Alternative Data News and Insight

It is no secret that the current alternative data market heavily services public equity investors. Of course, these are some of the biggest alt data spenders, so such preferential treatment isn’t surprising. However, this bias leads us to believe that non-equity investors may assume that alt data isn’t relevant to their strategies. Unsurprisingly, we believe otherwise. In this report we take a look at the alternative data options for real estate investors. Specifically, we address 1) issues with using traditional datasets and 2) which alternative datasets could help provide more accurate KPIs.

Earlier this month, location data provider PlaceIQ announced it would acquire Freckle IoT, a Toronto-based retail footfall measurement company

In the following three-part series, we provide an alternative data perspective on the current location data market, beginning with an overview of existing positioning technologies and the different ways that location data is made available to third parties.

In the first part of this series, we introduced the ways in which location information (ideally coordinate-based) is generated and subsequently made available to third parties. In the second part, we provide an overview of the technologies and challenges associated with contextualizing raw location data.

We discuss the key regulatory issues concerning the collection, processing and usage of geolocation data. Starting with the definition of geolocation data as ‘personal data’, we draw attention to several cautionary tales of data misappropriation or privacy leakage, before discussing best practices according to GDPR, as well as the logistical and legal challenges associated with data anonymization. We also draw attention to several future policy developments that should be on the radar of any informed user of geolocation data.