Data Collaboration Platform (DCP) guide

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At a glance: The AppsFlyer Data Collaboration Platform provides a seamless, privacy-centric solution for commerce media networks and collaborating brands to leverage their combined data to achieve maximum campaign results and create powerful new ad revenue streams.

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About the Data Collaboration Platform (DCP)

The AppsFlyer Data Collaboration Platform (DCP) is an advanced, next-generation solution that empowers commerce media networks and brands to unlock the potential of their combined data. Through secure, privacy-centric features, the platform enables seamless collaborations, allowing businesses to generate new ad revenue streams and build custom audiences for activation of spot-on campaigns anywhere.

DCP processes shared data including user-level data, to generate anonymized insights, ensuring that individual user information remains fully protected from exposure to both AppsFlyer and collaborating partners. Strict governance and compliance are enforced, with all parties agreeing on access and usage policies to prevent unauthorized sharing or misuse of information. By combining data from partner sources, businesses can unlock aggregated insights that are far more comprehensive and impactful than relying solely on their own data.

With access to a collaborative ecosystem of over 14,000 global brands and thousands of customer data platforms (CDPs), media partners, and enrichment tools, the DCP drives impactful, data-driven collaborations that deliver unparalleled revenue and results. DCP empowers both commerce media networks and brands to achieve maximum campaign results and revenue, strengthen partnerships, and thrive in a competitive digital landscape.

The Data Collaboration Platform (DCP) enables you to:

  • Create profitable new revenue streams by empowering non-technical brand-side marketers to build audiences from your data independently and advertise on your site or elsewhere.
  • Measure the performance of campaigns based on collaborative data across all retail media scenarios, with SKU-level granularity, to confidently drive marketing campaign investments for you and the brands you collaborate with.
  • Restructure and normalize data for multiple collaborations and protect sensitive information—all without data specialists.
  • Create and maintain seamless integrations with IDR providers, other clean rooms, and platforms so you can scale, adapt, and collaborate across ecosystems while safeguarding data privacy.
  • Feel secure, knowing you’re growing your business aligned with global and local privacy regulations. Secure and compliant data collaboration is assured across all collaborations.

Use cases

See some collaboration use case examples.

Personalized marketing to consumers

Exchanging anonymized data between commerce retailers and brands to create tailored ads based on individual shopping behaviors.

Example: Non-endemic advertising

A cross-sector collaboration: An affordable fashion brand engages supermarket customers who frequently purchase diapers (parents or caretakers of young children). They promote their ads for toddler clothing.

Example: Endemic advertising

Reaching a ready-to-buy audience: A food delivery retailer collaborates with a fast-food brand. The retailer leverages its extensive base of users ordering food deliveries and promotes the brand’s special sale directly on its app. The brand gains visibility and a more precise, personalized audience, which increases campaign performance.

Audience segmentation and engagement

Identifying customer segments, such as "value-conscious shoppers" or "brand loyalists", who are considered ready-to-buy audiences, using anonymized purchase history and browsing behavior.

Example: Non-endemic advertising

A brand collaborates with a retailer to promote running shoes. The brand wants to engage shoppers who searched for running shoes within the last 7 days on the retailer's in-app search but didn't make a purchase.

Example: Non-endemic advertising

A clothing brand collaborates with a CMN hotel chain to promote its summer collection to travelers visiting tropical destinations.

Get started using DCP

To get started using DCP, follow the steps below:

Prerequisite

  • An AppsFlyer account with DCP access.

Step 1. Planning

The possibilities are nearly endless for what can be accomplished using data collaborations. When planning, you'll want to:

  1. Consider which data to include. Based on your objectives and those of your potential collaborators, determine which data will be useful to include in collaborations. Pinpoint the relevant data you believe will be valuable.  
  2. Prepare and consolidate your data.

Step 2. Set up your cloud storage infrastructure

The cloud storage will house your data sources and audiences, which will be part of your collaborations. Setting up your cloud storage involves establishing inbound and outbound connections between your cloud services and DCP.

  • Inbound connections are used to access your first-party data when creating sources.
  • Outbound connections serve as destinations for audiences built within the platform.

To set up your cloud storage infrastructure:

  1. Set up your cloud services.
  2. Connect your cloud services to AppsFlyer.

Step 3. Create your sources

Sources refer to your first-party data ingested into the Data Collaboration Platform (DCP). You'll be able to securely share your sources with specific collaborators later on. Learn how to create your sources
 

Step 4. Create a collaboration

The collaboration is where all the action happens. It entails inviting a collaborator, setting permissions defining what your collaborator can do with the shared data, and finally, sharing your data. Learn how to create a collaboration.

Step 5. Build audiences and run campaigns

Next, you and your collaborator can build audiences from the collaborative data, and then use them to run campaigns. 

Step 6. Set up measurement and gain insights

Now it's time to set up measurement to see how your collaborative campaigns performed. Afterwards, check out the campaign results in the collaboration dashboard! 

Additional information

See additional information about the Data Collaboration Platform.

Data Clean Room (DCR) and DCP

The Data Collaboration Platform (DCP) functions as the central point for data collaboration, including audience creation and activation. DCP relies on the advanced technology of the Data Clean Room (DCR) to ensure data privacy and security for the collaboration and audience management processes.

Commonly used terms

Understanding some key terms used in relation to the Data Collaboration Platform.

Term Description
Audiences Segmented data files created within the DCP from combined datasets. Based on the agreed permissions, the audience is used for activation either with media partners or sent to the collaborator's cloud connections.
Data connections A connection to the cloud services in which your first-party data is stored. This is used to either share your data with collaborators or receive audiences created on the DCP.
Data sources A structured folder with a location of your first-party data files that are used in the DCP. This is used when querying the data and building audiences within the platform.
Endemic Advertising Ad placement that’s natural to a market and describes the products that are typically sold by the e-commerce site where the search is taking place.
Non-endemic Advertising The practice of buying and selling retailer ad inventory to promote a product or service from a brand that isn’t sold by the retailer, but is relevant or complementary to the retailer’s customer and their needs.
Onsite/Offsite advertising The distinction between advertising efforts conducted on a company's own digital properties (onsite) and those carried out on external platforms or websites (offsite).