Salesforce rolls out data sharing platform on Marketing Cloud

Salesforce on Wednesday is rolling out Salesforce Data Studio, a self-service platform on the Marketing Cloud that allows data owners like publishers to directly connect with data buyers.

With a collection of tools to facilitate direct sales of consumer data, Data Studio aims to resolve the problems typically associated with third-party data brokers.

Buyers, typically brands seeking more information about their customer base, "want peer-to-peer relationships with data owners to acquire data that's trustworthy and high fidelity that they can use for things like activation and to grow their insights," Raji Beni, VP of product marketing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, told ZDNet.

While buyers can get a better understanding of where the data is coming from, sellers can also take more control of where it goes. The platform, Beni said, "provides the ability for data owners to provision data with controls and terms they are comfortable with to ensure it's used in a way that doesn't create concerns for them and also creates opportunities for markets."

Relying on third-party data brokers can leave unanswered questions about the fidelity of the data, Beni said -- "how clean it is and where it was captured" -- as well as questions about the origins of the data or when exactly it was collected.

"The seasonality of markets change frequently," Beni noted, and marketers "don't want to be making decisions based on information that's 24 months old."

Ultimately, he said, it all comes down to the relevance of the data for marketers.

Data Studio includes audience discovery and search tools that should help marketers learn about the data available and how it relates to their brand's own, firsthand data.

It also includes data governance tools for the data owners, allowing them to set certain access parameters, such as what attributes are shared, to whom and for how long. Because the data governance controls are software enabled, there's no contract needed.

Some of the brands using Data Studio, Salesforce said, include large businesses like Anheuser-Busch, Conagra, Essence, Heineken and Keurig. Meanwhile, data owners using it include Bazaarvoice, Gatehouse Media, Kayak, Leaf Group, Penske Media Corporation, Publishers Clearing House, Ranker, Salary.com, and Univision.

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