Artificial intelligence is a vital tool for marketers, enabling personalization, efficiency, and scale across multiple channels. AI can tailor offers in real time and orchestrate the right mix of touchpoints to convert data into focused marketing actions. Brands often rely on their own first-party data to train AI models, but this data only reveals what the brand already knows—not what it might need to know.
This is where third-party data becomes crucial. It fills in the gaps, broadens visibility, and ensures AI-driven insights are well-rounded and reflective of real consumer behavior. Below are three practical use cases showing how third-party data can enhance AI-powered marketing.
1. Powering Personalization at Scale
Personalization promises a lot, but it can be challenging to execute effectively at scale. Brands can only customize content as well as their data allows. When first-party data is limited to past purchases and loyalty histories, it misses deeper signals that predict future needs.
Use Case: A national department store chain wants to personalize website content, emails, and push notifications across its e-commerce and mobile app platforms.
Current Data: The brand has transactional records and loyalty card data showing what customers bought and when. However, this provides only a partial view and leaves blind spots for anticipating customer desires.
The Role of Third-Party Data: By integrating lifestyle, behavioral, and psychographic data from third-party sources, the brand gains insights into interests, intent, and life stages. This enriches customer profiles and allows segmentation based on likely future needs—not just past purchases. The benefit is smarter content delivery across channels, even for anonymous visitors or new users, leading to higher conversion rates and stronger loyalty.
2. Informing Omnichannel Media Mix
Allocating marketing budgets wisely across multiple channels is critical. Many marketers struggle when their data is siloed or focused only on past performance, making it hard to predict where to invest next.
Use Case: A global electronics manufacturer wants to use AI for dynamic budget allocation across programmatic, social, connected TV, and in-store digital channels.
Current Data: The brand tracks channel-level performance and some store sales metrics, mostly retrospective and tied to last-click attribution.
The Role of Third-Party Data: Adding intent signals and cross-device behavioral data from third-party providers helps AI models forecast where consumers will engage next. For example, if third-party data shows rising interest in a new product category, the AI can shift spending proactively across channels. This approach enables near real-time budget adjustments that align with evolving customer behavior, maximizing impact without overspending.
3. Enhancing Product Recommendations
Recommendation engines depend on deep, accurate customer insights. AI can deliver relevant offers, but only if it understands the broader context behind customer choices.
Use Case: An airline wants to recommend flight upgrades, lounge access, and destination packages tailored to individual travelers.
Current Data: Flight history, frequent flyer status, and app browsing behavior provide some clues about preferences but don’t reveal the full picture.
The Role of Third-Party Data: Third-party insights can indicate if a traveler is planning a honeymoon, business trip, or relocation. They can also highlight seasonal trends, competing brand loyalties, or household demographics. For example, intent data might show a customer researching family-friendly attractions, signaling an opportunity for bundled offers. By enriching AI models with this data, airlines can present relevant offers that customers may not find on their own, boosting revenue and improving the overall experience.
High-quality, privacy-compliant third-party data complements first-party data to make AI models more accurate and actionable. Marketers aiming to improve personalization, optimize budgets, and increase recommendation relevance will find third-party data essential in creating smarter AI-driven strategies.
Your membership also unlocks:
