# In a niche B2B market, public data plus cold email beats paid ads

- Category: distribution
- Author: Mihai Negrea (https://indie.md/people/mihai-negrea/)
- Source: https://indie.md/journeys/mihai-datadriven/
- Canonical URL: https://indie.md/advice/cold-email-runs-on-public-data/

Google Ads sent Mihai visitors who could never buy: public tenders have eligibility requirements around revenue, staff, and certifications that an ad click cannot filter for. Cold email inverted the problem, because Romania's procurement system publishes exactly who participates in tenders, who wins them, and how to reach them. A firm that already bids on public contracts is pre-qualified by its own history, so the public record becomes the lead list. With a market of roughly 20,000 firms, a modest cold email setup beats an ad budget: the targeting information ads cannot access is sitting in the open data. Before paying platforms to guess at your buyer, check whether a public registry, license list, or procurement record already names every one of them.