B2B data and targeting

Every campaign starts with a list, and the list decides more than the message does. This is where you answer which companies, before anyone asks which people. Two questions separate the tools here. The first is whether you describe your market with filters, industry, headcount, country, technology, or by resemblance, handing over the accounts that already converted and asking what looks like them. Filters are a theory about your market and theories are often wrong; resemblance needs a seed of real customers and is useless without one. The second question is coverage on your market specifically, which no vendor page can answer. A database with excellent United States coverage and thin European data is a good product and a bad choice, if you sell in Europe. Test it on twenty companies you know intimately and count what it gets right. On price, expect two shapes: a credit balance you spend as you go, from roughly a cent a credit, or a quote after a sales call, which is what you get when a vendor publishes nothing. Neither shape is a warning sign. What matters is knowing the size of the market before you pay to collect it, because counting is usually free and collecting never is.

Decide which shape of tool you need

The tools on this page answer the question 'which companies' in two different ways, and picking the wrong shape wastes more money than picking the wrong vendor ever will. Airscale builds and enriches a list against thirty providers behind one credit balance, so you never sign a second contract just to find a number. That makes it the tool for when you already have a description of your market, however rough, and want it filled with people. Ocean.io works the other way round: it finds companies that look like the ones already buying from you, instead of making you guess a filter. That is the tool for when your filter is a guess.

Match the tool to what you actually have

Be honest about your starting point before you choose. If you have real customers and cannot articulate why they buy from you, resemblance targeting is the direct route, and I have written about when filters run out and resemblance takes over. If you have no seed yet, resemblance has nothing to work from, and a filter-based list builder is the only honest starting point. The question to ask yourself is simple: can I name the accounts that already converted? If yes, one path; if no, the other.

Compare what the credit actually costs

Both tools run on credits, and the credit is where the real price lives, not the monthly fee. Here is what the published grids show.

Plan	Monthly	Credits	Cost per credit
Airscale Starter	49 dollars a month	4,000 credits	0.01225 dollars each
Airscale Pro	99 dollars a month	12,000 credits	0.00825 dollars each
Airscale Growth	from 189 dollars a month	from 25,000 up to 210,000 credits	0.00756 dollars each at 25,000
Ocean.io, every plan	quoted by sales	credit balance per team	quoted with the seats

Two grids, two philosophies. Airscale puts its rates on the table, down to 0.008 dollars per verified email and 0.15 dollars per mobile on the Scale plan, so you can model the cost of a campaign before you talk to anyone. Ocean.io quotes every plan through sales, with a credit balance per team priced alongside the seats, so you cannot model anything until you have had that conversation. Neither shape is a warning sign, as the introduction says, but only one lets you do the arithmetic yourself. I go through that arithmetic in what a B2B data provider costs per contact, and again with real settings in my Airscale review.

Measure the size of your market before you pay for it

The cheapest mistake here is not picking the wrong vendor, it is buying a list for a market you never counted. Counting is free and collecting never is, which is why I treat counting before you buy as a non-negotiable step. Run your market through a count, note the number of companies, then multiply it by the per-credit rates above and by the share of contacts you expect to need mobiles for, where the 0.15 dollars per mobile matters a great deal more than the email rate. The same arithmetic tells you whether one contract is enough or whether a waterfall of providers is worth the setup, which is the whole subject of waterfall enrichment explained by what it costs.

Check coverage on your market, not on theirs

No vendor page can tell you how well a database covers your specific market, so the last check is yours to run. Take companies you know intimately, look them up, and count what comes back right. If you sell in Europe, pay particular attention, because a product can be strong in one region and thin in another and both are still good products. Do that on both tools if both shapes appeal to you, and let the coverage result, not the monthly fee, close the decision.