The idea of gathering and using consumer data is nothing new, but with the advent of computers, big data became a burgeoning business as well as a Big Brother specter. With computers running 24/7/365, businesses began to realize the almost unlimited amount of user data being gathered provided invaluable information about consumer trends habits. Most recently, however, consumers are demanding that their private information remain just that — private — and data-gathering and collection companies are committed to providing offerings that cater to security and privacy. A high-profile indication of this move to honor consumers is a change Apple made; the company now features a pop-up message asking consumers if it’s OK to track their activity. Welcome to the age of “small and wide” data where savvy companies, including Streamlytics (Profile), are looking to next-generation technology to meet this new demand. Streamlytics, a first-party data provider, doesn’t use cookies or tracking in its human-led data. As other players in the space, including International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM), Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG), Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) and Snowflake Inc. Class A (NYSE: SNOW), move forward with their strategic planning, they are certainly paying attention to the call for privacy, governance and compliance in collecting and using personal information.
- Experts estimate that 70% of organizations will switch to small and wide data by 2025.
- Streamlytics is a leader in “community-driven data,” a new category of data collection.
- Streamlytics is entrenched in precisely culling, organizing data to help customers see blind spots left by today’s technology.
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A New Type of Data Partner
With more than 1 billion iPhones in use worldwide along with another 65 million other Apple devices around as well, Apple has in many ways led the way in gathering consumer data. Until recently, Apple software permitted tracking a user’s activity across websites and apps, although knowledgeable users could disable the process in settings. The data gathered became invaluable in the world of targeted marketing. Consumers began to express their displeasure, however, with no federal data privacy laws on the books, companies and states are taking it upon themselves to protect their information. However, Apple has joined the efforts as well; its iOS 14.5 update allows users to prevent tracking with a simple tap on the screen.
The days of cookies, or packets of data that allow websites and apps to remember information about a user’s visit, are falling by the wayside as both consumers and companies are paying more attention to privacy concerns and regulatory changes. But data is still essential. As a result, brands are now gathering first-party data, or information collected directly from customers by brands for analyzation to personalize experiences and drive new customers and sales.
A privately held company, Streamlytics is a new type of data broker/partner. The company focuses on working with consumers with special attention being given to small and wide data. The company has initially been involved with the African-American demographic, comprised of almost 47 million people in the United States and one of the largest diasporas in the country. The company’s value is further increased by its patent-pending technology that unifies disparate data, an innovation in first-party data.
Streamlytics’ approach is straightforward. The company extracts added insights from smaller data sets using advanced processes to enhance training data that can be used with artificial intelligence (AI) to help it work more efficiently. The company’s wide-data analytics include analyzing both structured and unstructured data sources. The largest first-party data provider of African-American data, Streamlytics has collected more than 400million data points from the world’s largest platforms, such as Amazon, Netflix, Google, Uber and AppleTV+. The month-over-month growth for data points is an impressive 123% in one year’s time, from June 2020–June 2021, or 2,900% during the 12 months.
Gartner analysts believe that small and wide data is the data of the future, at least in part because of its superior 360-degree view of market trends. Gartner predicts that 70% of organizations will switch to small and wide data by 2025 because of “hyper-personalization and customer experience improvement.” Streamlytics is working to leverage changing markets and economics, positioning itself with a strong solution to capture market share.
Clture Leads the Way in Data Acquisition
Streamlytics is leading a new category of data company called “community-driven data.” The benefits of this innovative approach are many and include fostering inclusion at the societal level and representation from a branding purview. The company notes that it values data density more than data measurement, meaning that the quality of the data outweighs quantity.
Streamlytics’ flagship product is a consumer-face data acquisition app, Clture. Clture supports consumer demand to control private data rather than be tracked and followed without permission. Using Clture, African-American consumers own their private information through a data license. With Clture, consumers have choices and a voice in the process of data collection.
The app even allows consumers sell their data if they choose; users can identify their own price via Streamlytics proprietary data value algorithms. Through this model of paying consumers for their data, Streamlytics collects a comprehensive set of consumer, demographic, and consented data. Competitors’ marketplace solutions are far less robust, giving Streamlytics a competitive edge.
Standard, Custom Datastreams Available
Streamlytics is deeply committed to precisely culling and organizing data in its efforts to help customers see blind spots left by today’s technology. These voids span not only marketing and customer acquisition but also competitive intelligence, corporate strategy, branding and more to optimize various areas of operations. The company’s model is circular as data consent and data feed API integration both drive cash flow. The unique platform has already caught the attention of numerous Tier 1 clients, including CPG, wireless, automotive and apparel industries, a powerful indication of the scalability of the application of the datastream product.
The Miami-based company offers a standard data feed to brands for $250,000 per year, that is used for more precise execution in programmatic advertising, saving customers money and increasing revenue. The standard feed contains over 30 million data points that customers leverage as seed data. Data equity is critical in machine learning to accurately reflect changing demographics. Streamlytics also offers custom datastreams starting at $1.5 million annually where clients can utilize 400+ million datapoints to not only boost revenue, but to refine marketing, innovate in product, and increase artificial intelligence accuracy.
Changing Landscape of Data
Streamlytics is leading the way in the changing landscape of data. It works closely with its human data partners who have actually consented to data collection. Then and only then does Streamlytics run the gathered information through an extensive data processing system that cleans and enhances it. The data comes from upper echelon providers. For example, video streaming viewership comes from Amazon and YouTube; location data from Google Maps; audio streaming from Spotify and Audible; cross-device engagement data comes from smart speakers and TVs; gender and age data are provided at registration; and purchasing data is collected from Amazon.
The proprietary platform allows for scalability as evidenced by the accelerated data point expansion. As Streamlytics continues to build out its Clture product for the African-American community, the company is also planning its growth strategy. The next market in line is the LatinX community, which accounts for an estimated 18.5% of the U.S. population, or about 60.6 million people.
Evolution of Technology
Major players in data collection can’t ignore the rising demand from consumers to honor privacy and security. As these companies move forward with their plans for growth, an awareness of these changes to consumer privacy must inform the inevitable evolution in technology as companies do their best across multiple verticals in a constantly changing digital climate.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) is committed to helping clients generate business value from data and AI to create new customer experiences and redefine operations. As part of that strategy, the company recently inked a deal to acquire Bluetab Solutions Group S.L. The move will extend IBM’s portfolio of data and hybrid cloud consulting services as Bluetab becomes a strategic part of IBM’s data services consulting practice to further advance its hybrid cloud and AI strategy.
Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG), the monitoring and security platform for cloud applications, just announced the general availability of Database Monitoring (DBM). With insights into query performance and explain plans as well as automatic correlation of query metrics with application and infrastructure metrics, DBM provides engineers and database administrators the visibility they need to quickly find and fix application performance issues that arise from slow running database queries.
Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK), provider of the Data-to-Everything Platform, recently announced its new Splunk(R) Security Cloud, the only data-centric modern security operations platform that delivers enterprise-grade advanced security analytics, automated security operations and integrated threat intelligence with an open, unparalleled ecosystem. Splunk Security Cloud brings together best-in-class security operations solutions that help customers get maximum value from their data. With Splunk Security Cloud, teams can secure and manage multi-cloud deployments while remaining agile to adapt to ever-evolving threats.
Snowflake Inc. Class A(NYSE: SNOW), the data cloud company, in July launched support for its Unified ID 2.0 to help organizations easily enrich audience data, without sharing consumers’ personally identifiable information (PII). With Unified ID 2.0 support, Snowflake customers will be able to optimize their data-first advertising strategies by directly activating audiences on any platform that has adopted Unified ID 2.0, using Snowflake’s secure data sharing technology.
In a world where consumers understand the value of their data and know they can control it, companies that lead out in partnering with them in the work of data collection are in a prime position to succeed.
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