More Dynamic Decisioning Drives Online Marketers to Do Their Data Due Diligence

NEW YORK and ATLANTA, Nov. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- AD:TECH -- In today's dynamic online marketplace, possessing accurate data about web users has never been more crucial. It determines not only how companies market and sell products and services to customers, but also how they will continue to engage with and build loyalty among them. Accurate data is the foundation of today's business, and directly impacts the financial bottom line.

Digital Element, through its leading IP Intelligence solutions, is helping online marketers and advertisers make more accurate data-driven decisions and deliver more relevant online targeting.

"Online targeting is not a new concept by any means," said Rob Friedman, executive vice president, Digital Element. "However, the way our company approaches its technology innovation to improve online targeting is -- especially in terms of making our datasets the most accurate, most reliable and most granular on the market. These are all important features companies need -- and want -- to make their online endeavors more relevant -- and ultimately more profitable."

As of June 2010, there were approximately 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide. With the average user's time spent visiting websites clocked in seconds, not minutes, companies have only a short window of opportunity to make a direct connection with visitors. The business world continually clamors for new and improved ways to expand reach and better target their messages online.

According to Friedman, there are a number of technologies with all the latest bells and whistles that promise to deliver better audience segmentation and targeting capabilities. "But, when you strip away all the window dressing, online marketing comes down to one thing: relevance. At that point, you're only as good as your data," he adds.

Digital Element strives to continually improve its data accuracy levels. Recent third-party tests conducted by Keynote Systems, the global leader in on-demand test and measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience, demonstrated a 100-percent accuracy rate for the company's NetAcuity® technology at the country level, as well as an exact match at the state level for those IP addresses located in the United States. Additionally, the Keynote technology assessment graded results down to a city level, and NetAcuity delivered 97 percent accuracy. Additionally, the company's NetAcuity Edge product offers the only validated, user-provided geographic data down to a postal code level and represents a revolutionary approach to IP targeting.

Due Diligence Pays Off for Online Marketers

When it comes to securing data to use in online marketing efforts, Friedman cautioned companies about taking vendors at their word when they tout the accuracy of this type of information.

He advises online marketers and advertisers to do their due diligence and to look for companies that:

• Continually strive to improve their accuracy levels and validate their information, year over year, either through partnerships or technology innovations;
• Utilize third-party tests that measure data, not methods to collect data; conducted by reputable organizations, such as Keynote Systems; and
• Have a stable list of customers whose business depends heavily on providing precise and dependable data.

Infochimps, the central repository for the world's data, is an example of a company whose customers depend heavily on the accuracy and reliability of its datasets. Through its Query API, Infochimps offers Digital Element's worldwide city-level location, business, connection speed, proxy, and demographics data, allowing websites and developers to display more relevant and targeted content as well as improve user segmentation and analysis capabilities. The data lives alongside the other 10,000+ datasets that make up the Infochimps.org collection.

"Digital Element's NetAcuity database is the industry's most accurate geolocation solution, and we at Infochimps want to enable smaller businesses, developers, advertisers and marketers to take advantage of this data and its ability to increase the effectiveness and intelligence of our customers' online products," said Joseph Kelly, COO, Infochimps.  

About Digital Element

Digital Element delivers the de facto standard in IP Intelligence, providing coverage for 99.9999 percent of the Internet and collecting more than one million points-of-view daily from different online vantage points. Taking advantage of its patented technology and a team of dedicated data analysts, most of the world's largest networks, websites, video portals and social networks, access the most comprehensive set of IP data available to deliver targeting advertising, content localization, geographic rights management, video streaming localization and analytics. Through Digital Element's industry vision and leadership, this non-invasive technology has evolved into much more than geographic information and now includes other intelligence factors such as connection speed, domain name, ISP and language.

For more information on how to uncover new levels of insight about online users, please visit www.digital-element.net. Digital Element is a business unit of Digital Envoy.

SOURCE Digital Element