer first-party data without the barrier of having to involve a company’s chief information security officer or lawyers or going through a long implementation process, which is the state of play today.
It can sometimes take an enterprise customer half a year or more just to tick the boxes on information security, “which is very slow if what you want to do is enable innovation,” Kaniel said.
“Instead, it makes sense to allow companies to work with data without sharing it or sending it anywhere,” he said. “The only way for us to maximize innovation is by making sure we’re doing the minimum – as in, building data minimization directly into the platform.”
