• by Ray Schultz , December 6, 2017

U.S. companies will spend $10.05 billion on third-party audience data this year, and $10.13 billion on solutions to support its activation, according to a study from The IAB Data Center of Excellence and the Data & Marketing Association, conducted by Winterberry Group.    

The total for data includes $3.5 billion on email addresses, names, street addresses ad other personally identifiable information (PII), grouped together under the heading “omnichannel.” It also covers $2.9 billion on transactional data and $2 billion on digital identifiers.

Of the money spent on third-party solutions, $4.3 billion will be used to support data integration, processing and hygiene, the report sates. 

In addition, $4.2 billion will be spent on hosting and management solutions. And $1.63 billion will go to analytics, modeling, and segmentation solutions.

“Companies are spending significant sums on services and technology to assist with key data functions — more money than on the data itself,” states Neil O’Keefe, senior VP of content and marketing for the DMA. “A key challenge to reign in these costs will be stronger budget oversight and increased focus on developing data talent that can rise to the occasion.”

Orchid Richardson, VP and managing director for the IAB Data Center of Excellence, adds that “audience data is only powerful when you can put it to work, and this research shows that U.S. companies are turning to outside help to tap into that power.”

Spending on data itself will also include these expenditures: 

• Specialty — $0.88 billion
• Identity — $0.56 billion

The study is based on analysis of financial data provided by several commercial data providers.