As with so many industries today, the automotive sector suffers from a lack of high-quality data. Fundamental shifts in these companies’ interactions with consumers — the deprecation of cookies and other third-party identifiers, the breakdown of the television advertising model in the face of streaming, and the proliferation of media channels — together result in a fragmented landscape of customer touchpoints and signals that manufacturers are challenged to understand and adapt to.

There is an emerging bright side, however. Data collaboration is now changing the game for automotive firms seeking to reinvent their customer understanding. By leveraging secure data collaboration powered by a modern data clean room, manufacturers can reverse recent signal loss, alleviate poor visibility around customer intent, and much more. Let’s see how this works.

The auto industry’s challenges are multi-layered 

For context, a lack of data leads to a combination of challenges for auto manufacturers. Customers consider auto purchases for a significant amount of time and may wait years before buying again. Without good data, manufacturers struggle with targeting, attribution, and even understanding when potential customers are in market. Supply chain management is already complex, and data, were it available, could help improve planning and lower costs. Meanwhile, high prices for new cars leave manufacturers open to encroachment from competitors like used cars, ride shares, and rental agencies. Finally, in-car screens and connected cars challenge automotive companies to develop new customer experiences and data-driven platforms for partner applications.

A single solution to power transformation

Adopting a modern data clean room reverses the current trend toward data scarcity and enables automotive companies to power a new era of insights derived from data collaboration. Collaborative analysis of critical datasets provides manufacturers with better customer understanding, improved segmentation capabilities, and more effective media planning. Data-driven insights also elevate customer experiences and loyalty while driving manufacturer research into the next generation of differentiated products and services. 

At a high level, data clean rooms present a four-fold opportunity for automotive firms:

1. Access critical datasets. With a data clean room, manufacturers can gain access to the sensitive datasets of walled gardens and other potential data partners that have previously been off-limits in the era of data privacy.
2. Elevate performance and measurement. Via data collaboration, automotive companies can leverage new insights to drive campaign performance, improve addressability and measurement, and lower costs.
3. Develop new revenue models. New in-car data sources provide a foundation from which to build new digital services and subscription-based products, including hosting partner apps.
4. Enjoy 3x economic benefits. Data collaboration delivers proven benefits: analyst firm Gartner found a 3x greater economic benefit for firms that share data externally.

Getting started with a data clean room

The best data clean rooms deliver all these benefits with an easy, business-friendly experience, no-code tools, and extensive automation. They render simple all the complexities of connecting to, securing, and safely analyzing data on cloud platforms, including walled gardens. 

But there’s still the question of which data clean room vendor to work with, and how best to get started. We cover these questions and much more in our data clean room playbook. Go deeper on the data opportunities, implementation considerations, and key use cases for the automotive industry as you take a look at the future of data-driven collaboration.

To learn more, read our Playbook For Automotive Companies: