• Wall Street Journal, Monday, February 23, 2015 5:28 PM

The Wall Street Journal has posted an article exploring a research report released by media-buying agency Mediasmith, which conducted an experiment by purchasing demographic data from 11 different vendors in the U.S. and U.K. to use for targeting for one of its clients over a three week period in November. Per the WSJ, Mediasmith used comScore and Nielsen to “determine which vendor boosted the targeting performance of the ads the most.”

The findings: Not all ad-targeting data providers are created equal.

“According to Mediasmith the performance of the vendors in its test varied significantly, and some were ‘useless,’” wrote the WSJ. “In the U.S., four of the data targeting solutions tested were not much more accurate at targeting users of a certain age and gender than simply showing ads to users at random, the research said.”

Read the whole story at Wall Street Journal »