Making Audience Accuracy Actionable With Truthset’s Data Ratings

In advertising, everyone agrees that accuracy matters. But too often, accuracy lives in the abstract like a principle to aspire to rather than a metric to operationalize. Marketers know bad data is costing them money, but they have lacked an easy and reliable way to measure, compare, and improve the quality of the audiences they buy.

That’s where Data Ratings come in. Rather than a theoretical framework, Data Ratings offer a practical tool embedded directly into marketing workflows.

The Problem With Buying Blind

For years, buying an audience segment was somewhat of a leap of faith. A segment labeled “suburban moms” might be 60% accurate… or 10%. Without transparency, it’s impossible to know.

This is the “noise machine” effect. Even within a dataset that contains excellent records, there’s often middling and outright incorrect information. Without a way to identify the difference, marketers end up paying for inaccuracies they can’t see.

Turning Accuracy Into a Simple Decision

Truthset solves this with an objective, patented solution for measuring record-level accuracy of consumer attributes across the industry. Instead of delivering raw probability scores that few marketers have the time (or appetite) to parse, Truthset distills results into a ratings scale—AAA, AA, A, B—similar to how Moody’s rates creditworthiness.

This shift matters. It transforms accuracy from a hidden, technical detail into a visible, comparable metric that can be factored into buying decisions. A high Data Rating signals premium-quality data worth paying for; a lower Data Rating might be acceptable for broad-reach campaigns where precision is less critical.

Making Data Ratings Accessible: The PMG Example

PMG, a technology-driven marketing company, recently integrated Truthset’s Data Rated Audiences into its Alli Marketplace—a curated app hub within its proprietary Alli platform.

For PMG’s clients, this means they can validate the accuracy of their first- and third-party audiences, extend segment scale with additional high-accuracy records, and activate these improved audiences without leaving their campaign environment.

This integration eliminates the friction of moving between systems, shortens time-to-value, and allows accuracy to influence decisions in real time—right where media planning and buying happen.

Why This Model Works

Embedding data accuracy ratings into the tools marketers already use changes the game in three ways:

1. Visibility: Accuracy becomes a visible, understood variable, not an afterthought.
2. Comparability: Data Ratings create a common language for evaluating audience segments across providers.
3. Speed: Validation and improvement can happen in minutes, not weeks.

Beyond the Launch

PMG’s marketplace is starting with enterprise-grade data partnerships, but its roadmap includes categories like creative insights, audience discovery, and measurement. The vision is to provide a single, trusted interface for sourcing and activating not just accurate data, but the entire ecosystem of marketing technology.

If more platforms adopt this embedded-ratings approach, we could see a network effect: buyers demanding rated data, providers empowered to improve their scores, and accuracy becoming a standard buying criterion alongside reach and price.

From Principle to Practice

The open web can’t match the precision of walled gardens without a shared commitment to truth in data. Data Ratings are that commitment made tangible—a way to give every participant in the ecosystem the same starting point for defining what’s “real” in an audience.

It’s not enough to say accuracy matters. We have to make it visible, measurable, and actionable. When that happens, marketers will no longer be buying in the dark. They’ll be investing with confidence, knowing exactly what kind of audience quality they’re getting. and what kind of performance they can expect in return.