With Google Cloud’s BigQuery , Habu Makes Data Collaboration Safer

By all indications, data clean rooms have gone mainstream. Eighty percent of advertisers that spend more than $1 billion annually on media are expected to use data clean rooms this year, according to IAB, but interoperability and high costs are still proving to be a challenge, and no single developer of data clean room software has taken over the market — yet. A new partnership between Habu and Google Cloud has the potential to put Habu in an enviable position. The Google partnership is designed to encourage frictionless collaboration and accelerate business growth through a native integration between Habu and Google Cloud’s BigQuery.

Habu’s data clean room software connects data internally and externally with other departments, partners, customers, and providers in privacy safe and compliant ways. The company emerged from stealth in February 2020 and is currently headquartered in San Francisco and Boston.

The partnership means Habu’s data clean room applications will now be available natively on Google Cloud’s BigQuery. The native integration should provide companies with a more secure environment for rich data to be analyzed and processed without the risk of breaches or unauthorized access. It also provides business users and data scientists with a flexible framework to develop privacy-safe workflows and solutions for profile enrichment, journey analysis, and distributed machine learning.

“Data-driven brands require greater access to data to deliver more accurate targeting and effective measurement,” said Habu Co-Founder and CEO Matt Kilmartin in a press release announcing the partnership. “We are thrilled to announce this partnership with Google Cloud and our native integration with BigQuery, expanding the work we have been doing with Google Cloud, to provide secure, frictionless and automated collaboration solutions to accelerate business growth for companies.”

Habu is one of a number of companies taking part in the Clean Room Primer Group, a consortium of adtech executives working to educate the industry on the importance of privacy-safe marketing practices. Other companies taking part include Claravine, InfoSum, LiveRamp, and Merkle.

In a survey conducted by the Clean Room Primer Group, 87% of ad industry professionals said they anticipate data clean rooms playing a “somewhat to very important” role over the next 18 months. Respondents cited customer need, industry training, and clearer standards as the top factors encouraging the use of data clean rooms in marketing and advertising.

Partnering with one of the most widely-recognized brands on the planet will certainly help Habu executives on their mission for dominance in the data privacy space. Key capabilities of the company’s new integration with Google include interoperability, so brands can securely collaborate with partners across cloud environments, enhanced privacy and governance, and the ability to orchestrate multi-party workflows for secure collaboration. By leveraging Habu’s clean room intelligence applications within Google Cloud using native capabilities, like Analytics Hub and Exchanges, brands will be able to get additional value and insights from their data across a wider net of trusted partners.

Habu now integrates with Google Ads Data Hub’s API, as well as tracking to support Display & Video 360’s Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation.

“Extending our vision for data clean rooms with partners brings more choice and capability to marketers on Google Cloud,” said Bruno Aziza, head of data and analytics at Google Cloud. “Bringing Habu’s data orchestration and clean room capabilities alongside new privacy-centric BigQuery data clean rooms will help brands get more value and insights from their data across trusted partners.”