With the shift to online-oriented behaviours that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic has come new opportunities for brands selling and operating online.

Although ecommerce penetration has not remained as high as it once was in the depths of the pandemic, many more consumers have integrated online buying into their day-to-day lives in some way, while channels such as q-commerce (quick commerce) and click-and-collect have sprung up and expanded in order to cater to additional moments and behaviours. This has presented new opportunities for brands that historically may not have had access to much data on consumers’ buying habits and preferences, such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands.

In the first instalment of this two-part series, I looked at the opportunities that have arisen for FMCG brands to form direct relationships with their customers and gather first-party data, such as by selling direct-to-consumer (D2C), operating loyalty schemes, or offering discounts and prize giveaways.

However, as beneficial as it is for FMCG brands to form direct customer relationships, there is still a limit to the insights that can be gained from first-party data – particularly in FMCG, where brands rely on businesses like retailers or pubs to reach consumers with their products at scale, and those types of businesses tend to hold much richer information about customer behaviour.

Fortunately, new opportunities are also opening up in terms of access to second-party data: data owned and collected by another business that is licensed to the brand for its exclusive use. From media networks of retailer data to data ‘clean rooms’ and partnerships, this article will look at the different opportunities available to FMCG brands in the realm of second-party data and how brands are taking advantage of them.