L2
Price:
Ease of Use:
Overall Rating: 4.3
L2 operates as the definitive source for U.S. voter and consumer data, earning recognition as the “source of truth” for voter records across political campaigns. With over 50 years in the data business, L2 has established itself as the gold standard for political targeting and public affairs campaigns.
Market positioning: While mid-tier in general programmatic terms due to specialized focus, L2 represents top-tier quality for political and public-affairs targeting. Their longevity and compliance track record make them indispensable for campaigns requiring precision voter outreach.
Data foundation: Maintains an enhanced national voter file updated 3-8 times annually, incorporating new registrations, voter history, and district changes rapidly. Rigorous 50+ point hygiene checks ensure data cleanliness and accuracy that political clients depend on for precision targeting.
Strategic value: L2’s strength lies in reliability over innovation. They focus on maintaining superior data quality while adopting innovations that genuinely improve targeting, such as cookieless matching and rapid redistricting data re-aggregation.
Pricing: $$$$$
High cost structure. L2 data access is expensive, but pricing is typically structured on a usage basis rather than large upfront license fees. Audiences are synced into a DSP, and advertisers pay on a CPM usage basis directly to the DSP. The DSP then pays L2, so the cost is baked into the media budget — advertisers generally never receive an invoice from L2 directly. While this avoids minimum fees, the effective CPM rates can still be significant.
Value justification: The quality and coverage of L2’s data are widely regarded as worth the premium, especially for larger campaigns, agencies, or data consortiums that need comprehensive voter files. Smaller budgets may still find the CPM-based costs restrictive, but agencies often factor them into client pitches or spread them across multiple campaigns to make the investment more manageable.
Data Quality: (4.7/5)
L2 maintains extremely high standards for U.S. voter and consumer data. Often called the “source of truth” for voter records, their enhanced national voter file incorporates new registrations, voter history, and district changes rapidly through updates 3-8 times per year.
Quality assurance: Rigorous 50+ point hygiene checks ensure data cleanliness and accuracy. The data consistently performs across multiple campaigns, with political clients relying on L2 for precision voter targeting as the gold standard reference for accuracy in the vertical.
Integration (4.2/5)
L2 makes data accessible across various platforms through integrations with onboarding services and DSPs. You can send L2 audiences to LiveRamp or directly into programmatic platforms. StackAdapt announced same-day direct integration with L2 for voter audiences.
Access methods: DataMapping web interface enables easy audience creation and export without heavy technical work. While not real-time sync (users typically export segments via API or file), it’s fairly interoperable for a data provider.
Platform approach: Not all white-label agencies use L2’s platform or API, but they can incorporate data outputs into their own tools and dashboards for client reporting and analysis.
Scalability (4.5/5)
L2 has managed data for national presidential campaigns down to local races, demonstrating strong scalability. Supports dozens of campaigns simultaneously, drawing data subsets without performance slowdowns.
Dynamic capabilities: Swiftly updates district boundary changes and makes both old and new boundaries available for analysis instantly, showcasing the ability to handle dynamic political changes. Whether you need 1,000 records or 100 million, L2’s infrastructure delivers quickly.
Compliance (4.8/5)
Extremely strong compliance foundation built over 50+ years in business. L2 attributes its longevity to strict compliance, avoiding “bad actors” who might cut corners or violate laws.
Legal framework: All data (voter registration info, consumer overlays) is acquired and used within legal allowances. Voter data is public record augmented with legally obtained consumer data. Led privacy-friendly solutions, partnering with Comscore to launch cookie-free voter audience targeting, emphasizing privacy.
Regulatory adherence: Data usage complies with FEC regulations, GDPR (for any EU data, though L2 is US-focused), and state laws. Particularly important for sensitive political contexts where compliance violations could have severe consequences.
ROI: (3.5/5)
L2’s ROI appears in improved targeting, higher voter turnout, and more efficient ad spend by focusing on the right voters. Quantifying ROI is more art than science, as L2 doesn’t provide ROI calculators.
Cost transparency: Clear about what you receive for the cost flat fees for voter file access per cycle, or per thousand matched records delivered to platforms. Costs are clear upfront, though measuring data ROI requires analyzing campaign lift or success, which L2 doesn’t provide.
Value assessment: Sometimes difficult to pinpoint margins across clients because data costs might be pooled in the overall strategy. If a category isn’t applicable (an automotive client might not use voter data), agencies simply don’t incur that cost.
Customer Support: (4.4/5)
L2 works closely with clients through hands-on approaches, assisting with complex targeting queries and custom data pulls. DataMapping platform is self-serve, but L2’s team is accessible for audience refinement questions or field interpretation.
Proactive communication: Updates clients about major data changes (voter roll purges, new demographic data additions). While not as large a team as i360, their field longevity means they understand agency needs and provide tailored solutions, including quick turnarounds during election crunch time.
Innovation: (4.2/5)
L2 focuses on maintaining top-quality data while innovating in delivery methods. Quickly adapted to industry changes like new district maps or cookie deprecation, launching privacy-safe targeting with Comscore in 2022.
Technical advancement: Provides APIs for programmatic data use and integrates with adtech (StackAdapt integration for same-day audience activation). While not marketing flashy AI tools, it uses modeling to enhance data through predictive partisanship scores and consumer models.
Innovation philosophy: Decades of experience suggest a focus on reliability over chasing trends, but it adopts innovations that genuinely improve targeting effectiveness.
Reviews
“For over 50 years national political campaigns and advocacy efforts [have] utilized L2 data, along with hundreds of members of the United States House and Senate and Fortune 100 companies.”
“L2’s trust is built on quality data processing to ensure the highest quality and most current data are available… L2 is renowned for [its] customer service and support.”
“Prestigious news organizations including The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Economist, and CBS News all use L2 data.”
“L2 provides campaigns, political consultants, large and small PACs and more with the highest quality voter data and industry-leading platforms.”
“L2 has more than 213 million voter data records with more than 400 demographic fields and more than 91 predictive data fields.”
“Each year L2 processes tens of thousands of custom output files for individual users to fulfill their exact needs.”