FAQ: DMA Population Sizes

Resonate offers the most accurate geography data at scale. This geography data is based on most recent observed location to give you the most up to date understanding of your customers geographically. Use this data to learn thousands of insights about customers in a specific DMA, understand where people interacting with your digital footprint are located at the DMA level, view DMA insights by attribute and more.

When using the Geography data, you may see a Estimated Targetable IDs for a certain DMA that doesn't line up with what I know to be the population size of that DMA. Why is that?  

If you compare our Geography data to other data sources, you may see that Estimated Targetable ID numbers are a bit lower than other data sources.  

As you look at our data, it's important to keep these 3 things in mind:  

1. Our data represents people aged 18+ only.  Depending on the data source, like census data, their count may also include children. 
2. Our data represents only adults that are online.  
3. We only report on populations where we have a strong signal and where we have seen enough modeled devices to provide insights. In the case of our Geography data, this signal is based on IP address.
4. For audiences that include DMA level attributes, we do not report an Online Adult Population number and only offer the Estimated Targetable ID Population.  The DMA data is deterministic so we can only include an Estimated Targetable ID number.

So, for these reasons, it's important to know that when you compare our Geography data to other research providers, census data, or even just Google results, you need to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples.