Welcome to The Ally—a content series from Alliant that spotlights the top thought leaders shaping the future of audience data and advertising.

In this Q&A edition, we’re joined by Charlene Cai, Senior Director of Audience Insights and Strategy at Omnicom Media Group. Charlene offers her expert take on the evolving role of audience strategies in media planning and activation, while also addressing the data challenges and opportunities facing today’s advertisers.

Can you tell me more about Omnicom Media Group and your role there?

I recently joined Beauty Co-Lab as the Senior Director of Audience Insights and Strategy. BCL is a bespoke agency within Omnicom Media Group (OMG) created specifically for L’Oréal USA.

At Beauty Co-Lab, we take a data-driven, audience-first approach to media and marketing. In my role, I lead audience insights efforts. My team focuses on identifying high-value audience segments, aligning data solutions across platforms, and ensuring our strategies are grounded in insights that translate to measurable results. It’s a unique and exciting space where we use data to unlock opportunities and deliver real impact for our client.

How important is audience data to your company?

Audience data is foundational to everything we do. It’s not just a tactic—it’s a shared philosophy embedded across the end-to-end media planning and activation process. At BCL, we leverage the full spectrum of available data to identify and size growth audiences, translate them into targetable segments, and extract behavioral insights that inform optimization and refinement. This includes integrating client first-party data, second-party partnerships via clean rooms, and high-quality third-party data from providers like Alliant.

What are your biggest data challenges? What keeps you up at night?

One of the biggest data challenges today is the increasing fragmentation of the landscape. With the rise of walled gardens and the loss of third-party cookies, our view of the consumer is more fractured than ever. Operationally, this means our ability to activate uniform audiences across channels is weakened due to inconsistent data signals. As a result, it also obstructs clear cross-channel audience learning. When you’re using different data sets to target what is intended to be the same audience, you can’t definitively determine whether audience A is truly outperforming audience B.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities within the data-driven marketing industry right now?

The most significant opportunity lies in leveraging first-party data effectively. For brands that are ‘first-party data poor,’ like many in the CPG space, the priority is finding new ways to generate, enrich, and scale that data. Tools like AI-powered ID graphs can play a major role here.

How are you preparing for an ad landscape that doesn’t support third-party cookies?

Building on my earlier point, we believe in the power of first-party data and our approach is tailored to each client’s level of data maturity.

For clients who are ‘first-party data poor’, our focus is on building a foundational strategy for meaningful data collection and nurturing. A critical insight from our CPG work is that higher-value incentives consistently result in better-quality data capture.

For clients with more mature first-party data ecosystems, the focus shifts to insights and activation. I work closely with our data science, data & tech, and audience operations partners here at OMG to dive deep into 1PD insights, build custom segments, and activate them across paid media to maximize impact.

How do you feel about the rise of generative AI, and do you see it impacting your role any time soon?

I’m genuinely excited about the rise of generative AI. In a short amount of time, it has already fundamentally reshaped the way we work—from streamlining daily tasks to accelerating strategic planning. Personally, I’ve seen a tremendous boost in productivity, and I actively encourage my team to explore and adopt AI tools in their workflows. As AI continues to evolve, I absolutely see it becoming even more embedded in audience strategy, data analysis, and campaign optimization.