2020 alternative web data predictions: Gary Read, Import.io

Worldwide: As 2019 comes to a close, Import.io CEO Gary Read shares his predictions for 2020 regarding how industries and organisations will be utilising alternative web data in the next 12 months.

In this piece, Read takes the lead from the financial industry and more, including online retail and travel organisations, to see how they are looking to web alternative data solutions to uniquely combine data sets to uncover customer insights, market intel, competitive advantage and trends from the web.

According to management consultancy firm Opimas, as the range of use cases for web data integration rapidly increases, so has spending on alternative data – with spending to hit nearly $7 billion in 2020.

• Travel organisations to widely adopt web data insights in 2020

“As the travel industry becomes increasingly digital and varied (from ride sharing to hospitality to attractions and more), it also becomes progressively more complicated, and as such, travel businesses must utilise web data insights to remain competitive. Remember when everyone booked travel through their travel agent?

“The internet has revolutionised the way people vacation, and data driven insights are strategic ways to ensure travel businesses remain relevant. Travel organisations all need premium data at-scale to suss all this out and build a taxonomy so that the industry can better understand their markets and competition.

“Therefore, in order to stay competitive, travel organisations will be adopting web data integration tools by the droves in 2020.”

• Companies will become bolder in web data analytics initiatives after the LinkedIn v. hiQ resolution

“The ruling in the recent LinkedIn v HiQ case established the right to collect and analyse public web data. With the court’s ruling behind us, many companies will likely become bolder in their initiatives to collect web data from external sources in 2020 and beyond. Now that businesses feel validated that web data collection is not illegal, they will take advantage of the opportunities provided by web data integration and the competitive advantage they can gain.”

• The real estate industry to adopt alternative data in increasing numbers in 2020

“Now that the retail and travel industries have recognised the usefulness of this data to provide a competitive edge within their sectors, we can expect real estate companies of varying sizes to begin to capitalise on the widely available public data that is available on the world wide web.

“Due to the similarities between the real estate, travel and retail industries, there are quite a few ways that real estate businesses can initially take advantage of web data in 2020 – revenue optimisation, consumer sentiment, competitor pricing, and more – with additional opportunities yet to be explored.”

For more information, visit the Import.io website here.