Census Bureau Facing Steep Customer Acquisition Costs

David Schatsky | April 07, 2008, 09:27 AM

Conducting the national census in the U.S. is a costly enterprise. And the price just went up.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Census Bureau is scaling back plans to use hand-held computers to count millions of people during the 2010 census. The Commerce Secretary cited what sounds like scope creep in the requirements for the customized hand-held devices as the reason for limiting their use. This change is supposed to increase the cost of conducting the census by $3 billion to $14 billion.

If the population in 2010 reaches around 312 million, as we expect (link to our forecast in Quantify), that puts the cost of the census at about $45 per person. That might be a decent price when compared to the cost of customer acquisition in, say, the telecom industry. But it seems like overpaying when you consider that AOL bought Bebo for about $20 per member, and, according to a promotion my colleage David Daniels sent me, eToys Direct is offering a list of its recent customers (with average order value of $71) at $105 per thousand.

If the Census Bureau took on a commercial sponsor such as Comcast or AT&T Wireless, we might save a few bucks.