In the past, data leaders had to manage a balancing act between data access and governance. Granting too much access meant opening up the business—and the privacy of consumers—to risk. But if you hold back data, you can’t deliver great experiences and value to customers.
The Snowflake Media Data Cloud empowers companies to let go of the balancing act. They now have a single platform to store, govern, and share data while maintaining strict data governance. They can make data accessible in a way that drives positive business outcomes while safeguarding data privacy.
At last week’s Media Data Cloud Summit, Snowflake’s Chief Marketing Officer Denise Persson spoke with executives from two Snowflake customers, ViacomCBS and Roku, about how they’re using Snowflake’s Data Cloud to ensure consumer privacy, collaborate with partners, and plan for the future.
Roku: Consumer-first data privacy
At Roku, privacy is a consumer-first concept. Louqman Parampath is Vice President of Product Management at Roku, which manufactures a variety of digital media players for video streaming and also has an advertising business. Parampath said the company’s primary consumer privacy goal is to provide simplicity and transparency around how the company collects and manages data. “We aspire to build controls that are clear and easy for our users and also very transparent,” he said. This includes building a “privacy hub” where customers can control how their data is used.
Parampath said Snowflake’s Data Cloud has enabled Roku to securely share data while preserving consumer privacy. “One of the most exciting things about the Data Cloud is that it can enable data collaboration with our partners without any data leaving our Roku ecosystem, [while] never compromising on strong privacy protection for our streamers,” he said.
Snowflake’s enabling of data clean rooms is a big part of that privacy equation for Parampath. “How do data clean rooms enable you to improve privacy and, at the same time, deliver value to your advertisers?” he asked. “They offer an effective way to protect our streamers’ privacy and keep the data that we have on users on our side of the fence.”
Parampath is also looking at how Snowflake can help with planning, measurement, and activation. Specifically, he’s examining how to bring in data from multiple sources that show the value of buying media on the Roku platform to advertisers while honoring consumers’ privacy. “Use cases around planning, forecasting, measurement, and ultimately activation are ones that we are initially testing and are excited about with our Snowflake integration,” he said.
ViacomCBS: Confidence in data privacy
ViacomCBS focuses on collecting first-party data correctly and accurately. Joe Churchill is Senior Vice President of Data Services at ViacomCBS, which delivers premium content to billions of people worldwide through its studios, networks, streaming services, live events, and merchandise. Churchill said that with a number of properties on multiple stacks, the challenge is to ensure a consistent presence to customers. “We’re leveraging Snowflake to collect our data from our multiple properties and bring it all together to unify and solve the challenges that are coming up with all the [regulatory] changes,” he said.
Churchill also highlighted the importance of collaboration with partners. He said Snowflake’s consistent platform across ViacomCBS’ three cloud providers made it easier to collaborate, both internally and externally. “[Using Snowflake is] not just a media-only play for us. It’s really a foundational technology that we can leverage effectively across multiple groups,” he said.
ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV service uses Snowflake as its backbone, which helps ensure data privacy. “We take advantage of Snowpipe for real-time data loading, and we also take advantage of clean rooms or data sharing to support our current use cases with third-party content providers,” said Churchill. “This allows people at ViacomCBS [who are] not on the Pluto TV team to see what’s happening on the channels without jeopardizing our agreements with our third-party content providers.”
Churchill said one of the most important elements of Snowflake is its ability to protect data from being shared with the wrong people. “Someone can feel confident that when they put their content on our platform, people who aren’t supposed to see the data, won’t see the data.”
To hear Persson’s entire discussion with Roku and ViacomCBS, watch the recording here.
