Post by Ashwin Desikan

After reading the recent AdExchanger piece from James Hercher arguing that last year marked the end of the “data clean room era,” I found myself reflecting on the past few years. I’ve worked directly inside that era (2021-25), across Amazon Marketing Cloud and later within large complex ecosystems at MLB and the NFL. In each case, the conversation began with secure data collaboration. It quickly became something more fundamental: operating model discipline. The article highlights how the industry conversation has shifted from “which clean room?” to interoperability and outcomes. In complex ecosystems, whether it’s a league with 30+ clubs or a global advertiser measurement stack, the bottleneck is rarely the tool. It's alignment around identity, governance, and measurement that actually changes decisions. A few days ago, Alex Donics posted about the industry moving beyond layering more technology and instead focusing on how data is governed and activated in context. That feels like the real inflection point. Clean rooms were a necessary bridge in a privacy-tightening world. They forced organisations to think seriously about first-party data and secure collaboration. But clean rooms alone don’t create growth. What does? • A coherent first-party identity architecture • Shared taxonomy and event modelling standards • Governance councils with clear decision rights • Measurement embedded into operating cadence, not siloed in dashboards • Activation models tied to commercial outcomes When clean rooms become invisible, it’s usually a good sign. It means the organisation has moved from experimentation to discipline. The next phase isn’t about adding more layers of collaboration. It’s about designing a data strategy as an integrated operating system across product, marketing, analytics, and commercial teams. That’s the work I’ve led across complex, multi-stakeholder ecosystems: building first-party identity frameworks, governance structures and measurement models that scale and tie directly to commercial outcomes. If you’re navigating this transition in sport or other industries across UK/Europe and want to compare notes on making it practical, I’m always open to a conversation. #DataStrategy #DataGovernance #FirstPartyData #Measurement #AI