Habu

A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.

The Federal Trade Commission is warning companies that using a data clean room isn’t some kind of get-out-of-compliance-free card.

Is consolidation among clean rooms actually going to make things any cleaner when it comes to collaboration, accessibility and pricing?

In today’s newsletter: Google PAIR snags a CTV partnership with NBCU; why Madison Avenue and Hollywood will never make their relationship official; and TV buyers explain why they aren’t all-in on alternative currencies just yet.

Rather than a competitor to data clean rooms, Amazon Web Services – which has a data clean room offering of its own – considers itself to be a facilitator of ad tech companies, says Adam Solomon, global head of biz dev and go-to-market for AWS Clean Rooms. Guess there are no competitors in ad tech, only frenemies.

LiveRamp will acquire Habu for $200 million, further consolidating the data clean room tech category.

ASICS is testing data clean rooms and other cloud-based advertising solutions. It shows why vendor and channel tests are important, but not for the faint of heart.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AdExchanger is taking the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Our daily news roundup will return on Tues., Jan. 16. The Clean Slate Disney has been talking up its data clean room at CES. It now has 140 demand customers, and […]

Clear Channel Outdoor plugs into four clean room tech providers to help advertisers link their first-party data with out-of-home ad exposures and outcomes.

Proctor & Gamble recently announced their support of The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 identity framework. The partnership is significant for a couple of reasons. First, where P&G goes, other brands will follow. And second, approval hints at the rise of new walled gardens that could become even more powerful than Google and Facebook, writes Nancy Marzouk, CEO and founder of MediaWallah.

“The personalized targeting data points we’ve gotten used to are under examination,” said Jeremy Hlavacek, CCO of data services provider Experian. “Advertisers want better identity data, better segments and better understanding of consumer behavior. So they’re going to shift to higher-quality, more precise, more accurate, more trusted data sets.”

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Drop Til You Shop Livestream shopping is a big sales channel in China, but the trend hasn’t been successful in the US (not yet, at least). American retailers and major store brands aren’t waiting, though. On Tuesday, Walmart introduced Walmart Creator, a program […]

The market for first-party cloud data services has exploded. InfoSum raised $65 million in August at a valuation of $300 million, up from $100 million after a funding round last year. Brian Lesser left AT&T-owned Xandr last December to serve as InfoSum’s CEO. And then there’s Snowflake, the cloud data company that went public last […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Correction Streaming giant Netflix slipped a bit after riding high when demand surged at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. CNBC reports that Netflix shares dropped more than 10% in after-hours trading on Tuesday night following an earnings report with fewer-than-expected subscribers. Netflix gained […]

Matt Kilmartin, CEO and co-founder of data startup Habu, is embracing the walking meeting. He goes for long strolls in the woods near his home in the suburbs about 20 miles outside of Boston, eschewing the video conference for good old-fashioned phone calls. Zoom fatigue is real. Walking and talking is “a good way to […]

Four former Krux and Salesforce executives launched a marketing data startup called Habu this week to help with omnichannel orchestration – just don’t call it a customer data platform. Habu, which means “hub” in Japanese, is positioning itself as a modular operating system for marketing data. Put another way, data management platforms failed to fulfill their […]