InfoSum

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.

There’s a reason ad tech is no longer in a position to self regulate. Somewhere along the way, companies forgot to respect their consumers and so regulators stepped in.

WPP has bought InfoSum, a data clean room and collaboration startup. Terms of the deal, announced on Thursday, were not disclosed.

GDPR may not be perfect, but it forced European companies to adopt a privacy-by-default position. For US companies, this is a clear signal: Change is inevitable.

Forget ramping up. Maybe it’s time for the online advertising industry to ramp down. That’s the idea behind a guerrilla marketing campaign by InfoSum, timed to coincide with LiveRamp’s RampUp event in San Francisco this week.

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

The term “data clean room” has gotten co-opted. Plus, a useful one-pager on the new baseline standards for DTC marketing. 

If you were wondering whether Brian Lesser was planning to take some time off after handing the CEO reins of InfoSum to Lauren Wetzel last week – here’s your answer.

Rainbow-themed marketing schemes were muted during Pride Month this year, continuing an unfortunate trend of brands moving away from marketing to the LGBTQ+ community.

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.

Data clean rooms are becoming an important part of how agencies analyze and use data. Canvas, for one, added InfoSum as its first data clean room and collaboration tech partner.

Viewers might want to watch trashy shows from time to time, but they certainly don’t want to watch trashy ads. For the solution to what ails CTV, the industry could turn to another rapidly growing marketing favorite: retail media. 

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.

Advertisers need to do their due diligence on potential clean room partners before working together, including (and especially) finding out how secure the platform is.

“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 […]

Data clean rooms are to 2022 what customer data platforms were to 2019: Everyone’s talking about them, but people don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about. One reason for the uncertainty is that there are no standards that define exactly what a clean room is or how it should operate. “There are a lot of […]

A YouGov study found that people are more likely to sign up for an online platform if they can see how their information will be used. This presents a trust opportunity for marketers, writes Lauren Wetzel, COO of InfoSum.

The current web of disconnected clean rooms is like rows and rows of magnets facing the same way, so nothing actually happens. InfoSum announced a new software, Platform Sigma, to try and give its clients a better way to share depersonalized data with each other and their data vendors of choice – which could also help solve for measurement.

Even the experts at companies whose future depends on explaining the value exchange of personalized advertising to consumers struggle to make a convincing argument. Part of the problem is that the ad industry’s MO has been to “overcomplicate” matters, said Lauren Wetzel, chief operating officer at InfoSum, speaking at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit earlier this week.

Well, here’s the most ad techy thing ever: Clean room platform InfoSum is integrating with Unified ID 2.0 to expand how advertisers can use their first-party data in the bidstream. Omnicom Media Group is one of the first buy-side partners planning to take advantage of the integration.

The concepts underpinning Google’s newly announced Android Privacy Sandbox are still only that – concepts. Google will gather feedback from the industry before releasing fleshed-out versions for initial developer testing coming soon, followed by a formal beta at the end of this year. But as sketchy as the specifics are at the moment, it’s clear there […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The InfoSum Of Its Parts The data onboarding startup InfoSum raised $65 million at a valuation of $300 million, up from a $100 million tag a year ago when the company landed a $15 million investment. Ad tech companies have been capitalizing in investor […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tim’s Turn Apple CEO Tim Cook will soon testify in the company’s lawsuit with Epic Games. Epic sued after its hugely popular game Fortnite was kicked out of the App Store last year for flouting Apple’s 30% cut of in-game revenues. Epic claimed that […]

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. InfoSum is a company to watch. The five-year-old data services business enables onboarding, the development of new identity solutions and other use cases with a focus on privacy and data security. In this episode, President Lauren Wetzel talks […]

InfoSum, a UK-based data platform that allows companies to match data in a privacy compliant-way, has raised $15 million and appointed Brian Lesser as executive chairman, the company said Tuesday. The funding round was led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures and supported by strategics including Ascential, Akamai, Experian, ITV and AT&T’s Xandr, where Lesser […]

Brands are eager to onboard and match data sets, but don’t want first-party data to leave their own systems. They want user-level targeting, without the risk in trafficking actual consumer data. Zeotap and InfoSum are tackling this data paradox with an onboarding partnership, announced on Monday, that allows marketers and agencies to sync data from […]