Guides: Public Relations and Corporate Communications: Demographics & Advertising

Demographics

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Social Explorer provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. Users can create a free account in order to save, share, and collaborate on maps and projects. In addition to its comprehensive data resources, Social Explorer offers features and tools to meet the needs of demography experts and novices alike. From research libraries to classrooms to government agencies to corporations to the front page of the New York Times, Social Explorer helps the public engage with society and science.

Review Social Explorer's guides and videos for walk throughs of how to use main features such as maps, reports, and visualizing data.

Data.census.gov This link opens in a new window
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau, including the Census of Population and Housing, the Economic Census, and the American Community Survey.
Population topics include aging, disability, education, gender, employment, origins and languages, poverty, race and ethnicity, relationships, transportation and veterans. Housing information includes physical and financial characteristics. The Economic Census includes statistics on business and industry, foreign trade and government.

Advanced Searching in Census.gov
This shortcut will get you to the advanced search settings within data.census.gov. You will be able to pick which topics to cross-search with geographical locations and search through the pre-created datasets.

Review Census Data video for an outline of how to use the U.S. Census Bureau's Data website. Specific topics addressed include choosing filters, finding results that meet your needs, and best practices.

Statista This link opens in a new window
Provides access to statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources on over 600 industries

Advertising

Vivvix This link opens in a new window
Vivvix (formerly Advertising Insights and Ad$pender) provides advertising expenditure data for political campaigns, over 100,000 brands, and product categories. The 18 media formats include cable, internet, network TV (network, spot and syndicated), broadcast radio (network and national spot radio), outdoor advertising, major national newspapers and hundreds of business-to-business and consumer magazines.
Data can be retrieved by brand, product class/category, company name, etc. Data are available monthly, quarterly and annually for the past five years.
Adforum This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 35,000 advertisements in all media: TV, radio, cinema, Internet, print and outdoor ad campaigns. Also includes over 18,000 advertising agency sources, news and other information related to the advertising industry. Users can search for ads by keyword, media type, product, brand name, business sector, agency, country, celebrity or award.
MRI-Simmons Catalyst This link opens in a new window
Limited to 10 concurrent users.

Allows users to explore U.S. buying habits based on demographics, psychographics, media preferences and other criteria. An extension of Simmons Survey of Media and Markets National Consumer Study, the marketing data were collected from more than 22,000 households, then projected to reflect the general population.