When the Indian arm of a global consumer electronics brand rolled out its annual Diwali campaign last year, the marketing team confronted an uncomfortable reality. Cookies had become unreliable, third-party data was shrinking, and new regulations were closing in. The creative work was strong and budgets were secured, but the team had little confidence in its ability to measure results with precision.

The solution came in the form of a data clean room. Working with a global tech vendor, the brand created a secure environment where its customer data could be combined with social media platform data. Instead of exposing individuals, the system generated aggregated insights that showed how campaign exposure influenced both online and offline sales. For the first time in months, the team could draw a clear connection between advertising and outcomes.

This story is playing out across India’s marketing industry. With cookies on the verge of extinction and privacy laws rising, data clean rooms are emerging as one of the most talked-about solutions. But as adoption grows, the question is whether they are truly delivering ROI or simply adding another layer of complexity.

The attraction of clean rooms

A data clean room is a secure environment where two or more parties bring their data together, run analysis, and receive outputs without exposing raw files. Brands can measure overlap, test attribution models, and refine targeting strategies without violating consumer privacy.

Globally, adoption has been rapid. A Forrester survey in late 2024 found that 90 percent of B2C marketers were already using clean rooms for measurement. In retail media, Skai reported that 66 percent of organizations operate clean rooms in some form. The same study revealed that 41 percent struggled with workflow integration, 38 percent with scaling, and 34 percent with internal expertise.

For Indian companies, the economics are daunting but potentially rewarding. According to GrowthJockey, building a clean room locally can cost between ₹1.5 crore and ₹4 crore and take six to twelve months to deploy. Yet for campaigns with ad spends of ₹5 crore or more, payback can arrive in as little as six months.

Indian leaders weigh in

Ronak Sheth, CMO of 360 ONE, told MarTechAI, “We live in an age where we have more information than ever before. Yet almost 70 to 80 percent of organizations still struggle to make confident or timely decisions based on this data. It’s not a tech problem in my mind. It’s a human problem. It’s a leadership problem. It’s a culture problem.

”Gopa Menon, Coo and Co-founder of the Blurr, believes clean rooms strike a balance between compliance and insight. “They give marketers the ability to understand campaign performance and customer behavior at a granular level while still respecting privacy. It is a middle ground between marketing needs and consumer rights,” he said in a recent interview.

Agencies see them as a foundation for retail media. Dentsu India’s Kavita Cariapa has described clean rooms as “baseline tools” that now influence channel investment decisions, not just campaign measurement. According to her, they are helping align inventory planning, media spend, and sales forecasting in ways that were previously impossible.

That culture gap explains why some clean room pilots stall. Sneha Banerjee, an independent consultant in new media strategy, pointed out to MarTechAI that much of India’s dependence is still on platform data whose reliability is uncertain. “A lot of our dependency is on social media platform data, which in a lot of times we do not know if it’s accurate. In my experience, what I have tried and done is continuously test that data.”

Dhaval Jain, a brand and digital marketing consultant, captured the paradox bluntly in the same publication: “We live in a world drowning in data yet starving for decisions. The problem is not data or a lack of data. It’s a gap between information, interpretation and action.”

Experiments in the Indian market

Several large Indian brands are already experimenting. HDFC Bank has used clean rooms to measure how social media ads translate into credit card applications. Flipkart has reportedly tapped into them to study consumer switching behavior during major festive sales. Swiggy has piloted models that analyze overlaps with rival user bases to design promotional campaigns.

These examples show the appeal of clean rooms as strategic infrastructure. They allow marketers to prove effectiveness, plan smarter budgets, and optimize campaigns while staying on the right side of privacy regulations.

Global push, local response

Much of the clean room wave in India is being driven by global players. Google’s Ads Data Hub, Amazon’s Marketing Cloud, and Meta’s advanced analytics tools are all positioned as advertiser-friendly clean room environments. These walled gardens already have scale and data depth, making them attractive entry points.

At the same time, local enterprise solutions are emerging. Cloud providers such as AWS and Snowflake are enabling Indian firms to build their own clean rooms, giving them more control. Agencies are playing an active role, offering shared or managed clean room setups for brands that lack internal capacity.

Regulation is accelerating the trend. Gartner has projected that by 2025, more than 65 percent of the global population will have personal data covered under privacy laws. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act adds further urgency, putting clean rooms in the category of survival tools rather than experimental toys.

Data sets that tell the story

Five numbers sum up the momentum and challenges:

- 90 percent of B2C marketers globally are already using clean rooms for measurement.

- 66 percent of retail media organizations have adopted them.

- 41 percent cite workflow integration as the toughest hurdle.

- ₹1.5–4 crore is the cost of building one in India, with six-month ROI possible on large campaigns.

- 65 percent of the global population will be under privacy regulations by 2025.

These statistics highlight both the urgency and the practical difficulties.

Even with these sophisticated systems, experts stress that human interpretation cannot be replaced. As Jain observed, AI can reveal patterns but not causality. “AI can help you in spotting the pattern… But AI will never be able to answer you why. The why will come from human judgment.”

This is critical in India, where leadership, governance, and culture often determine whether technology investments deliver outcomes. Without coordination across marketing, IT, and compliance, clean rooms risk becoming costly experiments.

Between hype and reality

Critics argue that clean rooms are oversold as silver bullets. For smaller brands with limited first-party data, the returns may be minimal. The costs are steep, and the irony is that many clean rooms still operate inside the same global platforms that marketers hoped to escape.

Yet results like the Diwali case study prove that when implemented correctly, clean rooms can drive measurable growth. By the end of that campaign, the brand had recorded double-digit sales increases compared to the previous year. Clean room analysis gave them the confidence to reallocate budgets mid-campaign.

For Menon, the trajectory is clear. “With data regulations tightening and third-party signals dying, the clean room is a bridge to the future. It is not a question of if but of when.”

The next two years will determine whether clean rooms become foundational infrastructure in Indian marketing or fade into hype. Enterprises with strong first-party data are likely to lead, while agencies may open doors for smaller brands with shared or managed setups.

Ultimately, clean rooms are not magic. Their value depends on accurate data, strong governance, and leadership that can translate insights into action. As Sheth noted, technology cannot solve cultural inertia on its own. The real challenge is less about clean rooms themselves and more about whether Indian organizations can turn data into decisions.

For now, clean rooms remain one of the few bright spots in an increasingly opaque advertising landscape. If Indian marketers can combine the power of secure analytics with the discipline of human judgment, they may finally have a way to protect ROI in a privacy-first world.