Optable FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Optable and data clean rooms.

What Is First Party Data?

First party data is the information that companies can collect from their own sources. In other words, every information about customers from both online and offline sources, such as the company's website, app, CRM, social media, or surveys is first party data.

Companies have an obligation to their customers to protect their first party data. At the same time, companies can use their first party data to improve their understanding of customers, deliver better user experiences, and achieve a greater return on marketing and advertising investments.

What Does Optable Do?

Optable enables your company to match your first party data with your partners while keeping it protected. You can access your private Optable data collaboration node (DCN) as a managed service running in Optable's cloud infrastructure.

Optable is a data collaboration platform that enables two or more parties to securely exchange information about users that they know about and have in common. Companies such as publishers or advertisers access private data collaboration nodes in Optable’s secure cloud and are able to connect, configure, and execute clean room applications that match private datasets in a purpose-limited, controlled, and optionally privacy preserving manner.

A simplified explainer of one of Optable's secure match protocols can be found here.

Who Should Use Optable?

The Optable data collaboration node software is designed to give online advertising ecosystem participants, such as publishers, advertisers, and agencies and their partners the ability to directly and securely exchange information pertaining to their private first party data.

• Publishers with media walled gardens use a DCN to enable advertiser partners to match their audiences to their private identity graphs

• Advertisers and agencies with first party audiences use a DCN to match their audiences with partner publishers

Matched audiences can then be activated for targeting, modelling, insights or analytics purposes.

What's an Optable DCN?

An Optable DCN is a secure data collaboration node which is accessed and used by a single customer to store a private identity graph and user trait data used for collaborating with the customer's trusted advertising partners.

The level of connectivity and information transfer is controlled and configured by each customer within their private DCN. Partnering is completely voluntary and configurable.

Optable.co provides DCN hosting as a managed service running in Optable's secure cloud environment.

Is Optable a Controller or Processor of Personal Data?

First and foremost, Optable is a software and services provider and in that context is a processor of personal data. The Optable Products and Services Privacy Policy explains how we process information for our customers as a service provider, because we want individuals whose information we process on behalf of our customers to understand what we do.

It is important to note, however, that with respect to the personal information that we process on behalf of our customers, our customers are the controllers. The handling of that personal information is governed by the privacy policies and statements of our customers, and by our contracts with our customers.

In the special context of operating our public website, developing our products, and providing our services, Optable acts as a controller of some personal information that it directly collects via its websites, Email, and other means. You can find the details in Optable's Website Privacy Policy.