Rewriting the Rules of First-Party Data Activation
In today’s retail media economy, it’s not enough to collect first-party data—you have to make it actionable. That’s exactly what The Trade Desk and Snowflake aim to solve with the launch of the new Snowflake Connector App, announced this week.
The app enables brands and retailers to activate conversion data—like product-level sales—within The Trade Desk platform while keeping the data securely housed inside Snowflake. Built as a native application, the Connector App is designed to make audience creation and campaign refinement more accessible to non-technical teams, with direct insight into what types of media and targeting are influencing conversions.
This innovation marks a clear evolution in retail data activation, removing traditional blockers like manual data transfers or heavy engineering support, and allowing marketers to drive more informed decisions from the systems they already rely on.
What Makes the Snowflake Connector App Different?
The Connector App brings strategic utility to the data advertisers already own, enabling:
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Retail Data Activation at the SKU Level
Advertisers can now differentiate between broad category sales and individual product performance—like high-pulp vs. no-pulp orange juice.
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No Data Movement Required
Data remains within the brand’s Snowflake instance, supporting stronger privacy, control, and compliance.
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Feedback That Drives Optimization
Campaigns can benefit from ongoing insights on what’s working, enabling iterative improvements to targeting and media mix.
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Usability for Non-Technical Teams
No SQL required—built for activation by ad ops, strategy, and marketing leads, not just engineers.
Why This Is a Win for the Market
For years, brands have struggled with fragmented retail performance data, delayed insights, and rigid onboarding flows. This new app dramatically simplifies and shortens the path from conversion to campaign improvement.
Some key use cases include:
- Performance-Based Audience Refinement: Reaching more of the shoppers who buy—not just those who click.
- SKU-Level Personalization: Tailor creative and messaging based on product-specific purchase behavior.
- Channel Mix Optimization: Understand which media channels drive incremental value beyond last-click attribution.
- Retailer-Specific Strategy Development: Leveraging purchase data to tailor campaigns by channel or retail partner.
For a mid-sized team juggling multiple channels and data sources, the ability to connect conversion insights directly to media strategy—without a heavy lift—is a major unlock.
The Mid-Market Opportunity—and the Gaps That Still Remain
For mid-market agencies and independent brands—many of whom are still early in their data maturity journey—the Connector App presents a clear opportunity and a challenge.
While it reduces the ongoing need for technical resources, brands that haven’t yet implemented Snowflake or unified their first-party data still need foundational support. This is especially true for retailers new to modern cloud infrastructure or those with limited internal engineering capacity.
That’s where Ventura Solutions comes in.
Ventura Solutions: Built to Support Every Stage of the Journey
As partners of both Snowflake and The Trade Desk, Ventura Solutions is purpose-built to support mid-market advertisers—wherever they are in their data journey.
We offer:
- End-to-end support for Snowflake implementation and modeling
- Data engineering and identity resolution expertise
- Audience strategy and campaign orchestration
- Retail media-specific consulting and analytics
You don’t need a full in-house team to take advantage of this tech. Ventura brings the talent, tools, and training to help you move faster —and get more value from your data.
