How Clorox Uses Data Clean Rooms to Unlock Powerful Personalization (AI Marketing Explained)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: How Clorox Uses Data Clean Rooms to Unlock Powerful Personalization

Podcast: Retail Media Breakfast Club
Host: Kiri Masters
Episode Date: May 20, 2026
Guests: Tiffany Tan (Ecom Growth Acceleration, Clorox)
Special Mention: Emma Irwin (Flywheel Clean Rooms, Commerce Collective Podcast)
Length: ~10 minutes

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Main Theme / Purpose

This episode explores how Clorox leverages data clean rooms to personalize marketing, ensure consumer privacy, and adapt to a post-cookie, AI-driven era. It highlights the evolution of clean rooms from a strategic experiment in 2023 to an essential marketing infrastructure by 2026, showcased through the lens of Clorox’s journey and recent industry developments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Strategic Importance of Clean Rooms (00:00–01:54)

• In 2023, Clorox identified data clean rooms as a top strategic priority due to cookie deprecation, privacy laws, and unpredictable marketing dynamics.
• Host Kiri Masters frames clean rooms as having evolved from an emerging technology (“something to figure out”) to now being marketing infrastructure (“plumbing”) essential for AI-era personalization.
• Context updated by Tiffany Tan’s appearance on another podcast, coinciding with Publicis Group acquiring data company LiveRamp for $2.2B, underscoring the centrality of clean rooms.
• Notably, Clorox hasn’t publicly disclosed its clean room provider.

Notable Quote:

“In 2023, clean rooms were a thing to figure out. Today they are plumbing. And as of Sunday, they’re a $2.2 billion acquisition target.” — Kiri Masters (00:49)

2. Clean Rooms as Enablers of Personalization & Privacy (01:54–03:36)

• Tiffany Tan reframes clean rooms as enablers—not just technology—for privacy-safe, data-driven personalization.
• Clean rooms help resolve the tension where consumers demand both relevancy and privacy.

Key Insights:

• Clean rooms enable merging Clorox’s customer data with retailer signals.
• The real value lies in uncovering patterns—like frequency of purchase, cross-category shopping, replenishment vs. stock-up trips—that inform smarter business decisions.

Notable Quote:

“These clean rooms, they give us this privacy-safe way to connect our data… helping us solve a tension that’s always been out there… Clean rooms really let us do both.” — Tiffany Tan (01:58)

3. Practical Example: Brita Brand Personalization (03:36–06:28)

• Actionable demonstration of how Clorox uses clean rooms to personalize marketing for Brita.
• Two distinct moments:
  • Back to College Season:
    • Segmenting messaging for students (focusing on convenience and new routines) versus parents (health and peace of mind).
  • Water Quality Incident (Lead Notice):
    • Tailored journey from educational content (to reduce fear) to solution messaging (Brita's lead-reducing filters), to post-purchase engagement (reminders to replenish filters).
• Emphasis on contextual and behavioral signals, not just static demographics.

Notable Quote:

“We’re not necessarily personalizing just for the sake of personalizing. We’re actually trying to use different signals to decide how much personalization a particular moment deserves.” — Tiffany Tan (06:18)

4. Stitching Data for Deeper Personalization (06:28–08:14)

• Behavioral and contextual targeting enabled by combining internal and external (e.g., retailer, municipal) data in a privacy-safe way.
• When the infrastructure is working, the focus shifts from the technology to the experience itself.

Host Reflection:

“When the infrastructure works, you stop talking about the infrastructure.” — Kiri Masters (07:45)

5. Measuring the Impact of One-to-One Marketing (08:14–09:16)

• Clorox measures the cumulative effect of personalization, rather than fixating on single-metric or campaign-based ROI.
• Key metrics: New household acquisition, increased purchase frequency, filter replenishment, and migration to subscription models for Brita.
• Success over time, not from isolated campaigns.

Notable Quote:

“Personalization is cumulative.” — Tiffany Tan (09:16)
“If you measure clean room investments the way you measure a single campaign, the math never really works. The ROI is in the third year, not the first.” — Kiri Masters (09:25)

6. Future of Upper Funnel Brand Spend & Clean Room Infrastructure (09:16–End)

• Clean rooms are critical for tracking and justifying upper-funnel brand spend on retail media networks (RMNs).
• Retailers that can plug into seamless, standards-based brand infrastructure will attract more brand budgets going forward.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Clean rooms really let us do both.” — Tiffany Tan (01:58)
• “It’s the same brand, it’s the same product, just talked about in a way that really makes sense for that moment.” — Tiffany Tan (05:18)
• “When the infrastructure works, you stop talking about the infrastructure.” — Kiri Masters (07:45)
• “Personalization is cumulative.” — Tiffany Tan (09:16)
• “The ROI is in the third year, not the first. It’s in the compounded insight.” — Kiri Masters (09:25)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Clorox’s 2023 vision and the rise of clean rooms | | 01:54 | Clean rooms as enablers for privacy-safe customization | | 03:36 | Practical Brita example: different moments/experience tailoring | | 06:28 | Behavioral/contextual audiences & clean room infrastructure | | 08:14 | Measurement: cumulative impact vs one-off campaign metrics | | 09:16 | Future of brand dollars, infrastructure, and RMN evolution |

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Tone & Language

• Strategic, pragmatic, and insightful
• Tiffany Tan focuses on the “why” behind personalization, emphasizing substance over buzzwords.
• Kiri Masters provides context, draws industry connections, and highlights broader marketing implications.

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Summary for Non-Listeners

This episode is a concise but detailed dive into how Clorox uses data clean rooms to achieve highly personalized, privacy-conscious marketing in today’s rapidly changing environment. Clean rooms now serve as a foundational layer for connecting data silos and enabling contextual marketing—no longer an experiment, but mission-critical infrastructure. Through vivid Brita examples, Clorox illustrates the shift from broad demographic targeting to nuanced, timely experiences. Success isn’t immediate—the value compounds over time. And as the industry moves toward greater upper-funnel brand investment in retail media, the ability to connect seamlessly and measure credibly through clean rooms will define who wins the next wave of marketing budgets.

Transcript

[A]

Three years ago, in 2023, Clorox's then VP of Marketing Transformation, Doug Milliken, got on stage at CES and explained why his company was investing in data clean rooms. And at the time, clean rooms were one of five strategic choices that Clorox's board was focusing on to get smart about. The context was cookie deprecation, new privacy laws, and a marketing environment that nobody could quite predict. Predict now. Last week, Tiffany Tan, who leads Ecom growth acceleration at Clorox, gave an update of sorts on the Flywheel Commerce Collective podcast. She didn't frame it as an update, but listening to her talk about how Clorox uses clean rooms today, you can hear how far the conversation has moved. And the timing of this discussion is interesting because just this weekend, on Sunday, Publicist Group announced that it is buying data company LiveRamp for $2.2 billion. Publicist CEO Artur Sedun said that the acquisition will help clients generate new exclusive and proprietary data and build the smartest, most differentiated AI agents. So just to be clear, Clorox hasn't disclosed which clean room provider it uses. But that's almost the point a $2.2 billion deal at the holding company level tells you to grow that Clorox started investing in three years ago is now strategically essential to AI era marketing. In 2023, clean rooms were a thing to figure out. Today they are plumbing. And as of Sunday, there are $2.2 billion acquisition target. Let's listen in to this conversation with Tiffany Tan and Emma Irwin from Flywheel Clean Rooms.

[B]

Much less as a piece of technology and much more as an enabler, as you say, of better personal and frankly, we're seeing it as really an essential tool in modern marketing because at a very basic level, these clean rooms, they give us this privacy, safe way to connect our data, which we've been building with say, retailer signals. And they're really helping us solve a tension that I think has just always been out there, which is that consumers, we know our consumers, are expecting relevancy, they're expecting personalization, but they also want to ensure that their privacy is understandably respected. And so the clean rooms really let us do both. So how we've been using it is really using it to mine insights and understand understand how people are actually shopping. And I think the magic really happens when we can start seeing those patterns like the frequency of purchase or the cross category behavior. Are they doing a quick replenishment, are they doing a stock up trip? So, you know, clean rooms are really starting to help us get closer to the why why someone might need one of our brands. And it's really those rich insights that help us ultimately make smarter decisions about where to invest our dollars and how to best build those rich experiences for the

[A]

what I find interesting about what Tiffany is saying here is that she is reframing clean rooms entirely, not as a piece of technology, but as an enabler for what they want to achieve. She's talking about cross category purchase patterns and distinguishing a quick replenishment trip from a stock up trip that is the next level up. So what does Clorox actually do with this information? Tiffany shared a really specific example that is built around their water purification brand.

[C]

Brita, I'm going to ask you, can you give us like a really tangible example of what personalized one to one marketing, Connecting data. That's what it says. Connecting the data and signals together looks like in action. Like what does a more precise and relevant experience actually look like from your perspective?

[B]

Sure. Well let me share an example from from our Brita brand because it's a brand where context and need really matter a lot and how we show up actually can be very different depending on the moment. So let's take two very real Brita moments. So one is actually coming up in just a few months. It's back to college season when millions of students are going to be moving into dorms. And that's actually a critical adoption moment for us. And there are two audiences really involved in that scenario. First is the student who is moving into the dorm, brand new environment, really setting up routines for the first time. And the second is the parent, often in a very different mindset from the student. They're thinking about their kids health. They want peace of mind since their kids are living away from home for the first time. So instead of running a generic message, we are really trying to tailor that experience. So for instance parents, they may see a message that's focused on the health and safety and that peace of mind. Students, they may see a message around convenience or the taste or how to fit Brita into their new routine. So it's the same brand, it's the same product just talked about in a way that really makes sense for that moment. So that's one scenario. Contrast that with a totally different Brita scenario which might be when a local community might be notified about potential lead in their water. Now water quality, probably not something we think about every day, but when you get a letter from your municipality and you get that notice, it immediately changes how you feel about your water. You might start to worry, you probably have a lot of questions. And what we see in those moments is a huge spike in information seeking. People are searching, reading articles, or trying to understand what this lead notice actually means for their family. We do have Brita filters that are certified to reduce 99% of lead. So how we show up across that journey for that consumer is actually very tailored. So early on we might share educational content to really help reduce the fear and confusion that they may be feeling. Then as they get a little bit closer to making that decision, the message may become more solution oriented. And then if they do purchase Brita, the relationship starts moving into areas like reminders to replenish their Brita filter, for example. So I mentioned this Brita example mainly to demonstrate that we're not necessarily personalizing just for the sake of personalizing. We're actually trying to use different signals to decide how much personalization a particular moment deserves.

[A]

So a couple of things stand out in that example. The first is that neither of those scenarios is something that you target with traditional demographic segments. Parents of college freshmen during move in week and households in a municipality with a fresh lead notice are behavioral and contextual signals. They're the kinds of audiences you can only build when you can stitch together first party brand data together with external signals in a privacy safe way. So that is exactly what clean room infrastructure is built for. Retailers know that a marketplace model can dramatically boost product assortment, shopper engagement, and total revenue. But to get the most out of your marketplace, you need an ad tech solution that can really engage sellers. Miracle Ads is powering the future of retail media for leading retailers to activate both 3P sellers and 1P brands. Learn [e-mail] that's M I R A K L dot com. The second is the British example isn't really just about clean rooms. Tiffany doesn't say this was powered by a clean room. She presents it all as a personalization example. And that's exactly the point. When the infrastructure works, you stop talking about the infrastructure. But here's where it gets more difficult. If you're spinning up tens or even hundreds of creative variations for different moments, how do you actually know any of it is working? Tiffany had a very specific answer to this.

[B]

I would say when we think about measuring one to one marketing, the first thing we are actually really careful is seeing it kind of more broadly. So we do try not to get overly fixated on a single metric. Sure, the individual metrics definitely matter, but in and of itself, it doesn't necessarily tell you whether our one to one, marketing is changing consumer behavior, which is which is often what we are trying to do. So what we are really looking out for is signs of incremental impact and value over time. So are we bringing new households into the brand? Are people buying more per trip? Are they coming back more often? So in the case of Brita, for instance, if someone buys Brita once and then we see them replenishing filters or moving into a script subscription, that tells us that the experience that we've built has actually helped change that behavior. Another big mindset for us is that we're trying with measurement not to judge success off a singular campaign. So personalization is cumulative.

[A]

Personalization is cumulative. That is a killer line. And it also explains why most CPGs are still where Clorox was in 2023. If you measure clean room investments the way that you measure a single campaign, the math never really works. The ROI is in the third year, not the first. It's in the compounded insight. There's one more thread worth pulling on here. Back at CES in 2023, Doug Milliken said the higher value use case that he was excited about once the brilliant basics were worked out was upper funnel awareness building on retail media platforms. He was pointing at the exact unlock that RMNs are now actively chasing, which is brand budgets, the upper funnel inventory, the move beyond closed loop attribution. So I've written about this from the RMN side recently, how RMNs are eager to chase that brand budget in order to move past the retail media 2.0 version that optimized for trade and shopper marketing budgets. That's where they want to get to to fuel their next era of growth. What Clorox's clean room journey shows is the other side of that equation. The infrastructure that brands need to spend those dollars credibly across retailers takes some investment. It's been quietly built over the last three years at Clorox. The retailers who can plug into that infrastructure cleanly, through clean rooms, through accessible data, through standardized measurement, are the ones who will get that budget. Well, that's it for today. If you want to hear the full conversation, check out the Commerce Collective podcast by Emma Irwin at Flywheel. Thank you for listening and I'll catch you tomorrow.