• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 26, 2017

In 2017, more companies will clean up their CRM databases to verify contact lists, and there will be a significant uptick in the use of customer identity data management as social sites, portals, search engines and publishers deny agencies and advertisers the right to information based on consumer privacy concerns. At least in Infutor's world.

The uptick in mobile advertising and marketing will bring more eyes to the opt-in process to protect consumer privacy, especially by the new political administration, said Dave Dague, EVP of marketing at Infutor, which manages consumer identity data.

Mobile advertising will increasingly become business-friendly, but "I think concerns about privacy infringement with location-based services will be more scrutinized," he said.

Changes will prompt a significant uptick in the use of customer identity data in the area of risk and fraud, and companies will leverage investments in analytics, segmentation and behavioral targeting through clean data in CRM databases.

"We'll see more of a dynamic of lead aggregators focusing on small businesses like Home Advisor and Angie's List," Dague said, when asked to name trends influencing the increase of consumer identity data.

Infutor creates identity datasets from identifiers like consumer's name, physical address, phone numbers, email addresses, and IP addresses. Dague explains it this way: when a brand receives a fraction or a piece of information for a consumer and matches that with another fraction or piece of information about that same consumers, the two pieces begin to build a profile or identify for that consumer.

Most of that data, with the exception of email data, comes from offline sources such as point of sale, increasing the importance of Infutor's services as the advertising industry continues to see the decline of publicly available data as a result of changes of addresses or dropped landlines, all of which have become challenging for marketers.

Prior to its shift in strategy, Infutor focused on aggregating lots of data primarily for direct marketing. The company started to pivot a few years ago to real-time data integration based on the demand by enterprises to better manage consumer identity data.

After a significant uptick in inquiries, Infutor began to reengineer itself to address omnichannel advertising and many of the challenges that come along with a real-time market. The changes led to the 2016 milestones including an expanded executive staff and venture investment.

The company also experienced a nearly 30% increase in employee growth, including new hire such as Dague, and Gib Olander, senior vice president of product strategy.