• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, May 4, 2020

NetWise, a Boca Raton-based data firm, has announced a service that enables B2B brands to target people working at home during the pandemic, using what it calls a B2B-to-consumer ID Graph.

How this works was not clear at first glance. The company’s CMO, T. Brian Jones did not respond to a query sent last Wednesday. We have to assume it’s compliant and permission-based.  

That said, here are some of the segments available “from most DSPs:”

- Professionals working from home, including non-essential workers who already work from home offices.

- Unemployed workers, including those in such hard-hit fields as restaurants, hospitality, apparel and travel.

- People likely to receive stimulus checks, including lower income individuals.

The announcement sent last week proclaims: “Our proprietary B2B-to-Consumer ID Graph means you reach the same person everywhere and every time.”

So how does this work?

It’s probably easy to target professionals working at home. They will still be using their company email addresses — the same ones you have on your list.

But people who have lost their jobs? As email expert Ryan Phelan said the other day, there is no way to identify the unemployed by behavior, although you might infer it from the business they’re in.

But how do you glean contact data, when they are presumably cut off from their company email systems? Presumably, you can send text messages to their smartphones. 

And people who are receiving stimulus checks? That’s just about everybody below a certain income level.  And again, you might identify lower-income workers from the industries they work in.

Here’s an answer, although we’d like to know more:  

"We're having great success modeling Covid-19 & Economically Affected Businesses based on information like state and federal regulations, industry impact, geographic impact, business news, and specific company reporting," Jones states in the announcement sent last week.

Ah, it’s based on modeling. And the underlying data from DSPs? It sounds like it comes from old-fashioned B2B compiling, which entails going through clippings, public records and other data sources — manually. NetWise may or may not have moved beyond that.  

Whatever the methodology, here’s a two-word tip for NetWise and any other company selling data or ID services in this fraught environment: Tread lightly.