• by Ray Schultz , February 17, 2021

Forbes has expanded its data service footprint, launching ForbesOne, a first-party data platform that it claims will provide new insights into audiences and facilitate custom experiences.  

The goal is to “better understand who is visiting our site, what piques their interest and ultimately what motivates them,” the publisher says in a blog post announcing ForbesOne.    

The debut follows last year’s launch by Forbes of Communities At Scale, pursuing a strategy that would allow publishers to create premium content based on relationships. 

Last year, Meredith launched Data Studio, “a platform built out of its extensive first-party data set to help brands better understand their consumers both on and off Meredith’s properties,” according to AdExchanger. 

ForbesOne will help marketers reach Forbes' communities, including its CEO, CMO, CFO and CIO Networks. Users can more easily access its Under 30, ForbesWommen and For(bes) The Culture platforms., Forbes states.  

Forbes claims clients in the automobile, technology, finance and luxury categories are seeing good results with ForbesOne in early uses. “While Meredith and Forbes are the first to market with first-party data studios, they won’t be the only ones,” observes Richard Jones, CMO at marketing platform Cheetah Digital.  

“As more publishers follow suit, brands need to understand how to get the most value out of these offerings — how to understand if their consumers are reading these publications. That can be done through first-party data matching. To do so, a brand would need to stand up a data acquisition practice of its own, then bring that data to a publisher like Forbes or Meredith to take personalization to the next level,” Jones adds.

The new Forbes product has been in development for 18 months, and Forbes credits data scientists, engineers, journalists, project manager, sales and marketing professionals for bringing it to life.   

Jones concludes that first-party data “not only plays a role in the future of advertising — it is the future of advertising.”