14 Proprietary Data Study Examples that Grow Marketing, PR, and AI Search Success

It’s that time of year again. It was true last year and it’s true now in late 2026. The end-of-year reports are coming out shortly.

This week, I sent my watermelon-colored year-in-music report to friends and coworkers, somewhat unwillingly, and definitely cringingly. It came packaged in a personalized Barbie pink and frothy mint green. The design contrasted with my daughter’s black emo-coded story, and with my coworker’s tasteful periwinkle tale.

If Spotify competes with Santa Claus to own December, it’s because of its in-house data story “Wrapped” app that turns user data into a highly-shared, much-talked-about, gotta-get-in-on-it event — one which, in spite of my Fate-of-Ophelia foray, simply can’t stay private. Is it possible not to share the data story of your musical year?

Apparently not. In 2025, Spotify reported 200+ million users on Wrapped’s first day. We expect that to be even bigger in 2026.

Wrapped has dominated office watercoolers since the pre-pandemic era.

To achieve that, Spotify leveraged massive owned channels to catapult its personalized data stories to the top of everyone’s December share list, but not every brand has the resources to make that happen.

So we asked, “Which campaigns deliver on their own?”

After all, many smallish B2B companies find a goldmine with proprietary content that’s not simply created for virality. Internal brand data can also be packaged to create category leadership, drive visitors, and point to PR-grade “proof” assets that underscore their brand. 

Arguably the best-known use of internal data, data studies are the 2nd-most-viewed content type on the internet today, according to Ahrefs; they’re also #2 in keeping visitors reading the longest. But they’re not the only content type you can use. From calculators to open datasets, internal data is a versatile — but central — part of building a PR-worthy presence.

Ahrefs shows they are #2 overall for views with high engagement.

To find the biggest gems using internal data, we mined public case studies, stable research directories, and press pickups, then filtered for internal data studies and the number of earned backlinks and referring domains. 

Here are 14 campaigns centered around internal data that caught our eye, and what you can learn from each of them.

1. Mailchimp’s Email Marketing Benchmarks

This formidable campaign is a lesson for smaller companies because it succeeds on the strength of its own idea. Its centerpiece is a chart that breaks down open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes across industries, so readers can see how they measure up. 

What we think: We love how pretty and on-brand the report is, and how effortlessly it gives off that “we’re the authority” energy. We’d like to see benchmark data show up faster and with more fanfare. It’s the hero and gives business owners what they really want: to peek at everyone else’s work.

2. OpenTable’s The Restaurant Industry, by the Numbers

OpenTable turns its users’ reservation data into consumer trends for restaurateurs. And sometimes that data is interesting to a general audience, too. OpenTable does this balancing act well. Their graphs of restaurant reservation changes over time will leave you wondering, “What happened before Valentine’s Day this year?!” 

What we think: It’s packaged to look simple, but it’s secretly loaded. And the daily, weekly, and monthly views by country are genuinely fascinating. What’s missing is context, because a million micro stories are hiding in here, and OpenTable isn’t pulling them out for you.

3. Strava’s Year in Sport: The Trend Report

This bulky report covers everything from preferred workout times to the number of miles logged — even sock preferences. There’s not a single storyline here: instead, Strava owns all the microdata of America’s workouts.

What we think: This is basically the sports version of Wrapped, and it’s the ultimate “so full of stats you can’t not write about it” asset. The magic is in the micro-stories spelled out, because writers get handed a buffet of angles instead of a forced storyline.

4. Expedia’s Destinations of the Year

No data storytelling here, just an introduction that lets you know you’re seeing destinations that are taking off for 2025 compared to 2024 and a list — each with a percentage increase and links to city landing pages where you can explore more. Why is Big Sky 92% more popular in air and hotel searches than last year? For hot destinations and the drama of their story arc, Expedia’s annual list leans into emotion without saying a word.

What we think: The list is the story: one clean ranking, a percent change, and you’re done. It’s pure ownership of their data; it’s gorgeous, and it makes you want to share it without embellishing anything.

5. Wiz’s Cloud Threat Landscape

When you protect cloud infrastructures, you know exactly where they’re being attacked, how often, and by what. This archetypal use of open-sourcing threat intel to the community elevates Wiz to the threatscape’s top intel officer. It’s also “a giant experiment of what PR and carefully crafted marketing can do,” according to Venture in Security’s Substack.

What we think: It’s a stand-alone dataset that feels future-retro fun, with aliases, tags, and sorting that make the serious intel weirdly approachable. Even if backlinks are low, it’s a killer sales + credibility asset because it screams, “we are the experts, and we built the map.”

6. GWI’s Connect the Dots: 5 Major Marketing Trends for 2026

Already known for having its survey platform on the pulse of internet users’ preferences, GWI does a great job of packaging annual shifts into its trends report, not merely documenting cultural trends like short-form video, but also noting purchasing behavior, such as making impulsive big purchases. 

​​What we think: The core value is real: the dataset is massive! And the report is perfectly targeted to make GWI valuable to marketers who aren’t customers yet. However, we wish the visuals and cohesion were stronger, making it easier to digest.

7. Pave’s Explorable List of Companies

Real-time salary and equity data from thousands of startups? That’s Pave’s business, but a glimpse into its data shows off its chops by naming huge players, new movers, and up-and-coming shakers, with compensation programs that fall within Pave’s universe. Comb through 85 pages of names to see it really hit home that this data is valuable.

What we think: Seeing all the recognizable companies participating instantly communicates clout and usefulness. It works as a Swiss Army knife asset: sales can send it, journalists can quote it, and the brand earns authority points either way.

8. Cash App’s That’s Money Trend Report

Are Americans really getting twice as many haircuts in 2024 compared to 2023? Maybe, and that’s the benefit of having access to users’ money-sending habits, down to the emojis they use when sending payments. That’s Money features culturally attuned insights on the use of words like “Skibidi,” how hot bows have gotten this year, and whether pickleball tournaments are getting popular with younger crowds (up over 100%, very hot, and yes). So while it tells us something about how Americans send money, it’s also far more shareable than your typical economic discussion.

What we think: This report is so pretty and so fun that when you see a slide, you want to keep reading. The slang, emojis, and notes make financial behavior consumer-friendly, and it’s instantly quotable for lifestyle writers, not just business ones.

9. Robinhood’s Investor Index

With neon graphics, users can see what investments are hottest on Robinhood. But financial media outlets also use the Investor Index as shorthand for “what retail is thinking right now.” And that positions Robinhood as the guardian of real investors’ leanings, not just another investment app.

What we think: It’s ridiculously clean: just the top 100 most-owned investments, tracked over time, updated monthly, and with a design that makes it feel alive. Media can use it as shorthand for what retail investors do, so Robinhood becomes the default reference.

10. Duolingo’s 2025 Language Report

Making itself the authority on language trends has meant Duolingo is the go-to when you want to know which languages are up and coming and which are drawing fewer learners every year. The language app can also tell you who’s learning chess and music, and has even rolled self-reported age and motivation into its analysis. It’s not just an interesting read about language learners — it’s a lesson in how to let your brand’s big personality lead the way.

What we think: We’re disappointed in the visuals because they could be so much clearer with a better presentation of the data, but nobody cares because Duolingo’s brand discipline is undefeated. The underlying stats are genuinely interesting, and the brand consistency does half of their distribution work for them.

11. Credit Karma’s State of Debt and Credit Report

Credit Karma’s got 96+ million members’ total debt profiles, including their balances, product mix, and over $9.4 trillion in tracked debt. As a result, they serve as a mouthpiece for the stress that Americans feel about debt. This quarterly report tells the truth about Americans’ financial status, making Credit Karma an authority on something much greater than their users — the American economy.

What we think: It’s not the prettiest, but it answers the exact questions writers have in the exact format they need, with clean breakdowns and quarterly comparisons. It’s the perfect example of owned data at a massive scale, and it quietly turns Credit Karma into a finance authority writ large.

12. Hopper’s Summer 2025 International Travel Guide

If you’re planning a vacation, you’ve likely stumbled across the fascinating data stories of booking aggregators like Hopper, which lasso data about flight paths, prices, booking windows, and popular destinations, publishing the results in a “travel guide” that lets travelers wonder why on earth everyone’s spending so much on hotels. 

What we think: Travel guides like this mean journalists see Hopper featured as an expert source across the travel season. The company pops up on morning shows and news programs to give tips on booking and flying. And in turn, Hopper prominently displays its links and appearances online, boosting trust with users in a virtuous cycle.

13. Ramp’s Business Spending Report & AI Index

Ramp has the vitals on American business spending, which translates into an index with the authority to pinpoint where businesses are allocating their cash. Unlike surveys, the bill-paying and corporate card platform can even report which individual vibe coding or advertising platforms American businesses are favoring, and which are growing and shrinking fastest, based on real dollars spent.

What we think: This is one of those rare reports where internal data has the authority to overturn the government’s Census estimates. “Oh yeah?” Ramp says. “We’ve got the receipts.” That’s a massive PR move, but it’s hard to argue and easy to share on this massively timely topic.

14. Profound’s Profound Index

Want answer engine insights? Turn to Profound, which captures hundreds of millions of AI conversations and parlays that knowledge into a visibility score for companies across industries. Updated weekly, it’s a place to check in when you’re wondering who is winning among streaming services.

What we think: Industry breakdowns were a flash of genius, allowing journalists to nab stats about their beats on a regular basis. Want to talk about AI engine visibility? You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more timely source than the Profound Index.

Joe’s Comments and Updates November 2026

This amazing post written by our esteemed colleague Jessica hit it out of the park last year. As I sit here in November 2026, I think back about how things have evolved in 2026 with proprietary data studies and a few things come to mind: the growing importance of proprietary data, the impact that mentions vs links have, and building a consistent asset that’s updated annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, real-time OR…predictive.

How do original data studies help grow marketing, PR, and AI search outcomes?

When a company releases new, fresh, relevant, and/or updated data into the world, it’s a feast for crawlers, AI, news, and people. All relevant publicity that influences how the algorithms see you. Why? Google has been crawling sites for 25+ years, and its crawlers have always been on the lookout for new information and page updates to update its index and then rank those pages. Over time, they got better at passage indexing as well, looking for fragments in pages that are new or updated, extracting those, and showing them in featured snippets. Then the AI crawlers and systems came around and made that answer with the chat and question-and-answer feature the main product.

It all goes back to the core thing: are you, as a company, releasing helpful information for your audiences, partners, public, and (sometimes) adversaries? I’ve personally seen really fresh updates and content make it into AI search and answer engines much faster and more frequently than the Google-only days. And as all AI systems scoop up all they can from the internet, they’re looking for fresher and fresher data.

How do we know if the press and audiences care about our data?

There are discovery phases we go through to analyze proprietary data, sift through it and look out for interesting storylines that audiences and publics will care about. It’s a bit different for every company but we’re constantly asking: “what’s the headline?”, “What’s the pitch subject line?”, “What’s the elevator pitch?”

But in conjunction with that, we work with marketing leadership to discuss how they currently relate to and communicate with their audience, and what resonates the most. This can be across marketing, PR, sales, and AI search. It’s all related under your brand and what you do best.

What if our company doesn’t have good proprietary data or doesn’t want to release it?

Most companies have some data, even if it’s not as robust as Zillow or Ramp. But there are a few options to get around this:

• Often companies do have the data, but it’s hard for them to get internal sign-off or for their tech/dev team to make time for extraction
• For companies with sensitive information, there’s a process of cleaning and anonymizing the data, then further washing it to make it palatable for leadership to release
• Inferences from analytics data – take the same approach above, use your internal analytics data on users using your product or website – and again translate that into inferences and insights that can be shared
• If you have just one data point slice that’s hard to share on its own, we often recommend blending this with market data and/or open data sets from government and organizational releases
• Lastly, you can always create surveys to poll existing and lookalike audiences, or survey general public audiences to build assets that can be created and pitched
• There’s always a way!

How does this align with other channels, like sales, brand, paid, and executive thought leadership?

We always encourage proprietary data studies to have many ways to win across the organization and different channels. We work with our contacts and champions inside organizations to help them build a cross-channel plan to use the great data studies we help produce across their organization.

For example, we worked with a large French cosmetics company to build out interesting geographic data studies that then gave an executive good quotes and fodder for an invite to a conference panel. We’ve seen studies used to draw in interest across demand generation and lead generation that then became MQLs and SQLs. The content can support awareness, branding, and re-engagement across the sales process for active opportunities. AI and modern marketing systems make it easier than ever to recycle and reuse on-brand content throughout the org.