Season 4 Episode 11
ActiveProspect CEO Steve Rafferty on the InfutorData Acquisition and 20 Years of Building Trust in Lead Generation

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Marketing Rapport Podcast, host Tim Finnigan sits down with Steve Rafferty, CEO and Founder of ActiveProspect, for a candid conversation about one of the most significant moves in the lead generation industry in years: ActiveProspect’s acquisition of Verisk Marketing Solutions. Steve walks through the origin story of ActiveProspect, the unexpected evolution of TrustedForm from a lead verification tool into the industry’s most widely used TCPA compliance solution, and how a 15-year competitive rivalry with Jornaya transformed overnight into a single unified team.

The conversation also unpacks the strategic logic behind the deal — bringing together a software-first company (ActiveProspect) with a data-first company (Verisk Marketing Solutions, now rebranded as InfutorData) — and what that combination unlocks for marketers buying leads in real-time auctions. Steve explains why identity data, applied upfront in the bidding process, is the next frontier for improving lead quality, contact rates, and customer acquisition costs in industries like insurance, mortgage, and financial services.

Finally, Steve previews what’s next: the consolidation of TrustedForm and Jornaya’s TCPA Guardian into a single compliance product, the relaunch of the Infutor brand, the new Lead Gen Alliance Slack community, and a verified publisher partner directory designed to bring more trust and transparency to a market that, as Steve puts it, was “the Wild Wild West” not long ago.

Guest-at-a-Glance

Key Insights

• Identity Data Belongs Upfront — Not After the Lead Is Bought
  The most actionable insight from Steve’s conversation is that the next wave of lead-gen efficiency won’t come from better post-purchase scrubbing — it will come from applying identity data at the moment of bidding. Most lead buyers today operate in real-time auctions, where decisions are made in milliseconds with limited information about the consumer behind the form fill. By injecting InfutorData’s identity graph into the bidding process itself, buyers can evaluate who the consumer actually is — and what they’re worth — before committing budget. For VPs of acquisition in insurance, mortgage, and financial services, this represents a fundamental shift: from optimizing what you do with leads after you buy them, to optimizing which leads you buy in the first place.

• Two Competing Products Become One Compliance Solution
  For 15 years, TrustedForm and Jornaya were the Coke and Pepsi of TCPA compliance — each pushing the other to innovate, each capturing roughly equal market share. Steve confirmed that ActiveProspect will consolidate them into a single compliance product built on the TrustedForm foundation, while bringing forward the Jornaya/TCPA Guardian features customers love. For compliance and marketing operations leaders in regulated industries, this matters because it eliminates the operational complexity of maintaining dual compliance stacks, simplifies vendor management, and signals where the industry standard is heading. The migration will be gradual, but the direction is set.

• The Real Logic of the Deal Was Complementarity, Not Consolidation
  Most observers assumed the acquisition was about eliminating a competitor. Steve reframes it: ActiveProspect has always been a software company, while Verisk Marketing Solutions (Jornaya, Infutor, Contact State) has always been a data company. The two were solving overlapping customer problems from fundamentally different angles. By combining a real-time decisioning platform with a deterministic identity graph, the new entity can offer something neither company could deliver alone — software-orchestrated lead buying powered by enriched consumer identity. This is the kind of platform-plus-data combination that’s increasingly defining winners in marketing technology.

• Trust and Transparency Are the Industry’s Real Moat
  Steve repeatedly emphasized that the lead generation industry looks dramatically different today than it did 15 years ago — and that the competition between TrustedForm and Jornaya is largely responsible. The two companies independently raised the bar on consent verification, lead certification, and buyer-seller transparency. For marketers in financial services and insurance navigating tightening regulations (HR 2808, evolving TCPA interpretations, state-level privacy laws), this is a reminder that compliance infrastructure isn’t a checkbox — it’s a competitive advantage. The companies that built trust into their acquisition stack early are the ones now positioned to weather regulatory disruption without rebuilding from scratch.

Episode Highlights

The Aha Moment That Wasn’t About Compliance
~00:03:15
Steve explains that TrustedForm — now synonymous with TCPA compliance — didn’t start as a compliance product at all. It began as an answer to a far more basic complaint from lead buyers: “The leads I’m buying are no good, and I think I’m being misled.” TrustedForm was originally built to independently verify when and where a consumer signed up, giving buyers transparency into what they were actually purchasing. It only became a TCPA compliance product later, when written consent requirements tightened. This origin story matters because it explains why the product is fundamentally about trust and verification — compliance was a downstream beneficiary, not the original mission.

“How do we allow a buyer to understand what it is they’re buying? And that was really the genesis of this idea of lead certification… It wasn’t until later that it became a TCPA compliance product because of the TCPA laws as they got a little bit tighter.” — Steve Rafferty

Why Software + Data Was the Real Strategic Thesis
~00:07:30
When Tim asks why ActiveProspect pursued the Verisk Marketing Solutions acquisition, Steve pushes back on the obvious narrative. Yes, consolidating TrustedForm and Jornaya simplifies the TCPA compliance market — but that wasn’t the primary driver. The deeper logic was the complementarity of a software-first company and a data-first company solving overlapping customer problems from different angles. Bringing InfutorData’s identity graph into ActiveProspect’s real-time decisioning infrastructure unlocks capabilities neither company could deliver independently.

“These are two teams that have largely been focused on solving the same problems from a very different perspective. Verisk Marketing Solutions has always been more of a data company, and ActiveProspect has always been more of a software company.” — Steve Rafferty

Coke vs. Pepsi: A 15-Year Rivalry Ends
~00:09:15
Steve gets candid about what it’s like, after 15 years of competing head-to-head with Jornaya, to suddenly be on the same team. He describes the rivalry as “a lot of personal angst” and admits it’s been “a little surreal” working alongside people he’d long thought of as the enemy. But he’s quick to credit the Jornaya team for raising the bar — and for the impact both companies, working in parallel, had on professionalizing the entire industry.

“We were really like Coke and Pepsi in this industry for a long time… I’ve thought of them as the enemy for so long. I’m sure they thought about me that way, and now we’re all on the same team working together.” — Steve Rafferty

Why the Infutor Brand Came Back
~00:14:45
Tim and Steve discuss the rebranding decision — retiring Verisk Marketing Solutions and bringing back the Infutor name (as InfutorData). Steve explains the practical constraint that drove a fast decision: the Verisk name couldn’t be used post-divestiture, so the team had a tight deadline. After exploring alternatives over a weekend, three options were put to a company-wide vote, and Infutor — a brand with strong recognition in the data industry since 2003 — won decisively. Tim adds the marketing data point that validated the choice: Google Analytics still showed inbound traffic searching for “Infutor” long after the original rebrand.

“Rebrands can be a major waste of money… In our case, it was very helpful that we had a really quick deadline. The team came back overwhelmingly with Infutor as the chosen one.” — Steve Rafferty

What’s Next: The Lead Gen Alliance and a Verified Publisher Directory
~00:20:00
Steve previews two new initiatives ActiveProspect announced at LeadsCon. The first is the Lead Gen Alliance — a free, open Slack community designed to give buyers, sellers, and publishers a place to find each other and have real conversations. The second is a publisher partner directory with verified credentials: to be listed, a publisher must have a live lead-generating website and be certifying leads with TrustedForm. Steve makes clear this isn’t just another directory — the verification layer is the differentiator, designed to bring trust to a process that historically has been opaque.

“It’s easy just to put a directory up there. One of the things that we’re doing that’s more challenging is to have some true criteria and to verify things that are somewhat hard to verify.” — Steve Rafferty

Top Quotes

Steve Rafferty [~00:00:30]
“If we can bring [identity data] into the bidding process, where a lot of our clients buy leads in auctions, and allow them to better evaluate and know what to pay for a lead, that helps them be more efficient with where they spend their dollars.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:04:15]
“How do we allow a buyer to understand what it is they’re buying? That was really the genesis of this idea of lead certification — how do we independently verify when and where a consumer signed up?”

Steve Rafferty [~00:07:45]
“These are two teams that have largely been focused on solving the same problems from a very different perspective. Verisk Marketing Solutions has always been more of a data company, and ActiveProspect has always been more of a software company.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:09:30]
“We were really like Coke and Pepsi in this industry for a long time. There’s a lot of personal angst for me… and now we’re all on the same team working together.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:10:30]
“A lot of folks thought, ‘Oh, since we acquired VMS, TrustedForm was the victor in the battle.’ It wasn’t that way at all. These are two peers equally successful in the market that came together.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:11:00]
“When you look back 15 years ago, it was the Wild Wild West. I mean, people think it’s that way now, but it was nothing like it was then.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:13:30]
“We made the decision that we want to consolidate, simplify things for the market. We’re going to bring those two products together as one compliance solution.”

Tim Finnigan [~00:14:30]
“There are still people searching for InfutorData and Infutor out there… instead of figuring out a new name, why don’t we just call it InfutorData?”

Steve Rafferty [~00:17:30]
“A lot of people said, ‘Finally, this will help simplify things in the market.’ We view our role as a company as an infrastructure provider really trying to provide efficiency for all the parties engaged in this ecosystem.”

Steve Rafferty [~00:20:45]
“It’s easy just to put a directory up there. One of the things that we’re doing that’s more challenging is to have some true criteria and to verify things that are somewhat hard to verify — so you can spend your money wisely.”