Advertising Data Provider: 15 Cataloged Datasets · Head-to-head
IAB Insights & Industry Research Library vs OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) Data
Which advertising data provider: 15 cataloged datasets data fits your job: IAB Insights & Industry Research Library, or OpenSecrets Data. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
IAB Insights & Industry Research Library
OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) Data
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | IAB Insights & Industry Research Library | OpenSecrets Data |
|---|---|---|
title | Published title of the report, which usually names the series and its window outright. | not in this set |
publisher | Publishing organization behind the entry - IAB itself or a member company. | not in this set |
publication_date | Date the report was published. | not in this set |
summary | Abstract of findings carried on the listing and landing page for the entry. | not in this set |
category_tags | Topic classification within the library's nine category groups. | not in this set |
iab_research_flag | Marks entries authored by IAB rather than contributed by member companies. | not in this set |
cycle | not in this set | Two-year FEC election cycle the record belongs to. |
fec_id | not in this set | Federal Election Commission identifier of the candidate or committee. |
crp_id | not in this set | OpenSecrets' own persistent identifier for a politician or organization, stable across name changes and re-filings. |
contributor_name | not in this set | Name of the individual, PAC or organization making the contribution or expenditure. |
amount | not in this set | Dollar value of the contribution, expenditure or lobbying activity. |
date | not in this set | Date of the transaction as reported to the FEC or Senate Office of Public Records. |
Coverage, side by side
| IAB Insights & Industry Research Library | OpenSecrets Data | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | United States focus for spend benchmarks, with European and global angles through member research | United States - all 50 states plus federal House, Senate and presidential contests |
| Temporal | Rolling library of current reports; flagship revenue series published annually since the mid-1990s, 30th edition in 2026 | Federal lobbying totals from 1998 onward; contributions and outside spending organized by two-year election cycle |
| Granularity | One row per published research entry, flagged IAB-authored or member-contributed | One row per money event, plus aggregated profiles per candidate, committee, industry and organization |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| IAB Insights & Industry Research Library | OpenSecrets Data | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the digital advertising trade body, with PwC co-published revenue reports | OpenSecrets, run by the nonpartisan 501(c)(3) Center for Responsive Politics |
| Subject lens | Benchmark research shelf: the Internet Advertising Revenue Report, annual Outlook forecasts, and video, CTV, creator-economy, measurement, privacy and AI studies | Money-in-politics ledger: campaign contributions, outside spending, Political Ads, PAC and party activity, federal lobbying, Foreign Lobby Watch and the Revolving Door |
| Unit of analysis | One row per published research entry, flagged IAB-authored or member-contributed | One row per money event, plus aggregated profiles per candidate, committee, industry and organization |
| Documented fields | 6 fields, definitions verified during research | 11 fields, definitions mapped during the August 2026 research pass |
| Geographic coverage | United States focus for spend benchmarks, with European and global angles through member research | United States - all 50 states plus federal House, Senate and presidential contests |
| Temporal coverage | Rolling library of current reports; flagship revenue series published annually since the mid-1990s, 30th edition in 2026 | Federal lobbying totals from 1998 onward; contributions and outside spending organized by two-year election cycle |
| Signature figures | Nearly $300bn US digital ad revenue for full-year 2025, up 13.9%; social $117.7bn; digital video $78bn | More than $1bn in dark-money donor records uncovered since 2008; lobbying history reaching back 28 years |
| Best for | Market sizing, channel-mix trend evidence and forecast calibration | Tracing who paid for political ads, how much, and which industries lobbied |
What each does better
IAB Insights & Industry Research Library
Benchmark lineage nobody else holds. The IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report has been published annually since the mid-1990s and reached its 30th edition in 2026; its Full Year 2025 edition puts US digital advertising revenue at nearly $300bn, up 13.9% year over year. When a deck needs one quotable market number, this is the series the trade argues from.
Channel arithmetic arrives computed. Social sits at $117.7bn (+32.6%), digital video at $78bn (+25.4%), commerce media at $63.4bn (+18%) and the creator economy at roughly $37bn - splits you would otherwise rebuild from a dozen press releases.
A forward view is part of the same shelf. The January 2026 Outlook forecast +9.5% overall ad-spend growth, with social +14.6%, CTV +13.8% and commerce media +12.1%, and recurring series such as State of Data 2026 track measurement practice, privacy and AI alongside the spend numbers. Roughly 20-40 active reports stay listed at a time across the nine categories.
OpenSecrets Data
Transaction resolution. Every row resolves to one money event - who gave or spent, which committee received, the dollar amount, the date, the two-year election cycle - with millions of records per cycle. The IAB shelf publishes market estimates; this record lets you count the events underneath one.
Political advertising as a first-class subject. Two sections carry the advertising load: Outside Spending holds the independent expenditures that fund candidate and issue ads, and Political Ads tracks internet ad spending on Facebook and Google alongside TV and radio political ad money. No market benchmark breaks political out that way.
Aggregated profiles per candidate, committee, industry and organization ship beside the transaction rows.
Where they're equivalent
On the dimensions a sourcing decision turns on, the ties are real:
- Same country at the center. Both concentrate on the United States - OpenSecrets exclusively so, covering all 50 states plus federal House, Senate and presidential contests; IAB for the spend benchmarks, with European and global angles arriving through member-contributed research.
- Attribution travels with every row. The IAB entry carries publisher and publication date; the OpenSecrets row carries filer-side names and identifiers. Neither asks you to quote a number without knowing who stood behind it.
- Fixed taxonomies on both sides. Nine IAB category groups on one shelf; assigned industry and sector categories on the other. Both make roll-ups a group-by rather than a reading project.
- Neither measures performance. The IAB shelf publishes market estimates, not campaigns; OpenSecrets records money, not impressions. If your question is click-through or reach, neither dictionary answers it.
- Both are reference series their industries quote without a citation hunt - the difference is which question they were built to settle.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they answer different halves of one sentence, how big is advertising, and who pays for its politics.
Take IAB Insights & Industry Research Library if your question names the market. Sizing decks, channel-mix trend evidence, forecast calibration, creator-economy diligence - anything answered by the trade's own consensus numbers. This is the default anchor for market researchers, and the yardstick investors and quants test company claims against.
Take OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) Data if your question names political money. Tracing who funded an ad, pricing races by outside spending, mapping lobbying footprints back to 1998, auditing dark-money exposure - the territory of journalists and academics building citation-grade research and competitive-intel teams watching Washington budgets.
If the brief spans both - a market-sizing chapter with a political-spending sidebar - that is the both-of-them case, and see market sizing for why the benchmark layer comes first.
Sample both, pick by fit. See IAB Insights & Industry Research Library · See OpenSecrets Data
Or take both in one feed
Yes - as numerator and denominator. Size the market on the IAB side: nearly $300bn of US digital ad revenue for full-year 2025, with social, video and commerce-media splits. Then place political money inside that frame using OpenSecrets' Outside Spending and Political Ads sections, whose internet rows cover Facebook and Google and whose TV and radio rows complete the broadcast picture. Political spending stops being an anecdote once it reads as a share of a benchmarked market.
Three alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, there is no row-level key: a published report and a filed transaction never share an identifier, so reconcile at channel-and-year level rather than expecting a join. Second, calendars differ - annual editions against two-year election cycles - so fix a calendarization rule before summing. Third, respect each side's provenance layer: keep the IAB Research flag attached so member-contributed figures never masquerade as bureau benchmarks, and lean on crp_id and fec_id when entity names drift across cycles. Browse the rest of the shelf at the advertising data hub or the best advertising datasets ranking, and see campaign finance data and political ad disclosure for the vocabulary underneath.
Get a sample of either dataset and inspect both field dictionaries before anything ships, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is IAB Insights & Industry Research Library better than OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) Data?
Better at different jobs. The IAB library owns market benchmarks: the 30-year IAB/PwC revenue report, channel splits such as social at $117.7bn and video at $78bn, and forward Outlook numbers. OpenSecrets owns political money at transaction grain: independent expenditures, political ad spending on Facebook, Google, TV and radio, and lobbying back to 1998. Pick by which half of the question you need answered.
Do the two datasets cover the same ground?
Only the country. Both put the United States at the center - OpenSecrets across all 50 states plus federal contests, IAB for its spend benchmarks. Beyond that they fork: one publishes aggregate market estimates at document level, the other records individual money events with typed amounts, dates and party identifiers. The overlap stays conceptual rather than tabular.
Which dataset has more data?
By row count, OpenSecrets, decisively: millions of transaction records per election cycle plus lobbying filings reaching back to 1998, against a rolling shelf of roughly 20-40 active IAB reports. By breadth of subject, the IAB shelf spans privacy, AI, measurement, audio, video and the creator economy. Count rows or count topics - the winner changes.
Can I get political ad spending broken out by platform?
Yes, on the OpenSecrets side. Its Political Ads section tracks internet ad spending on Facebook and Google alongside TV and radio political ad spending, and its Outside Spending section details the independent expenditures behind candidate and issue ads. The IAB library carries no platform-level campaign data at all - its grain is the market's own account of itself.
Can Datadory deliver IAB Insights & Industry Research Library and OpenSecrets (Center for Responsive Politics) Data together?
Yes - alone or merged into one feed, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented dictionary: six fields per IAB entry with the authorship flag intact, eleven fields per OpenSecrets event with fec_id and crp_id preserved. Reconcile the pair at channel-and-year level, since no row-level key crosses the two. Or take both in one feed.