Agency onboarding guide

This step by step user guide explains how agencies get onboarded to Decentriq in order to participate in Media Data Clean Rooms (Media DCRs), a no-code data collaboration environment for agencies to collaborate with advertisers, publishers and data partners for the purpose of audience matching, audience insights and audience targeting.

Media DCR

A data clean room provides a secure, neutral environment where multiple parties can collaborate to analyze combined datasets without directly sharing or exposing their raw, sensitive customer data. This is achieved by processing data in a secure and controlled environment with strict protocols and privacy-enhancing technology, allowing you to derive insights and build audiences while protecting the identity of individuals.

Decentriq offers a no-code data clean room environment dedicated to media use cases: the Media DCR. It enables:

• Analysis of audience overlap
• Generation of audience insights
• Creation of custom audiences for targeting

Each Media DCR corresponds to one collaboration instance between a single advertiser and a single publisher or data partner. For different publisher collaborations, you must use different Media DCRs. The Media DCR offers similar data onboarding and targeting with premium publishers than what Walled Gardens offer, while protecting the advertiser or data partner user data.

Seed audience

The seed audience is the audience input that represents the advertiser's ideal customers and is matched against the publisher data or data partner data to generate insights and build audiences. It can be provided by the advertiser or by a data partner.

If the advertiser lacks a good enough seed audience in terms of quality or size, you can select a data partner listed in the Decentriq Network that can upload a seed audience on their behalf.

It is often a list of existing customers, defined as "ideal targets" based on the objective of the campaign and the product to advertise. A seed audience can, for example, be composed of the highest LTV customers, or customers who previously bought the product to be advertised.

Base audience

The base audience is the audience input provided by the publisher or data partner. It typically includes the publisher's authenticated and unauthenticated traffic and the entire user segmentation.

1. Prepare the campaign

Before creating any Media DCR, prepare the campaign with various stakeholders, similar to a standard direct deal with publishers.

1.1 Set campaign goals

Determine your campaign objectives, as they influence which Media DCR functionalities to enable. Awareness and consideration campaigns require different functionalities than performance campaigns. See collaboration types to understand which features support your goals.

1.2 Browse the Decentriq Network

Browse publishers and data partners available for Media DCR collaboration in the Decentriq Network.

For each publisher and data partner, you can view:

• Description: What inventory and services they provide
• Matching IDs: Which identifiers they support (e.g., hashed email, MAIDs, NetIDs, Utiq Martech)
• Supported collaboration types: Which Media DCR collaboration types they support
• Contact: Who to reach out to on their side
• Operating countries: Which countries they cover with their first-party data
• URL: Link to their website

If you cannot find a specific publisher or data partner in the Decentriq Network, contact your customer success manager to request their onboarding.

1.3 Coordinate with the publisher

Decentriq does not manage commercial agreements between agencies and publishers (or data partners). Align separately outside of Decentriq with the selected publisher to discuss:

• Campaign briefing: Align on CPM, budget, duration, inventory, format, channel, and activation (I/O, PMP, PG deals, etc.) as you would for any standard campaign
• Matching ID: Ensure alignment on which matching ID type to use in the Media DCR

1.4 Coordinate with the data partner

If a data partner provides the seed audience, Decentriq does not manage the commercial agreements between the agency and the data partner. Align separately outside of Decentriq with the selected data partner to discuss:

• Seed segment data: Confirm the availability of a target segment. There must be an alignment on the matching ID
• Commercial terms: Any commercial agreement linked to the provision of the data needs to be negotiated

1.5 Define campaign metrics

Consider which metrics matter most for your campaign:

• Upper/mid funnel KPIs: Decentriq audiences have proven highly effective in improving upper and mid-funnel KPIs, such as engagement and qualified visits metrics
• Lower funnel KPIs: Decentriq audiences also improve lower funnel metrics like conversions. However, given the premium nature of ad inventory connected to Decentriq (premium publishers) and the premium nature of targeting (direct deals), the perceived cost per conversion tends to be higher compared to traditional open web and third-party cookie-based targeting. Decentriq enables advertisers to target and convert users that are unfortunately not tracked by traditional technologies (e.g., converted Safari users, iOS users)

In addition to improving common KPIs, there is another key advantage of using a Media DCR. Campaign impressions are expected to be better distributed across all browsers (e.g., Safari) and devices (e.g., Apple), balancing the device/browser mix and reaching a much broader audience which cannot be tracked with third-party cookies online today.

tip

For your first campaigns with Decentriq, set up an A/B test by splitting the media budget between Decentriq audiences and standard media buying with a given publisher. This helps measure the uplift provided by Decentriq across the selected KPIs.

2. Participate in the Media DCR

2.1 Prepare and provision the seed audience

note

As an agency that does not provide the seed audience and relies instead on a data partner, you can skip this step and proceed to Step 2.2.

Prepare and provision your seed audience to the Media DCR according to the seed audience requirements.

There are several options to prepare the seed audience:

• Option A: The advertiser needs to onboard a list of matching IDs representing a seed audience
• Option B: The agency has direct access to the advertiser data and onboards a list of matching IDs representing a seed audience on their behalf
• Option C: A data partner needs to onboard a list of matching IDs representing a seed audience agreed upon with the advertiser

2.2 View the overlap

View the overlap results to understand the potential of the collaboration.

The match rate is the number of matched users divided by the number of users provided by the advertiser or data partner. It is calculated for each segment of the seed audience.

2.3 Explore audience insights

Explore the audience insights dashboards to understand your overlapping users.

The insights dashboards display various statistics about the overlapping users seen through the lenses of the publisher. In particular, the dashboards highlight the publisher (or data partner) segments that have the highest affinity with the seed audience. Bear in mind that the segment taxonomy is specific to each publisher — Decentriq does not impose a normalization of the publisher segment names.

These insights can be used to:

• Identify which segments should be the focus of the campaign
• Define the most effective creative
• Identify marketing personas

2.4 Create target audiences

Create audiences for your campaign targeting. The available audience types depend on which collaboration types are enabled in the Media DCR.

Remarketing audiences

Create remarketing audiences to re-engage users from the seed audience.

Rule-based audiences

Create rule-based audiences by combining or filtering existing audiences and publisher attributes.

AI lookalike audiences

Create AI lookalike audiences to extend the seed audience by leveraging Decentriq's built-in AI lookalike model.

It is recommended to create multiple lookalike audiences with different extension levels:

• An audience size corresponding to 2x the monthly impressions you want to deliver
• An audience size corresponding to 3x the monthly impressions you want to deliver
• An audience size corresponding to 4x the monthly impressions you want to deliver

This enables you to observe which audiences are delivering and performing best during the campaign delivery without needing to create new audiences during the delivery phase. Start by buying the smaller audience and — if the pacing is too low — then buy the larger ones.

3. Export audiences for activation

Once all audiences have been created, activate them through one of the available options.

Option A: the publisher exports the audiences

This is the standard activation path. Collaborate on audiences by clicking the Share button to make audiences available to the publisher.

The publisher can retrieve the audiences and export them back into their systems. From this point on, the role of the Media DCR is complete and you can proceed with the agreed activation path:

• If insertion order: No further action required from you. The publisher will take care of the export of the audiences and its activation
• If programmatic direct: The publisher will take care of the export and will share with you a deal ID for each audience that was created

Option B: the agency exports the audiences

If you have the export permission, you can export audiences to the Dataset Portal and then:

• Export directly using connectors: Use one of the supported ad platform connectors such as Google DV360, Adform, or Meta
• Download as CSV: Manually upload to your desired ad platform

note

This is only possible when the publisher (or data partner) is using an identifier in the Media DCR that is compatible with ad platforms (e.g., hashed emails, MAIDs, RampID, ID5, NetID, OneID, First-id, Google ID, etc.).

4. Start campaign delivery

note

Decentriq is not a media buying platform. The following are best practices for campaign delivery.

If you decide to activate the audience via a programmatic direct deal, enter each deal ID provided by the publisher into your DSP of choice.

Best practices

Decentriq generates audiences that are already optimized and ready to target. For this reason, remove additional constraints and targeting rules on your DSP.

Avoid using cookie-based optimization algorithms, such as the DV360 dynamic bidding algorithm based on Floodlight tracking. This setup would exclude many bids that do not have third-party cookies for tracking, and as a consequence increases CPM and bids on a fraction of the available users.

If you use an optimization strategy while bidding, make sure that the audience is big enough to sustain the expected pacing. Decentriq targeted audiences can be limited in size, as are eligible bids.

Here is a summary of best practices:

Category	Don'ts	Dos
Audiences	Create a single audience	Create multiple audiences of various sizes to tune pacing
Bid optimization	Use optimization algorithms that use third-party cookies or data	Use a bid optimization model success measure that is not cookie-based (do not use tracking tags)
Structure	Strict budget allocation per line item	Flexible budget allocation across line items
Metrics	Based on CTR and viewability	Based on engagement metrics

5. Monitor campaign delivery

Monitor these aspects when running your first Decentriq campaign:

• Impression delivery: Check early on that the campaign is delivering as expected. If it is under-delivering, review Step 4 to identify potential root causes. Contact the publisher to troubleshoot. If the pacing is slow, begin buying the bigger-sized audience

• Effective CPM: Check early on what the effective CPM is and if it is higher than expected. As you are bidding on an audience of limited size, multiple factors can push the DSP to bid too high, such as under-delivery of impressions. Often, if pacing is the bottleneck, increasing the audience size reduces the CPM as well. Contact the publisher or the DSP provider to troubleshoot

• Engagement/conversion metrics: Check early on if these metrics are as expected. Bear in mind that Decentriq audiences are cookieless, so they will not optimize for a presence of third-party cookies. This means that measurable impressions might be just a fraction of the actual ones. This might lead to lower absolute engagement metrics if you rely on third-party cookies to measure them

• Publisher audience refresh: For campaigns that run over six weeks on web or mobile inventory, it is recommended to refresh the created audiences within the Media DCR given the short life span of most advertising identifiers. To achieve this, the publisher simply needs to refresh their first-party data in the Media DCR such that the audiences can be refreshed and re-exported

6. Close the campaign

6.1 A/B test evaluation

If you set up an A/B test by splitting media budget across Decentriq audiences and non-Decentriq traditional audiences, assess the uplift generated by Decentriq once the campaign has completed. Include Decentriq as you run through the final evaluation to share learnings and feedback.

6.2 Measure uplift in Decentriq

Under specific circumstances (e.g., CTV campaign), you can measure the efficacy of campaigns using Decentriq by collecting impression events from the publisher and conversion events from you as the agency, then applying attribution or incrementality testing logic. This is supported through Advanced Analytics DCR. Contact Decentriq if you are interested in accessing these capabilities.