Audience data providers supply advertisers and marketers with third-party audience data that can be used to target and understand specific groups of consumers. These providers collect and combine data from multiple sources to create persistent, targetable audience segments based on attributes such as demographics, behavior, interests, location, and purchase intent.
Audience data providers are commonly used to expand campaign reach, improve targeting accuracy, and enrich existing customer data. Their data is delivered into advertising and marketing platforms such as demand side platforms, connected TV (CTV) advertising platforms, social media advertising software, and CRM software, where it is used to build and activate audience segments.
Audience data providers focus on supplying external audience data for use in advertising and marketing workflows. In practice, they work alongside platforms like data management platforms (DMP) and customer data platforms (CDP), which organize and activate data, while providers deliver the audience segments that power targeting. Unlike audience intelligence platforms, which focus on analyzing audience trends and insights, audience data providers deliver reusable or customizable segments that can be directly used in campaigns for ad targeting. These providers do not rely primarily on real-time contextual signals to generate audiences.
To qualify for inclusion in the Audience Data Providers category, a product must:
- Provide third-party audience data or pre-built audience segments for targeting or enrichment
- Deliver audience data into advertising or marketing platforms such as DSPs, CTV, social media, or CRM systems
- Offer pre-built or customizable audience segments
- Provide clear details on the data and attributes used to build audience segments
- Support compliance with data privacy regulations
- Offer persistent or reusable audience segments, not limited to real-time contextual targeting
