What is Zero, First, Second, and Third Party Data?

Digital Analytics Insights that you can apply right away

Author

Anil Batra
February 29, 2024

Table of Contents

One Insight You Can Apply Right Away

What is Zero, First, Second, and Third Party Data?

I have referred to 1st and 3rd party data in many blog posts and classes. In the past, only larger organizations could integrate and use various types of data but now with GA4 +BigQuery connection, smaller organizations can also easily integrate and use these data sources.

Zero Party Data

Zero-party data is the data that users willingly provide to your business, on your site, app, etc. Users own this data and can ask it to be removed from your system.

  • Site registration data – name, email, address, gender, etc.

  • User-provided interest and preference data

  • User provided feedback

First-Party Data

1st Party data is the data that you (brand/publisher/retailer) have collected about your visitors, customers, shoppers, etc. You own the data outright and all the rights to it. You can use it for any purpose you want based on the agreements with your visitors, customers, shoppers, etc. as specified in your data collection and use policies. Some examples of 1st party data are:

  • Visitors’ behavior data on your site – time of visits, minutes spent, products looked at, source of visits, etc.

  • Shoppers/customers purchase data – products purchased, transaction amounts, coupons used, etc.

  • Email interaction data – emails sent, opened, clicked, etc.

  • It is the most widely used data for marketing purposes. Generally, you use the 1st party data for customer retention using email marketing, retargeting, and onsite personalization.

Second-Party Data

2nd party data is the data that is collected by some other company and shared with you(brand/publisher/retailer), in other words, it is their first-party data. A strategic data-sharing partnership between two brands/publishers can help both of them grow their customer base and monetize that customer base.
You can generally use 2nd party data to:

  • Augment the data you already have about your customers (or visitors) – for example, if you do not collect “Household Income” during customer registration/signup data but need that data you can partner with another brand that collects that data to get that data to enhance user profile. Another example is Google Adwords sending the keyword/campaign data to enhance behavioral data collected on the site.

  • Add a list of new customers – for example, if you are a hotel booking site, you can have a partnership with the airline to share information about customers who recently booked. If a customer books a flight, then you can use the data from a partner to reach those customers and offer them hotels. Similarly, the airline partner can reach the customers who have booked the hotel on your site.

Third-Party Data

3rd party data is the data collected and aggregated by someone other than the 1st party (data collector). In other words, the data aggregator doesn’t directly collect the data from customers/shoppers/visitors but has relationships with several companies/sources that collect the 1st party data. These data providers aggregate the data from different sources to build a comprehensive profile of a customer/person. These enhanced profiles let you understand a visitor/shopper more than what a 1st party or 2nd party data set can provide.

For example, if you are a Financial institution, it will be helpful for you to know which of your customers travel frequently, this will help you offer them a credit card that provides added travel rewards and benefits. This is where 3rd party data becomes useful and can provide such information based on data collected from various data sources such as hotel booking sites, airlines, location-based data on several other places, other credit card providers, etc.

The digital marketing, data, and analytics landscape is always changing. It is hard to stay on top of all the changes and that is why you should join Digital Analytics Inner Circle. It is a community where you meet, share your thoughts, and get ideas and help you need to have a successful Digital, Web, and Marketing Analytics career.

If you are new to Digital Analytics then join Become a Digital Analyst Program.

Other Learning Opportunites

Here are my other three newsletters that you might be interested in.

Latest Digital Marketing and Analytics Jobs

If you are interested in receiving a comprehensive list of Digital, Web, and Marketing Analytics jobs then subscribe to my Jobs newsletter at https://analyticshire.beehiiv.com

Thank you,
Anil Batra, Optizent.com

How do you stay up-to-date with the insane pace of AI? Join The Rundown – the world’s fastest-growing AI newsletter with over 500,000+ readers learning how to become more productive using AI every morning.

1. Our team spends all day researching and talking with industry experts.

2. We send you daily updates on the latest AI news, tools, and tutorials.

3. You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI.