Each month, our Ask Don column will answer a commonly asked question from real data buyers and sellers. Email your submission and we might answer it in next month’s newsletter (we’ll give you a pseudonym and remove any potentially identifiable information, of course).

Q: Which vendors are actually alternative data vendors?

A: Any vendor is potentially an alternative data vendor, but we think this is the wrong question to ask. We aim to be practical in this column, but as it’s the start of 2022, we’re pausing to reconsider this more philosophical question. And in fact, it came up during our recent event with the SEC.

With too broad a view, you might subject your New York Times digital subscription to the same onboarding process as your favourite credit card data vendor; an overly narrow rule might ignore risks in a dataset simply because it’s hosted on a well-known platform (e.g., Bloomberg, Moody’s, etc.).

There are many taxonomies that a buyer can use to build its policies and procedures.