Hugh Stevens, managing director EMEA at AUDIENCES, dives into the future of first-party data activation. He looks at how customer strategy should evolve, driving a sustainable impact, and prioritising practical value over theoretical potential.

What led you to first-party data activation?

Over the course of my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with talented people across data at Acxiom, media at dentsu, and technology at LiveRamp. Clients, partners, colleagues past and present, each of whom has shaped the way I think and operate today. 

The last decade has been defined by the convergence of these three worlds and by the dramatic evolution of the underlying technology. Ten years ago, brands started to shift away from buying hardware to store data and implementing software stacks in the hope they could extract value. Today, cloud infrastructure underpins almost everything we do, personally and professionally. The way we access, analyse, activate, and share information has been transformed. 

When I met the AUDIENCES team earlier this year, I was immediately drawn to the way they have pioneered since 2022 their cloud native approach to solving for brands and data owners to securely activate their audiences directly from their cloud infrastructure. Instead of building yet another external platform, they have built an application designed to live inside an organisation’s cloud environment, aligned to the modern data architecture that enterprises have already invested heavily in. 

Three months in, I’ve been reflecting on the transformative steps brands and data owners can take to drive more connected, effective marketing investment as the roles of data, tech, and media continue to converge. 

How should customer strategy evolve to drive smarter, more connected media investment? 

A brand’s known customer base is one of its most valuable assets. Yet, ironically, it is often underused when it comes to one of the biggest marketing investments: media. 

Whether you’re leveraging customer insights to fuel smarter prospecting, suppressing existing customers for efficiency, or orchestrating omnichannel experiences, the customer experience outside your owned environment is just as important as the one within it. 

I’ve been lucky to work with brands that have taken this seriously, and the evidence is consistent: when used properly, first-party data improves ROI, strengthens targeting accuracy, and creates meaningful operational efficiency. 

For me, this comes back to two things. Firstly, access: media teams, whether in-house or agency, should be able to easily query and activate first-party data. Secondly, expectation: using first-party data in media shouldn’t be a stretch goal, it should be the baseline. 

The future of media will be omnichannel, joined up, and consistent. The organisational shift required to do this is one challenge, but the technical enablement is no longer difficult. Brands and agencies must push each other to make it a standard rather than an ambition. 

Technology enables transformation but what truly drives sustainable impact in marketing organisations? 

I’ve always loved solving puzzles, and in many ways marketing transformation is exactly that: a puzzle that only comes together when people, technology, data, process, and governance align. 

Technology solves problems but never by itself. It is, at best, the how. You still need clarity on the why, and you still need the right structure, skills, and operational alignment to extract value quickly. 

The CFO must trust that the investment will drive growth, efficiency, and longevity. The CTO and CIO teams are the custodians of the infrastructure and are responsible for ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, and future proof. The CMO must be able to access and use this infrastructure to drive performance. Strategy is what aligns these functions, but people are what make it work. And with the pace at which technology is changing, that alignment is more important than ever. 

Data infrastructure has evolved, so why are so many marketing technologies still behind the curve? 

Data infrastructure has undergone a revolution. Today, enterprise data lives in cloud environments like AWS, GCP, and Azure, organised through modern warehousing technologies like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks. Meanwhile, SaaS platforms, even those built on cloud compute still require brands to move their data into external environments for the software to operate. That’s created two significant issues, the first being security and compliance risks. With customer data breaches making regular headlines, brands are under more pressure than ever to minimise exposure. Moving data out of your controlled environment increases risk. Full stop. 

The other risk is commercial inefficiency. If your data already sits in cloud infrastructure that you’re paying for, traditional SaaS models effectively result in double-paying for cloud compute. In media-specific platforms, this can even become an additional 'tax' on the media budget. 

As brands have modernised their data infrastructure, the technology that sits on top of it must modernise too. The CTO organisation still needs to deliver value for the CMO but they should now expect that value to be delivered inside the cloud environment they already trust and invest in. 

What’s the next chapter for data-driven marketing? 

We’re entering a new phase: cloud-native marketing applications. These applications live within the brand’s data environment, use its cloud resources, and are directly connected to the relevant data sources. They are built for interoperability, for reduced friction, and for far greater control. This new phase was created by AUDIENCES. Developed post GDPR, we were built for the new infrastructure. 

Many vendors today are commercially aligned with marketplaces like Snowflake or Google Cloud but applications go beyond partnerships. They are technically integrated, architecturally aligned, and designed for the future state of enterprise data. 

For brands, this means the next leap in marketing maturity will be driven not by more platforms, but by applications that create value directly from the data sources they already own. Democratisation, security, and operational simplicity can all co-exist but only if the technology evolves to fit the environment, not the other way around. 

What’s the single most important message you’d share with marketers navigating the shift to first-party data? 

Prioritise practical value over theoretical potential. There’s a lot of noise in the market about identity, cookies, clean rooms, and data maturity but the brands that are winning are the ones that start with simple, high-value use cases and scale from there. 

You don’t need a perfect dataset to take meaningful steps forward. You don’t need to solve every channel at once. And you don’t need to rebuild your entire tech stack. 

What you do need is clarity on what first-party data can improve today, the ability for teams to access and act on it, and technology that removes friction rather than introducing more of it. 

If you focus on using the data you already have securely, intelligently, and consistently then you’ll be in a stronger position than 90% of the market. Perfection is not the goal; progress is.