Oracle launches “largest B2B audience data marketplace”

Oracle has beefed up its data chops with the launch of what it describes as the largest B2B audience data marketplace.

Part of the company’s Data Cloud, it offers access to over 400 million business user profiles that are sliced into more than 4,000 pre-built audience segments, plus a million US companies with addressable decision-makers for account-based marketing.

Account-oriented segments can be based on such criteria as specific enterprise purchases, and individuals can be targeted by parameters like job functions or named industry events they’ve attended.

The data comes from Oracle-owned BlueKai, Datalogix, and AddThis, as well as from such B2B data partners as Bombora, Dun & Bradstreet, FullContact, Gravy Analytics, HG Data, Infogroup, Place IQ, and TransUnion. In addition, Leadspace provides predictive analytics.

The key differentiator, Oracle noted, is the access to such a large amount of B2B data in one place, with pre-built segments and tools to build others. The Data Cloud is integrated with over 200 platforms, including DSPs (demand-side platforms), DMPs (data management platforms), agency trading desks, publisher exchanges and ad networks. In addition to Oracle’s customers, companies that do not employ other Oracle technology can utilize it.

Previously, Oracle offered B2B data through Bizo, which LinkedIn owned. But Bizo was shut down earlier this year, and Microsoft purchased LinkedIn, so the Data Cloud built its own offering. Oracle also offers a B2C data marketplace through BlueKai.

Data Cloud Group Vice President Rob Holland pointed out via email that “the other major audience marketplaces today (Adobe, Acxiom, Exelate) are focused mostly on B2C, not B2B.” He added that “no other B2B marketplace [comes] close” to the new endeavor, since the Oracle marketplace includes the largest freestanding B2B data providers, like Dun & Bradstreet.

A typical use case, he said, might be a large hardware/software company that wants to target IT decision-makers who work for companies with more than 1,000 employees. Those companies might be limited to 10,000 that are in the hardware/software company’s list of accounts and have purchased a specific kind of equipment, with marketing targeted to individual decision-makers at those accounts who attended conferences related to that kind of equipment.

Accessible data has become a key calling card for the major marketing clouds, including Salesforce’s launch in 2014 of its Wave analytics cloud and Adobe’s unveiling last year of its Audience Marketplace.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.