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The Alternative Data Weekly is Powered by Babel Street | Vertical Knowledge.
Announcements:
Babel Street announces strategic acquisition of Vertical Knowledge.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is … We are starting to see some real world uses cases for AI & LLMs.
QUOTES
“…it's a silly name, alternative, it does data. But it's, it's just non traditional data for financial markets. It's, it's the data that the companies have reported, or the stuff that the markets haven't reported … the hard part is generating the insights, but tying it back and making it useful to somebody who's analyzing a company.” - Shawn Edwards, Bloomberg CTO
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Babel Street Acquires Vertical Knowledge)
#1 – Aquiba Benarroch published How to Utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) in Your Next Data Analysis Project. January 2024.
My Take: Wonderful article here. We have seen more interest in our massive collections of review data for similar use cases described here. Importantly, Aquiba highlights the importance of knowing how to use these models … ie “apply them appropriately”.
#2 – Scott Hall’s Data Providers. How to Maximize Revenue. January 2024.
My Take: Scott points out there is a long tail of data providers that are struggling to drive revenue. Bottom line, there is a ton of friction in the process. Having been involved with firms on both sides of the long tail (my up/down experience with 90 West Data & now with the strong VK/Babel) & lived this process, having a PSI score (product strength index) is a helpful tool.
BONUS: CIO Magazine published CTO Shawn Edwards on Bloomberg’s evolving data and AI approaches. January 2024. “…domain expertise has to go in hand in hand with data. And so we have been collecting high quality data for over 40 years. It's it's a great asset that we have. But it wasn't the fact that we were just collecting the data, it was the fact that we … understood its place with relationship to all the other data and all the systems that we have.”
What else I am reading:
Putting AI to Work: How Babel Street is Revolutionizing Identity Intelligence and Risk Operations. January 2024. (Demo?)
Vinesh Jha’s ExtractAlpha's 2023 in review. January 2024.
Tristan Handy’s My Thoughts Going Into a New Year. January 2024.
Three Data Point Thursday’s How Unlearning Helps To Build $7B Data & AI Companies. January 2024.
IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2023. January 2024. See below for cool charts.
Datanami’s Alternative Data Isn’t So Alternative Anymore. January 2024.
Source: Deconstructing Data: A Podcast for Modern Marketers published Deconstructing Data: 2023 Year in Review. December 2023.
My Take: I thought this was still timely even at the end of January. The biggest topic of 2023 was AI and ChatGPT. ChatGPT was really the first consumer access to AI & the consumer loved it. The hosts indicated that it seemed like every episode in 2023 talked ChatGPT & AI.
AI is pitched to the world like it will be another industrial revolution. The biggest changes the hosts are seeing is the increased use of AI for ad targeting. They are not yet a trickle down to SME … almost too many tools and too much noise in the market. Just now seeing tip of the iceberg
Can AI help clarify return on ad spend & improve ROAS?
Lessons from 2023 included the pervasiveness of ad fraud, the impact of temp IDs, & finally that you have to be on your toes … everything changes so fast.
“First party data is king!” … formerly “content is king!”
Highlights (43-minute run time):
Minute 02:00 – starting with the impact of ChatGPT & AI (Topic #1)
Minute 07:00 – importance of quality data
Minute 08:45 – “AI only as good as the data it is fed”
Minute 09:15 – increased awareness of ad fraud (Topic #2)
Minute 13:00 – companies starting to take their first party data more seriously
Minute 20:00 – the power of pulling data from multiple sources
Minute 25:30 – lesson & trends from 2023 (Topic #3)
Minute 37:30 – what advice for beginning of 2023
BONUS: Microsoft Build: State of GPT (YouTube video). May 2023.
Source: IBM Global AI Adoption Index. January 2024.
Summary: “Data Suggests Growth in Enterprise Adoption of AI is Due to Widespread Deployment by Early Adopters, But Barriers Keep 40% in the Exploration and Experimentation Phases.”
Of most interest to me was that “data complexity” is listed as the #2 issue hindering further AI adoption (after #1: the skill gap). We can make a lot of progress in the near term with this issue.
A couple cool visualizations:
My messy circle in red shows an area where we can make a lot of progress this year.
Big news!
It has been an interesting week.
We’ve had a chance to meet many of my new colleagues at the recent Babel Street Sales Kick-off (SKO) in Dallas … this of course lead us straight into the still ongoing (as of this ADW publication) BattleFin Alternative Data conference in Miami. I hope to have some time to catch my breath and get caught up this weekend.
First impression: Babel Street is a well-resourced company that is pairing a suite of cool products with disciplined processes to make a big impact in the market.
It will be fun to connect with our current & prospective clients to share what our expanded offering can do for them.
Will be a busy few months to be sure.
Can’t wait!