Public Data

As the importance of channeling the insights of Big Data grows, more and more businesses are leveraging public data — massive databases with millions of records accessible to anyone.

Strictly speaking, public data in the US is the data made available via the Freedom of Information Act. This data includes information about real estate, pharmaceuticals, demographic information, and much of what is in the public domain, such as arrest records, lawsuits, and driving records. But public data often refers to data from both government and non-government sources and is sometimes used interchangeably with “open data.”

Effectively harnessing publicly available data can help businesses improve customer targeting.

Public Data versus Open Data

Public data may refer to open data — that is, easily accessible data published to easily accessible platforms. There are huge amounts of data available for analysis and to drive essential insights for your business. And though much of it may not yet be readily accessible in a convenient location, there are troves of public data that can provide crucial information. However, only approximately 10 percent of all public data is published as open data; the vast majority of public data is available, but not necessarily accessible — or at least not easily accessible.  

How to Use Public Data

Public data provides context to the customer information you already have. As with your customer data, public data can inform decisions to improve your marketing and better serve your customers' needs. Combining public data with your data creates richer customer profiles and enables specific targeted marketing campaigns. Public data can also help create content marketing, providing information and numbers to tell compelling stories using charts and infographics.

Snowflake for Public Data

Leveraging public or open data can provide valuable business insights and enhance marketing campaigns. Additionally, Snowflake customers can access and catalog data from valuable datasets of a growing catalog of data partners directly from the Snowflake Marketplace. With Snowflake's open data hub, you can improve your business analytics with third-party data or get deeper insights into your organization with data from vendors or partners you already work with.