Da Facto: Where is the US household file?

Friday, October 23, 2009

Where is the US household file?

Conducting an offline direct marketing campaign is relatively easy. You can call any one of a number of data providers to get a us household file (that is, demographics on 115 MM US households), run a test campaign, figure out the profile of who responded to the campaign, and you are off to the races. The data exists. You just have to crank up your favorite LOGIT tool and you are in business. In the online space, not so much.

In the online world, there is no single vendor that has the US online user file. Why? It is hard to identify users online in a way that protects privacy and is meaningful for marketers. Though they are all getting better, no single online method of tagging users for demographics has over 30% of the online audience. So, in order to know basic demographics, you need to combine data from multiple data sources.

Say you have signed up multiple data providers. Are you ready to go? No. You now need to make some trade offs on accuracy and comparability. What do I mean by that? Well, all of the data sources have varying levels of accuracy. Is IP based better than cookie based? Do you have a file that you can use to know truth? Also, the data sources may report data at the user level (though anonymous) or the household or the zip4 or the zip. Seems like you should be as close to the user level as you can be, but what about the accuracy issue? Is is better to have accurate data at the Z4 or less accurate data at the user level. By the way, it is going to depend on the data type and category. All in all, very complicated stuff.

What is a online marketer to do? You have two choices on this. Test and learn and know that you are going to need to invest time and resources in getting a good set of data providers in place. Or, self servingly, work with someone who has already climbed up the learning cure :).

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