Alternative Data is no more the Alternative!
Alternative data implies data that is curated from a variety of non-traditional sources. To start, it’s necessary to know from where we get this gold mine of alternative data that can give you a unique competitive advantage. These are generally an unconventional set of external data points which could be sourced from a set of public and private owners. These are often large, complex and messy in the form factor and not very straightforward to process and consume easily.
But before jumping right into it, let’s quickly look into what we believe are the 5 major characteristics of Alternative Data.
These data points hold immense value for the organisation’s competitive advantage. We present here a few ways in which we collect data and process it to generate insights for you through our platform.
- Sensor-based Geolocation Data
Foot traffic data is available from WiFi signals (with granularity and accuracy), Bluetooth beacons (higher accuracy, more expensive, less coverage), and smartphone traces. This set of raw data is then cleaned, de-duplicated and cross-checked for the required geofencing using complex statistical modelling and algorithms to get metrics such as Footfall, Dwell time, Customer Journey etc.
2. Identity profiles
Often, just foot traffic data is not enough to ascertain the usefulness from the client point of view. These data sets must be complemented by actionable insights. That’s why people’s attributes are used to get deeper knowledge. These attributes are either declared by the smartphone users or sometimes modelled based on their location-webpage-app visits. Data is collected at all levels and volumes depending on what the customer has given consent to provide. Using AI and ML algorithms, we create customer segmentation for business purposes and needs.
3. Social Media Data
Signal from the noise is obtained from the processing of social media content (tweets, pictures etc.) for location-based insights. Demographics, psychographic, visits alone miss a critical part of the story; likeness, interests, and attitudes. We organize these geotagged social media posts, map them to the location to reveal the customers’ attributes that predict product, retail, and brand success at the street level. Popular use cases could be Event-driven sentiment tracking, brand Virality/Advertising success etc.
4. Map and Satellite Imageries
Data is collected from satellites, maps or (increasingly common) low-level drones. Image processing via computer vision algorithm is then carried out to process metrics such as build area, density, type of land use patterns etc. These data points are then used to gain granular data for a specific location by simply drawing a custom polygon in the hyperlocal intelligence engine.
5. Unstructured Data Sources
Data on quantity, quality, reviews, surveys of products etc. is scraped from public websites. In its original form, this data is often difficult to access, not clean and not in a usable format. State of the art NLP models is run on this to get insights pertaining to the product and business. Popular use cases for this could be to get the brand preference and understand consumer behaviour.
6. News and Media Reports
News articles, print, broadcast, and web news media, blogs etc. are obtained in their raw text form, then cleaned and processed via applying text-based analysis and tagging relevant data and fields. Locations, organisations, themes, sources, emotions, counts, quotes, images and events are identified for the business and product use cases.
Moreover, our data is acquired following the right legal procedures and consents. We also have a team to keep in place the checks and balances, investigate the data sources and parties. We identify the right dataset, do the analysis to verify the hypothesis and get the right insights for your business and products. Understanding the intricacies of the various sources of alternative data and smartly navigating them for churning out a competitive advantage is a superpower.
Harness the power of alternative data from these various sources and edge ahead of others with unMazer.ai!
To know more, please visit unmazer.ai or write to us at sales@unmazer.ai or leave a comment.
