Audiences today have split attention spans and constantly shifting online habits. It has made understanding where they spend their time more complex, and also a competitive requirement. Few companies know this challenge better than SparkToro, the audience research platform founded by Rand Fishkin.
SparkToro helps companies identify the websites, channels, and sources their audiences actively engage with; insights that might previously have required days or weeks of research.
At the heart of SparkToro’s platform is a large-scale data foundation that reveals how people search, browse, and navigate the digital world. For that layer, SparkToro relies on Datos.
In this case study, we’ll look at why SparkToro chose Datos as a core data partner, how Datos’ clickstream intelligence is integrated into their product, and why it has become essential to how SparkToro delivers audience insights at scale.
Why sparktoro needed a scalable and trustworthy clickstream partner
From its earliest days, SparkToro’s mission has been straightforward: make it dramatically easier to understand real audiences, including what they search for, where they gather online, and which sources influence them. But delivering on that promise requires access to large, diverse datasets that accurately reflect digital activity across millions of people.
“Clickstream data is core to the things that we do,” Rand explains. “We want to help people understand their audiences so they can reach them where they really pay attention.”
To support that mission, SparkToro evaluated several clickstream providers. Accuracy, cost, ease of integration, and partnership quality were all critical criteria. After extensive testing, Datos became the clear choice.
“We looked at other providers. Datos weren’t just the friendliest and easiest to work with – they were the most cost-effective, and their data structures made a lot of sense. We were able to verify their data quickly, and it performed exceptionally well in our accuracy tests.”
Inside the integration: How SparkToro uses Datos
SparkToro combines multiple data sources (search results, LinkedIn profiles, social profiles, and Datos’ large-scale clickstream panel) to model how audiences behave across the web. When a user searches for an audience inside SparkToro, such as people searching for “Seattle real estate”, the platform runs a multilayer analysis powered in part by Datos.
1. Understanding what people search for
SparkToro begins by blending search-based insights with clickstream-derived patterns. Using Datos, the platform identifies the set of users performing specific searches and how frequently those searches occur. That allows SparkToro to estimate audience size and uncover related search patterns.
2. Measuring website affinities
One of SparkToro’s most popular features is its affinity scoring, which shows the websites an audience is more likely to visit compared to an average internet user.
Datos provides a significant portion of the underlying browsing signals that make this possible. Because Datos’ panel includes tens of millions of real devices, SparkToro can model audience affinities with strong statistical grounding, not guesswork.
“This data is core to what our customers care about,” Rand notes. “They want to learn what websites are popular with this audience and how they compare to baseline internet behavior.”
3. Revealing social network engagement
SparkToro customers often want to understand which social networks matter most to their audience. Datos enables SparkToro to quantify this with precision.
In the Seattle real estate example, SparkToro can show that this audience is disproportionately active on LinkedIn and Reddit, less active on Twitter, more active on Quora and Medium, and less active on GitHub, all based on data sourced partly through Datos.
SparkToro extends this to dozens of categories, from entertainment to productivity tools.
“These categories come from Datos’ dataset. It’s incredibly helpful to us.”
Why Datos stood out
Beyond data quality, Rand highlights several reasons SparkToro chose Datos:
1. Proven accuracy
Rand independently studied traffic-estimate accuracy across third-party sources, comparing them against verified Google Analytics data.
“When I ran this analysis, Datos was in second place. Today, I believe they’re the leader.”
2. Easy integration
SparkToro’s team was able to ingest Datos’ data quickly, verify it, and begin modeling without complex engineering overhead.
3. A partnership mentality
Rand emphasizes the human element multiple times.
“Eli [Goodman, Datos Co-Founder] has been hugely helpful to me. Datos has been a wonderful partner: kind, responsive, and easy to work with.”
4. Cost-Effective for a Growing Company
For a high-growth SaaS company, budget efficiency matters.
“They were the most affordable option for us, without compromising quality.”
The Impact: Better Audience Intelligence for Thousands of Users
By combining Datos with SparkToro’s proprietary models and additional datasets, the company now helps thousands of teams:
- Identify what their audiences read, watch, and follow
- Discover new communities and platforms for outreach
- Validate messaging and positioning
- Improve competitive research
- Strengthen strategic planning with defensible insights
For SparkToro, Datos isn’t a data vendor – it’s foundational infrastructure.
“Datos has been incredibly helpful to our company. If you’re looking for large-scale clickstream panel data, I think the world of what these folks are doing.”
About SparkToro
SparkToro is an audience research platform that helps marketers, creators, founders, and analysts understand the sources their audiences pay attention to, allowing smarter content, outreach, and product decisions.
About Datos
Datos provides a privacy-first, large-scale clickstream dataset sourced from tens of millions of real devices. Our data powers insights for finance, marketing, product, analytics, and platforms that depend on accurate digital-activity intelligence.
