AlternativeData.org saw a lot of interest in 2017. We'd like to share some of the most highly engaged content in case you missed it. Please email us with any comments or content recommendations for the year ahead. TOP DATA CATEGORIES Below is a distribution of clicks generated by each data category in our Provider Database during 2017.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Subscribers are most interested in niche datasets. 'Emerging Data Categories' had the highest concentration of clicks and includes niche datasets that are usually industry sector specific and/or private company exhaust data (e.g. transportation, video game, and retail).
• Weighed by provider count, Credit/Debit Card data had the highest CTR at 90% above the average CTR of other data source categories.
  • Web Data and App Usage both received strong engagement at 20% above average CTR.
• While Social/Sentiment received a large amount of clicks (10% of total), its weighted CTR was 40% lower than average given the large number of providers in the category. 
  • Web Traffic and Sell-side were among the lowest weighted CTRs, more than 30% below average CTR.
• Data Brokers, Infrastructure/Interface, and Consultants received a combined 31% of all clicks, highlighting the challenges of discovery fatigue and data analysis/integration. 
• These were the newly discovered data providers that received the most clicks:
  • One Click Retail (Emerging/Consumer) - Includes AMZN dataset.
  • Random Walk (Geo-location) - Consumer foot traffic and email receipts.
  • Re-analytics (Web Data) - Fashion, retail, consumer, and travel.
  • Dawex (Data Broker) - Open alternative data marketplace.
  • EEDAR (Emerging/Video Games) - Data on over 127K game products.
  • Broughton Capital (Emerging/Transportation) - Trucking, rail, and airfreight.
  • BayStreet Research (App Usage) - Smartphone, tablet, and wearables.
  • Mavrx (Satellite) - Satellite, aerial, and infrared data for agriculture.
  • FaunaDB (Infrastructure/Interface) - Enterprise data warehousing.

TOP 5 POSTS

• Public Database of Alternative Data Providers
• The Ultimate Guide to Selling Data to Hedge Funds
• How to Integrate Investment Analysts, Data Analysts, and Engineers
• Top Data Providers China Equities
• Getting Started with Alternative Data

HIGHLY ENGAGED ARTICLES

• When Silicon Valley came to Wall Street. (Financial Times - subscription required)
• UBS wins Institutional Investor #1 in equities thanks to their investment in data team, Evidence Lab. (Institutional Investor)
• Two academics publish their process for using sentiment data to predict iPhone X success. (insideBIGDATA)
• Alpha Architect, a small asset manager, published a primer on machine learning for investors. (Alpha Architect)
• 74% of hedge funds plan to increase spending on alternative data, based on a survey of 50 hedge funds by Greenwich Associates and Arcadia Data. (Greenwich Associates - subscription required)
  • 90% of alternative data users have seen the return they hoped for, with two-thirds of buy-side firms using alternative data. (Business Insider)
  • Alternative data could be a silver lining for active investment strategies. (Institutional Investor, Pensions & Investments)
• Market size for alternative data estimated between $183 – $200mm, and projected to double in 4 years. (Value Walk - subscription required, Quartz)
• Web scraped listings help predict a decline in US retail employment.(Financial Times - subscription required)
• A federal court ruled against LinkedIn, confirming that a startup can scrape its publicly available data – a potentially precedent-setting ruling in favor of web scraping based analytics. (Ars Technica, WSJ - subscription required)

INDUSTRY STATISTICS

Number of alternative data providers: 212 Discretionary funds using alternative data: 163 Alternative data full-time employees at funds: 340

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