

Ask HN: What is the $ value of audience data? (BlueKai, Magnet, eXelate, etc..) - throw444

The company I work for, a fairly large web publisher, was recently approached by a company wishing to purchase our audience data. We have never sold audience data before, and therefore don't know exactly what commission we should expect a data exchange to take.<p>In the ad network world, I know that commissions range from the 50%-&#62;80% range, depending on a few different factors, as ad networks do have substantial overhead (their ad serving/technology platform, trafficking labour, accounting, salesforce).<p>I would expect Data exchangers, on the other hand, to have lower overhead in comparison, as all the transactions are fully digital and automated - meaning their only real costs are software development and business development.<p>Does that mean we should expect the data exchangers to ask for proportionally less than what networks take? (I.e. they take 10%-&#62;30%, versus the 30%-&#62;50% more common in the network world?).
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petewailes
At the risk of being trite, you've hit the nail on the head: there's no real
set price. It depends on the data source, quality, recency, collection
methods, how tightly focused it is, and who the customer is.

I'd suggest doing some background research on the company in question; if
they're talking to you, they'll have talked to other people, probably in your
area, probably in others before too. See if you can find some of their names,
and see what they did.

Also, start digging around your area in general, and see if anyone else is
selling data. If so, find out what they're selling, how they're packaging it,
and what they're charging. Step one of selling anything is understanding the
market. Know your competitors.

As a second step, once you know what the going rate is, package your pricing
around that. You should be able to work out based on other people's pricing
methods what your data is worth to this particular company. Bare in mind
though that what it's worth to them might not be what it's worth to other
people in the future, so have some flexibility built in there too.

Finally, in data sale, as with everything, there's room for negotiation. Ask
yourself what you'd consider a fair price, combine that with your other data,
and work from that.

However, I'd also raise the question of, is this something you want to do, and
how would your customers react if they knew what you were doing? There may be
moral, ethical and legal issues to answer, although not knowing the specifics,
I can't really comment there.

Hope this helps!

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throw444
Thanks for the input - It's funny, but contacting their competition for a
competitive quote is so obvious that I didn't even consider it, as we we're
approached, versus visa versa. Great insight.

~~~
petewailes
Glad to be of service.

