Zero-party data: A guide for marketers

Cookies are losing their sweetness. Google’s third-party cookie ban on Chrome is rolling out from early 2024, and have already been blocked by Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla.

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This poses a big problem for brands. The answer? Collecting zero-party data.

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In this article: 

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• What is zero-party data?
• How it can help brands

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What is zero-party data?

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Data falls into four categories: zero-party data, first-party data, second-party data and third-party data.

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Zero-party data

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Zero-party data is data that a consumer actively chooses to share with a brand. For example, if a customer fills out a survey or questionnaire, the answers that are collected are zero-party data. A consumer has made the active decision to give information about themselves to a brand.

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First-party data

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First-party data is the term used to describe information that a company directly collects from consumers. Now, while this would also describe zero-party data, the difference between first-party data and zero-party data is the level of consumer intention involved.

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With zero-party data, consumers actively choose to share their information whereas this is not the case with first-party data. First-party data is information that has been collected about consumers without explicitly seeking answers from them.

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For instance, analytics from a brand’s social media account would be first-party data, as well as information about user behaviour on their website. Data in a brand’s CRM and from subscription-based emails would also be first-party data.

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Second-party data

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Then there’s second-party data. This is first-party data that another brand or company owns, that they privately share with you. For example, brands who are working in a partnership together may share their data as this helps them both better understand consumers. Or a brand may approach another organisation to buy their first-party data: this can be done through data marketplaces.

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Third-party data

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Finally, there’s third-party data. This is data collected about consumers by a company that doesn’t have a direct relationship with them. Brands can purchase third-party data from data aggregators, who collect data from a variety of sources, and use this to support their first-party data insights.

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Third-party data can give brands details on consumer behaviours and characteristics such as age, gender, purchasing behaviour and life events.

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Cookies are tracking codes that collect user data and you can have both first-party and third-party cookies. The difference is third-party cookies are placed on a website by a company that is not the website owner.

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As third-party cookies are phased out by all major browsers, zero-party data is becoming increasingly important to brands. Not only will it help businesses survive this shift, it helps build a healthier data relationship between businesses and customers at a time when consumers are growing more vigilant about their data.

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According to EY’s 2020 Global Consumer Privacy Study, 54% of the consumers surveyed said COVID-19 had made them more aware of the personal data they share. And recent research from PwC found that 83% of consumers say they want more control over their own data.

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How can zero-party data help brands?

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Zero-party data therefore gives brands all the benefits of third-party cookie data whilst developing brand trust by giving consumers greater control over the information they share.

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With the learnings from questionnaires, brands are able to glean valuable insights about consumer behaviour that can be fed into product development, packaging design and marketing campaigns.

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But it’s not just about the benefits to businesses. This data can be used to hyper-personalise the customer journey so consumers are only presented with the products most relevant to their needs and their time isn’t being wasted with irrelevant ads.

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Consumer’s zero-party data allows brands to offer them personalised recommendations and improve their overall user experience.

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Of course, this, in turn, drives product sales by better matching customers with the products they’re most interested in and making the customer journey smoother. And it helps cultivate brand loyalty as personalisation develops a one-on-one relationship between brand and consumer and customers feel uniquely heard and valued by a business.

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Want to learn more about collecting zero-party data with Odore? Book a demo.