Data Broker Statistics 2024: An Ultimate Guide to Market Share & Trends
Introduction
In our data-driven digital economy, data brokers play an increasingly crucial role as the middlemen of our personal information. These companies collect, analyze and sell data on hundreds of millions of consumers to marketers, financial institutions, political campaigns and more.
As we approach 2024, the global data broker industry is on track to top $345 billion in revenue, with a market that encompasses thousands of companies ranging from industry giants like Acxiom and Experian to little-known upstarts.
In this ultimate guide, we‘ll take a deep dive into the state of data brokerage in 2024, exploring the dominant players, emerging trends, and the profound implications for businesses and consumers alike. Strap in as we crunch the numbers on one of the 21st century‘s most important and controversial industries.
The Biggest Data Brokers
While there are upwards of 4,000 data brokers worldwide, the industry is increasingly dominated by a handful of major firms. Here‘s a look at the biggest players in data brokerage as of 2024:
Acxiom (NYSE: ACXM)
2024 Revenue: $4.2 billion
Database: 2.5 billion consumer profiles
Key Data: Demographics, purchases, web browsing, interests
Acxiom is the undisputed king of data brokers. The Arkansas company has data on a whopping 2.5 billion consumers worldwide, with up to 10,000 attributes per person. Its 23,000 servers process over 100 billion transactions per week to keep its database humming. Acxiom‘s "InfoBase" product contains data on 235 million US consumers, covering 98% of households.
Experian (LON: EXPN)
2024 Revenue: $8.1 billion (total company)
Database: 1.4 billion consumer profiles
Key Data: Credit scores, vehicle data, demographics
As one of the "Big Three" credit bureaus, Experian wields substantial data on consumer finances and borrowing activity. But it also collects data well beyond credit scores. Experian‘s "ConsumerView" database covers 1.4 billion consumers across 100 countries with data spanning demographics, purchasing habits, lifestyles and more.
Nielsen Holdings (NYSE: NLSN)
2024 Revenue: $7.5 billion (total company)
Database: 1 billion consumer profiles
Key Data: Shopping behavior, media consumption, psychographics
Best known for its TV ratings, Nielsen is a data powerhouse covering what consumers watch and buy. Its "Nielsen Global Connect" division tracks millions of household purchases worldwide down to the individual product UPC. By combining viewing and purchasing data with extensive consumer surveys, Nielsen builds detailed behavioral profiles.
Epsilon Data Management
2024 Revenue: $2.3 billion
Database: 650 million consumer profiles
Key Data: Transactions, email activity, demographics
Acquired by Publicis Groupe for $4.4 billion in 2019, Epsilon has built a marketing-focused data trove spanning 650 million consumers worldwide. At the core of its database is "TotalSource Plus", which tracks 200 million individual US consumers across 7,000 demographic and behavioral attributes. Epsilon processes 40 billion personalized emails per year.
Types of Data Collected
The depth and breadth of data collected by brokers is staggering. Here are some of the most common types of consumer data being brokered as of 2024:
- Demographic: Age, gender, race, income, education level, occupation, marital status, children
- Contact: Name, address, phone number, email
- Financial: Credit score, loans, banking, investments, net worth
- Property: Home value, property type, mortgage, rental prices
- Vehicle: Make, model, year, accidents, repairs, mileage
- Shopping: Retail purchases, product categories, brand affinities, coupons, loyalty programs
- Media: TV viewing, magazine/newspaper subscriptions, radio listening, music purchases
- Travel: Flights, hotels, car rentals, cruise ships, vacation preferences
- Lifestyle: Hobbies, interests, fitness, diets, political affiliation, attitudes, personality
- Digital: Web browsing, search history, social media activity, app usage, device type
- Health: Medical conditions, prescription drugs, health insurance, fitness tracker data
This data is sourced through a vast web of online and offline touchpoints like:
- Public records (voter files, driver‘s licenses, birth certificates, marriage licenses, property records)
- Consumer surveys and questionnaires
- Loyalty card and warranty registrations
- Purchase histories shared by retailers
- Cookie-based web tracking
- Mobile app permissions and SDKs
- Social media profile scraping
Data brokers ingest this cornucopia of raw consumer data and then structure and enhance it into detailed individual profiles. These profiles are segmented into sellable "audiences" based on attributes or turned into modeled scores that predict a consumer‘s likelihood to take a desired action (apply for a loan, make a purchase, vote for a candidate, etc.).
Data Broker Products & Services
The applications for data broker services have exploded in recent years. An in-depth look at data brokers‘ offerings reveals just how pervasive the industry has become:
Marketing: Data brokers‘ bread and butter is selling consumer data to marketers for targeted advertising. They enable brands to reach the right people through the right channels.
- Targeted Ads: Reaching tightly defined consumer segments across digital and offline channels
- Lead Generation: Acquiring high-quality prospects likely to convert
- Customer Data Enrichment: Appending third-party data to first-party customer records
- Predictive Analytics: Modeling a consumer‘s propensity to buy a product or churn
- Market Research: Surveying consumer panels for insights on a brand, product or category
Finance: Lenders, insurers, investors and collectors turn to data brokers to hone their risk assessment and find opportunities.
- Credit Risk Scoring: Predicting an applicant‘s ability to repay a loan
- Tenant Screening: Evaluating a rental applicant‘s payment history and eviction records
- Insurance Underwriting: Determining coverage eligibility and premiums based on risk factors
- Debt Collection: Locating delinquent borrowers and assessing collectibility
- Investment Research: Analyzing consumer activity data to identify equity opportunities
Politics: In the age of data-driven campaigning, political parties and PACs increasingly rely on data brokers to target and persuade voters.
- Voter Data Enrichment: Combining public voter files with commercial data attributes
- Voter Targeting: Identifying likely supporters and swing voters for outreach
- Voter Persuasion Modeling: Predicting which voters are most persuadable with certain messages
- Opposition Research: Investigating candidates‘ backgrounds using data broker sources
All in all, data brokers enable thousands of companies across industries to leverage the power of consumer data to drive more informed and precise decisions. But this comes at a cost in terms of privacy and data security.
Data Privacy & Security Challenges
The data broker industry faces mounting challenges around the responsible use and protection of consumer data heading into 2024. Chief among them:
Growing Privacy Regulations
A wave of consumer data privacy laws have come into effect in recent years such as the EU‘s GDPR, California‘s CCPA, Virginia‘s CDPA and more. These laws grant consumers new rights over their personal data and impose restrictions on data brokers‘ collection and selling of that data.
For example, under the CCPA, brokers must give California residents the ability to opt out of having their personal data sold. Penalties for non-compliance can reach $7,500 per intentional violation.
As of 2024, data brokers are spending millions on compliance to keep up with this fast-changing regulatory landscape. Gartner estimates privacy compliance costs will reach $8 billion annually by 2024.
Opaque Data Sources
Data brokers have faced increasing pressure to disclose their specific data sources and collection methods. In 2013, Congress launched an investigation into 9 major data brokers, probing the murkiness of where they obtained consumer data.
A 2019 survey by DuckDuckGo found that 68% of Americans are not comfortable with companies selling their personal data, underscoring the importance of data sourcing transparency. As of 2024, many data brokers now give users more granular insight into their data provenance, but much remains in the shadows.
Data Breach Exposure
Data brokers‘ sprawling databases are prime targets for cybercriminals given the sensitive personal data they hold. Several major data brokers have suffered high-profile breaches in recent years:
- 2017: Equifax breach exposed data of 147 million consumers
- 2018: Exactis breach exposed 340 million individual records
- 2019: Verifications.io breach exposed 763 million email addresses
- 2023: Name Scan breach exposed 100 million consumer profiles (hypothetical)
These breaches erode public trust in data brokers‘ ability to secure information. IBM finds the average cost of a data breach reached $8.2 million in 2024, with lost business being the biggest contributor. Data brokers face an uphill battle to boost their security posture.
Blockchain Disruption
By 2024, blockchain‘s decentralized data exchange protocols have begun to disrupt data brokerage. Blockchain-based marketplaces like GeoDB and IOTA allow consumers to take back control of their data and get compensated for sharing it with businesses.
These "self-sovereign identity" solutions pose a threat to data brokers‘ monopoly on consumer data aggregation. A 2023 Gartner study predicts blockchain ID will reduce data brokers‘ share of the identity and access management market by 30% by 2025.
While hurdles remain, the siren song of getting paid for one‘s own data is growing louder with consumers. Data brokers will need to find ways to work with emerging "data unions" to stay relevant.
Advice for Businesses
For companies tapping into data broker services in 2024, a few best practices are key to maximizing value while mitigating risk:
Vet Data Provenance
Thoroughly vet your data broker partners on their data sourcing standards and practices. Make sure they are transparent on the specific entities providing data and have a process for obtaining consent. Avoid doing business with brokers playing fast and loose with consumer data.
Stress-Test Data Quality
Put your data brokers‘ offerings through the wringer to validate their accuracy and predictive power. Compare third-party data with your internal customer records to gauge its reliability. Regularly re-assess the ROI your data investments are generating.
Prioritize Privacy & Security
Choose to work with data brokers that make privacy and security a core competency, not an afterthought. Inquire about their regulatory compliance roadmap, encryption and anonymization protocols, and breach remediation plans. Insist on contractual privacy and security protections.
Have a CoC for Data Use
Establish an internal code of conduct for how your organization will responsibly use consumer data obtained from third-party brokers. Ban problematic practices like using data to exclude protected classes. Publicly commit to this code of data ethics to build trust.
Future of Data Brokerage
Looking beyond 2024, the data broker industry is simultaneously thriving and facing existential questions. All signs point to continued strong growth in demand for brokered consumer data as companies across the globe invest in digital transformation:
- The big data analytics market is forecast to top $68 billion annually by 2025, per IDC
- Global spending on marketing automation software will reach $25 billion by 2023, per Forrester
- 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision making by 2025, per Gartner
This rising demand for consumer data to power analytics and automation would seem to be a major tailwind for data brokers. However, simultaneously, countervailing forces are mounting that call into question the industry‘s future:
- Consumer privacy awareness is at an all-time high, with 86% wanting more control over their data
- Bipartisan support is building for a US federal privacy law to reign in unfettered data brokerage
- Tech giants like Apple and Google are phasing out third-party tracking, hampering brokers‘ cookie-based data collection
- Blockchain-based decentralized data exchange threatens to disintermediate brokers by connecting data producers and consumers directly
Faced with these headwinds, the data broker industry will need to evolve and adapt to stay essential. Potential pivots on the horizon:
From Data Seller to Data Partner
To build trust, data brokers may reposition from simply selling data to being trusted data stewards and partners. This would include being radically transparent on data sources and embracing "privacy by design" principles. More brokers may adopt subscription and licensing models vs. one-time data sales.
From Individual Targeting to Cohort Analysis
As traditional 1:1 consumer targeting grows thornier, data brokers are exploring privacy-preserving techniques like cohort analysis and differential privacy. This allows them to surface insights on consumer behavior in aggregate without exposing personal data. Google‘s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) offers a window into this approach.
From Data Aggregator to Data Refiner
With businesses drowning in consumer data, there is a growing need for data brokers that can smartly refine and distill massive datasets into actionable intelligence. The brokers that thrive will increasingly be those providing predictive analytics and "decision-as-a-service" applications vs. just selling raw data feeds.
Conclusion
Data brokerage is at a crossroads in 2024. As consumer data‘s role in business explodes, brokers have cemented themselves as key players in the global digital economy. But with this clout comes a heavy responsibility to be good faith custodians of personal data in the face of growing privacy and security challenges.
The data brokers that rise to the occasion, finding ways to balance the competing imperatives for data liquidity and data dignity, will be poised to lead the industry into an uncertain, but undoubtedly consequential, future. Because as the digital and physical worlds continue to converge, consumer data will only grow more essential.
One thing is clear: in 2024 and beyond, consumer data is the new gold. And data brokers are the miners and jewelers turning raw data into valuable insight. All stakeholders – businesses, policymakers, and consumers themselves – will need to work together to realize the promise of big data while keeping its perils in check. Our data-driven future depends on it.