AUDIENCE PASSPORT · audiencepassport.com · Nº AP-26-0002

thebackcut.com

The Backcut · weekly newsletter for tree service operators (beehiiv, 1,848 subscribers)

TIER-2MEASURED
ID-GRAPH
2026-08-24
B2B newsletter
2026-07-05 → 2026-08-20 · day 46
2026-08-24
Passport v0.4 draft
01 · Audience scale
4,283devices observed on-site
4,661measured pageviews
336distinct people identified
796hashed emails (custom-audience ready)

Collection began 2026-07-05. Sixth issue: 4,283 devices and 336 identified people, up from 3,061 and 245 at day thirty-two, 1,536 and 126 at day sixteen. Identity-graph rows ingest through 2026-08-20 upstream, so this issue's beacon window ends there; the humanness read runs through the issue date. On 2026-07-18, tag delivery moved from direct GTM tags to the audiencepassport loader; the change is disclosed in the claims ledger. Figures accumulate as the instrument runs; nothing is projected.

02 · Identity resolution
22.1%of devices resolve to a real, named person via independent id-graph match
947resolved devices
3,336observed, unresolved (kept in denominator)
devices observed4,283
devices resolved947
distinct people336
hashed emails796

Resolution is deterministic cookie-to-identity matching against a 274M-person US identity graph. The unresolved remainder is reported, not discarded: the rate itself is part of the measurement.

03 · Humanness (tier 1)
73%of measured pageviews assess as human traffic
4,494pageviews in read window (2026-07-05 → 2026-08-24)
Human 73%Declared crawlers 6%Suspect automated 15%Not enough data 7%

On-page fingerprinting by FouAnalytics; dashboard read 2026-08-24. Automated read from the dashboard chart.json endpoint (labels no/noish=human 3261, yes/yesish=suspect 689, declared+search=251, not-enough-data=293; mapping validated vs 2026-07-13 manual dashboard read). Prior manual read 2026-07-13: 74.4% human on 924 pv. Declared crawlers are reported as a distinct signal, not dismissed as fraud: in the agentic era, AI agents visiting a property are a leading indicator of machine-mediated discovery, and this instrument counts them separately from suspect automation.

04 · Professional composition
low fill · disclosed102 of 336 identified site visitors carry employment-graph job data, and what fills is scattered day-job records, not the tree businesses themselves. This audience resolves as owner-operators and consumers: people whose businesses exist in county registries, not LinkedIn. The first-party list match below is where the professional shape becomes measurable; business-registry verification remains the designated tier-3 lane and appends to the ledger when it ships.
05 · Demographicsfill: 280 of 336 people

Age

45-5421%
55-6421%
35-4420%
65 and older19%
25-3414%
18-245%

Gender

F56%
M43%

Small-cell floor n<5: 1 cell (1 people) suppressed, included in fill counts, never rendered.

Age spreads nearly flat across four adjacent bands on-site — 45-54 (60 people), 55-64 (59), 35-44 (56), 65-and-older (54) — the older-skewing mass of earlier issues now balanced by mid-career fill. Gender splits 180 F / 139 M on-site while the subscriber list runs 74% male; site traffic includes non-subscriber visitors and household devices, so the two read differently and both are reported.

06 · Household & wealthfill: 222 of 336 people

Household income

5%$250K and up
4%$200K to $250K
12%$100K to $150K
14%$75K to $100K
16%$60K to $75K
12%$45K to $60K
24%$20K to $45K
13%under $20K

Net worth

over $1M3%
$750K to $1M13%
$500K to $750K3%
$375K to $500K11%
$250K to $375K2%
$150K to $250K16%
$100K to $150K9%
$75K to $100K6%
$25K to $50K5%
$2.5K to $25K11%
around zero17%
negative3%

Bands descend from highest at the top on both wings; each wing is percented on its own known base and scaled to its own longest bar. The shapes are the point: where the income mass sits against where the net-worth mass sits.

Small-cell floor n<5: 2 cells (8 people) suppressed, included in fill counts, never rendered.

92%homeowners, of 229 people with housing data
45%married, of 224 people with marital data

Income reads modest (modal band $20,000–$44,999, 54 people) while net worth shows both ends: near-zero is again the largest band (40 people), $150K–$250K second (36), $750K–$1M third (29). The owner-operator signature — small W-2 salaries, wealth held in homes and businesses — persists at day forty-six. 92% homeownership (211 of 229 with housing data) corroborates.

07 · Geographyfill: 312 of 336 people
AK · below small-cell floor (n<5)AL · 6 people · 1.9% of known-state baseAR · below small-cell floor (n<5)AZ · 6 people · 1.9% of known-state baseCA · 25 people · 8.0% of known-state baseCO · 12 people · 3.8% of known-state baseCT · 5 people · 1.6% of known-state baseDC · no identified people in windowDE · below small-cell floor (n<5)FL · 18 people · 5.8% of known-state baseGA · 11 people · 3.5% of known-state baseHI · no identified people in windowIA · below small-cell floor (n<5)ID · below small-cell floor (n<5)IL · 12 people · 3.8% of known-state baseIN · 6 people · 1.9% of known-state baseKS · below small-cell floor (n<5)KY · below small-cell floor (n<5)LA · below small-cell floor (n<5)MA · 11 people · 3.5% of known-state baseMD · below small-cell floor (n<5)ME · below small-cell floor (n<5)MI · 17 people · 5.4% of known-state baseMN · below small-cell floor (n<5)MO · 7 people · 2.2% of known-state baseMS · below small-cell floor (n<5)MT · below small-cell floor (n<5)NC · 9 people · 2.9% of known-state baseND · no identified people in windowNE · no identified people in windowNH · below small-cell floor (n<5)NJ · 8 people · 2.6% of known-state baseNM · below small-cell floor (n<5)NV · below small-cell floor (n<5)NY · 23 people · 7.4% of known-state baseOH · 10 people · 3.2% of known-state baseOK · 9 people · 2.9% of known-state baseOR · 6 people · 1.9% of known-state basePA · 12 people · 3.8% of known-state baseRI · no identified people in windowSC · 5 people · 1.6% of known-state baseSD · below small-cell floor (n<5)TN · 5 people · 1.6% of known-state baseTX · 13 people · 4.2% of known-state baseUT · below small-cell floor (n<5)VA · 7 people · 2.2% of known-state baseVT · below small-cell floor (n<5)WA · 11 people · 3.5% of known-state baseWI · 9 people · 2.9% of known-state baseWV · below small-cell floor (n<5)WY · no identified people in windowAL2%AZ2%CA8%CO4%FL6%GA4%IL4%IN2%MI5%MO2%NC3%NY7%OH3%OK3%OR2%PA4%SC2%TN2%TX4%VA2%WA4%WI3%
share of known-state basebelow floor n<5none identified

Leading states: CA 8%, NY 7%, FL 6%, MI 5%, TX 4%. Tint carries each state’s share of the known-state base; hover any state for its exact count and share. Hatched states hold 49 people across 20 cells, counted in fills, never rendered individually.

08 · Acquisition sources
86%of UTM-attributed devices arrive from Meta ads (1,959 of 2,277); 24% of them resolve
4%newsletter-click devices (86; opens don't touch the site, only clicks are measurable)
10%organic / direct / other (233 devices)

Source attribution reads UTMs and click IDs captured in the beacon itself, not platform-reported analytics. Shares can overlap slightly where a device arrives from more than one source. This panel reads from the 2026-08-05 device-level sweep; the attribution query lane was unavailable upstream at this issue date, so the sweep is dated rather than restated.

09 · List composition (first-party list match)
1,848subscriptions on platform (1,755 active)
479resolve to verified people — 25.9% of the list, 26.1% of actives
Ownerthe single most common job title among the resolved
90%homeowners, of 313 matched people with housing data
One dot per subscription, all 1,848 of them. Each filled dot is one of the 479 identity-verified people; the rest are reported as unresolved, never projected.

One dot per subscription, all 1,848 of them. Each filled dot is one of the 479 identity-verified people; the rest are reported as unresolved, never projected.

Of 208 matched subscribers with seniority data, 98 are C-level; top titles read Owner (38), President (18), Business Owner, CEO, Arborist. 109 of 185 with company-size data run 1-to-25-person firms; Environmental Services is the top industry. 74% male, modal ages 35–64; Texas, Michigan, California, and Georgia lead. The list is matched as SHA-256 hashed emails against the identity graph and reported as aggregate statistics only: no person-level enrichment is returned to anyone, including the publisher. Composition is read from the resolved 26%; the remainder is reported, never projected.

10 · Declared vs. verified
Declared / claimedMeasuredVerdict
Weekly newsletter for tree service operators (declared subject)Owner is the top job title; 98 of 208 C-level; 59% at 1–25 employees; Environmental Services top industry (list match, 479 people)CONFIRMED
~800 subscribers (declared at first issue, 2026-07-06)1,848 subscriptions on platform; 479 identity-verified people (25.9%)REVISED
Audience built with Meta ads (declared acquisition)86% of UTM-attributed devices arrive from Meta placements; 24% of them resolve to peopleCONFIRMED
Raw traffic counts imply human readers (the industry default claim)72.6% of pageviews assess human; 5.6% declared crawlers; 15.3% suspect automation, reported unblendedREVISED

What the property says about itself, against what the instruments read. A revised claim is not a failure of the property; it is the difference between a description and a measurement, on the record.

11 · Issue-over-issue trend
IssueDevicesPeopleResolutionHuman shareSuspect share
first issue · day 2 (2026-07-06)1721879% (160 pv)11%
re-issue · day 9 (2026-07-13)9437623.3%74.4% (924 pv)18.4%
re-issue · day 12 (2026-07-16)1,1189624.0%74.8% (1,048 pv)17.7%
re-issue · day 16 (2026-07-20)1,53612622.8%75.8% (1,416 pv)16.0%
re-issue · day 32, full month (2026-08-05)3,06124522.0%74.3% (2,955 pv)14.7%
re-issue · day 46 (2026-08-24)4,28333622.1%72.6% (4,494 pv)15.3%

Same instruments, same property, successive issues of this document. Movement in the suspect share is reported, not smoothed: a rising bot share with scale is what honest measurement of paid traffic looks like.

12 · Persona models (modeled layer)

~ modeledThese are not measured people. They are synthetic buyer archetypes, modeled from the property's declared audience definition, weights re-fit to day-12 measured composition (n=96 site people: modal age 65+, 52% female, 94% homeowners, barbell net worth; plus the first-party list match). One deliberate mismatch archetype is included to quantify targeting waste, not to be sold to, for use in creative and offer planning. Weights are estimates of segment share, never quotable as measurement.

~22%Doug
Two-truck grinding veteran · upstate NY · 52

Wants: Book more removals and stump jobs without paying a marketing company that doesn't get his business.

Held back by: Burned by a $500/mo SEO vendor; assumes marketing pitches are scams until proven otherwise.

Stance: Solution-aware; answers every call himself from the cab of his F-350.

~15%Marcus
Growth-hungry two-crew owner · DFW · 34

Wants: Systematized lead flow so he can step off the saw and run the business.

Held back by: Two payrolls to cover; anything new must show ROI in weeks.

Stance: Product-aware; runs his own LSAs, wants tree-specific proof, not hype.

~18%Linda
Office-and-field partner · central NC · 48

Wants: Practical, low-cost tactics she can run herself to restart flat revenue.

Held back by: Distrusts subscriptions she can't pause in winter; a Groupon deal once brought the wrong customers.

Stance: Problem-aware; she reads the newsletter and decides what her husband sees.

~18%Ray
Semi-retired legacy operator · southern Maine · 68

Wants: Reads to validate that his way of doing business still works; would take a few more high-margin removals.

Held back by: Never spent a dollar on advertising; new tech reads as designed to exploit tradespeople.

Stance: Unaware; has never clicked a CTA in an email.

~8%Jake
Scaling 12-person operator · Milwaukee · 41

Wants: Grow $400K to $750K in two years; professionalize the pipeline for municipal bids.

Held back by: Time. Anything adopted must save hours, not cost them.

Stance: Most-aware power reader; CRM, agency ads, 120+ reviews already in place.

~12%Carlos
Hustle-phase new owner · Baton Rouge · 29

Wants: Legitimize the business past side-job status and hire a first employee.

Held back by: Cash is truck-payment tight; spend must pay back within weeks.

Stance: Problem-aware; skims on his phone between jobs, suspicious of anything that costs money.

~7%Pat
MISMATCH · retired homeowner, no tree business · Sarasota FL · 66

Wants: Subscribed out of property-owner curiosity (a removal quote scared her); reads for the stories.

Held back by: Has no business; every operator-facing offer is irrelevant by definition.

Stance: Function: quantifies the waste segment. Roughly this share of the measured audience carries no employment signal and consumer-only attributes; a sponsor buying operators should know this slice exists.

Heaviest-archetype rule: Doug (22%) is also the most pitch-averse; for this panel the win condition on the heaviest segment is not losing it. This matched the live creative test, where funnel suspicion was the universal blocker.

This panel is executable. The publisher can offer sponsors a pre-flight test of their creative or offer against these archetypes as part of the sponsorship package, producing per-archetype receptivity scores before budget is committed. The passport certifies what the panel was modeled from; the test is its own report. Sample pre-flight test against this panel →

13 · Field confidence
FieldKnown-value baseFillConfidence
Gender320 of 33695%high confidence
State / geography312 of 33693%high confidence
Age band280 of 33683%high confidence
Homeownership229 of 33668%directional
Net worth230 of 33668%directional
Marital status224 of 33667%directional
Household income222 of 33666%directional
Children in household170 of 33651%directional
Job title108 of 33632%sparse
Seniority102 of 33630%sparse
Company size85 of 33625%sparse
Industry57 of 33617%sparse

Every percentage in this passport is computed on its field’s known-value base (nulls excluded), never imputed. high confidence ≥70% fill, quotable; directional 40–70%; sparse <40%, indicative only. Small-cell floor: distribution cells under n=5 are suppressed from render (the floor rises as fills grow).

14 · Claims ledger
ClaimSourceMethodBasis
✓ verified4,283 US devices observed; 4,661 pageviews measured (day 46)on-page beaconfirst-party pageview beaconfull window
✓ verifiedIdentity-graph beacon rows ingest through 2026-08-20 at issue time; the humanness read (tier 1) runs through 2026-08-24. The four-day gap is upstream ingest lag, reported rather than paddedinstrument statuscross-tier window comparisonissue date
✓ verified22.1% of devices resolve to an identified personidentity graphdeterministic cookie→identity4,283 devices
✓ verified336 distinct people; 796 uploadable email hashesidentity graphHEM extractionresolved set
✓ verifiedTag delivery moved from direct GTM tags to the audiencepassport loader on 2026-07-18; daily row volume and humanness held within prior varianceinstrument changeGTM-verified migration + 48h variance window2026-07-18 → 07-20
✓ verifiedPaid-social traffic quality: 24% of Meta-ad devices resolve to real peoplebeacon + UTMsource-segmented resolution1,959 ad devices
✓ verifiedSecond cumulative intent read (eleven archived weekly windows through 2026-08-24, plus six windows on the subscriber list): 535 site topics and 432 list topics clear the n=5 floor and topics now over-index — but nearly all sit at the floor (5-6 members), so the intent panel still stays out rather than shipping noise. Watch item: Bobcat Zero-Turn Mowers at 3.1x average lift (5 members, 2 weeks) is the first sponsor-relevant signalintent archivemember-level union across windows, per-week lift vs same-week baseline11 + 6 weekly windows
✓ verifiedFirst-party list: 479 of 1,848 subscribers resolve to verified people (25.9%)identity graphSHA-256 HEM match, aggregate output only1,848 subscriptions
✓ verifiedList composition is owner-heavy and propertied: top title Owner, 90% homeownersid-graph attributesperson-graph join on the matched set221 / 313 people
✓ verifiedOwner-operator wealth signature: modest income bands, net worth filled at both ends, 92% homeowners on-siteid-graph attributesconsumer-graph join93 / 169 / 171 people
~ modeledAudience decomposes into 7 buyer archetypes; weights are estimatesSimPanelsynthetic panel; seed disclosed in the persona panelmodeled
✓ verified73% of measured traffic assesses as humanFouAnalyticson-page fingerprinting, dashboard read 2026-08-244,494 pageviews

✓ verified read directly from the instrument, quotable as-is. ~ modeled estimated from distributions, flagged wherever it appears, never quotable as exact. ∅ not measured the instrument is absent or has not read yet; the row stays so the gap is on the record. Every number traces to a source, a method, and a basis count; the schema is vendor-neutral, so additional measurement layers append as new ledger rows.

METHODOLOGY & LIMITS
Tier-2 identity resolution covers US traffic only; non-US devices remain in the unresolved denominator. All composition data is delivered as aggregate statistics; no personally identifiable information leaves the measurement layer. Attribute fill varies by audience class and is disclosed per panel. Panels with low fill are labeled, never extrapolated. The subscriber list is matched as hashed emails; raw addresses never enter the matching path. As collection accumulates, this passport re-issues with the same document number and a new issue date.
NOT IN THIS PASSPORT (v0.4): business-registry verification (tier 3, designated lane for this audience class) · credit score, home value, education, residence tenure (present in consented-lane datasets such as LiveIntent; absent from this graph) · intent-topic read (second cumulative read 2026-08-24: topics now over-index, but nearly all at the five-member floor — equipment-brand and rural-property topics are the first sponsor-relevant glimmers; the panel ships when a signal clears the floor with members to spare, stated rather than stretched). Each appears as a new panel or ledger row in a future issue; nothing is estimated in the meantime.
Issued by audiencepassport.com · 2026-08-24 · format v0.4 draft

Methodology · For buyers · Audience audit · Privacy · Terms · alex@audiencepassport.com