Acxiom holds world's largest commercial database on consumers

In 2012, Acxiom's database was reported to be the largest commercial database on consumers in the world, containing approximately 1,500 data points, or "elements", for each of the 500 million active consumers worldwide and processing more than 50 trillion data transactions per year. Each of the individuals in its database is slotted into one of 70 specific socioeconomic clusters as an attempt to predict what they will buy and what types of persuasion they will respond to. In its latest fiscal year, Acxiom had produced a profit of $77.26 million and revenues of $1.13 billion; its customer list included 47 of the Fortune 100 companies, which buy elements to add to the information they already have about their customers. After the 9/11 attacks, it provided the government with information about 11 of the 19 hijackers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-quiet-giant-of-consumer-database-marketing.html

https://theweek.com/articles/474509/acxiom-corp-faceless-organization-that-knows-everything-about

tags: Acxiom, credit scoring, databases

Writer: Natasha Singer. The Week

Publication: New York Times, The Week