What is First-Party Data?

First-party data is generated through direct interactions between your business and your customers. When someone browses your Shopify store, makes a purchase, opens an email, submits a review, or interacts with your app, they generate first-party data. You own this data, you collected it with the customer's knowledge (and ideally consent), and you control how it is used.

The distinction between first-party, second-party, and third-party data centers on the relationship between the data collector and the data subject. First-party data is collected directly by you from your own audience. Second-party data is another company's first-party data shared through a partnership. Third-party data is aggregated from various sources by data brokers and sold to advertisers, this is the data type that browser privacy changes and regulations have been systematically eroding.

The collapse of third-party cookies and the tightening of privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, and Apple's App Tracking Transparency) have dramatically elevated the importance of first-party data. Advertisers who once relied on third-party data for targeting, retargeting, and attribution are finding those signals increasingly unreliable or unavailable. First-party data, collected with consent and stored securely, is immune to these changes because it does not depend on cross-site tracking or third-party infrastructure.

For Shopify store owners, first-party data sources include website analytics (page views, product interactions, search queries), transaction data (purchase history, order frequency, AOV), email and SMS engagement metrics, customer account profiles, review and UGC submissions, customer service interactions, and loyalty program activity. The richness of this data grows with each customer interaction, enabling increasingly personalized marketing and better business decisions over time.