“Infrastructure must build trust—not just scale”: Q&A with Ruben Niet, digitalAudience

ExchangeWire sat down with Ruben Niet, CEO of digitalAudience, to discuss data distribution, digital identity and the power of clean rooms.

With privacy regulations tightening globally, how can marketers ensure compliant data onboarding and activation, especially in markets with varying legal landscapes?

Privacy rules are getting stricter everywhere, but they’re not the same everywhere. What’s allowed in Sweden might be off-limits in Germany. That means marketers need tools that aren’t just compliant by default, but adaptable by design. We help brands work with first-party data in a way that respects local laws - by keeping the data where it is, only using it for clearly defined purposes, and making sure consent is properly handled. It’s not about finding loopholes - it’s about building a setup that works across borders without creating legal risk or operational friction.

Many marketers and brands struggle with unifying their first-party data across channels. How does digitalAudiences help advertisers overcome data silos to build cohesive, actionable audience segments?

Marketers know their data has value - but tapping into it across fragmented systems is a daily challenge. First-party signals live in CRMs, analytics dashboards, apps, and even offline systems. Stitching that together is key to delivering consistent, personalised messaging.

digitalAudience helps brands break down those silos with a privacy-safe identity layer that connects data without centralising it. The result? A unified view of your audience and the ability to activate segments across any channel - with consent and precision.

What problems can data clean rooms help to solve?

Clean rooms were built to solve a critical challenge: how to collaborate on data without exposing it. For marketers, that means the ability to analyse audience overlap, enrich segments, and measure performance - without ever sharing raw data.

But traditional clean rooms often require heavy tech setups and long lead times. We believe collaboration should be secure, scalable and actionable - but also fast and user-friendly. digitalAudience offers clean room functionality that’s built for marketers: intuitive, agile, and ready to support real campaigns, not just theoretical use cases.

What role do you see digital identity and clean rooms playing in the future of audience targeting and measurement?

As cookies fade and device IDs become less reliable, digital identity is moving to the center of the marketing stack. The future belongs to solutions that connect customer data in a consented, privacy-safe way - enabling targeting and measurement without relying on third-party signals.

Clean rooms and identity frameworks will become the connective tissue between brands and their partners. They’ll empower marketers to collaborate, activate, and analyse with full control over who sees what - and why. It’s not just about targeting better. It’s about earning trust and proving value.

Looking ahead, how do you envision digitalAudiences adapting to the increasing demand for transparency and control in data-driven advertising, from both brands and consumers?

Trust is no longer optional. Consumers want to know how their data is being used. Brands want clarity on where their audiences come from and how decisions are made. Regulators are making sure both get answers.

At digitalAudience, transparency is baked into everything we build. From clear governance rules to purpose-based data use, our platform gives marketers and their partners full visibility and control. We see this shift not as a constraint - but as a competitive edge for brands who are ready to lead with responsibility.

• Check out more on this subject in our Data Distribution hub, in association with digitalAudience