The unlikely data points that are driving corporate competitive intelligence

From podcast, and video streaming to digital retail, and influencer marketing data – learning which out of the ordinary data sets you can start collecting to achieve your business goals, can lead to explosive data governance strategies 

In this article we will discuss:

• Everything is data 
• Podcast data
• Video/streaming data 

Everything is data 

As broad a statement as this is, it is true. Every social interaction, video we watch, text we write, song we listen to, contains metadata that companies can collect, analyze, and monetize. 

The key is understanding the space in which you operate from a data perspective so that you can curate the data sets that will bring the most value to your business goals, automate an ongoing data feedback loop, and then make real-time operational decisions based on concrete insights, and trends, after analyzing what competitors, and target audiences are doing in your industry. 

Companies who choose to get creative with their data sourcing, and analysis can drive unique product offerings, tailored user experiences, targeted marketing campaigns, and socially-driven retail, and investment strategies. Here are a few companies leveraging data in unique ways:

• Moda Operandi – Is a digital marketplace which uses data to empower designers with insights regarding consumer fashion trends, interests, purchase habits, and retail patterns.
• Curacity – A data-driven travel influencer platform enables hotels to analyze social media account metrics (engagement volume/quality, geography, and conversion rates) so that they can create more successful influencer marketing campaigns. 
• Google – Has recently announced their new Timelapse feature which collected 24 million satellite images from 1984 to 2020 from NASA, the US Geological Survey (USGS), the European Union, and the European Space Agency (ESA). This massive scale project is helping to shed light on changes in terms of Earth’s forestry, urbanization, climate change, and energy sources. 

As part of this conversation, the following sections will respectively focus on data pertaining to podcasts, and videos. Though these digital assets are rarely viewed as ‘collectible’ they contain metadata, embedded data, and other identifiers which can be aggregated, and analyzed for business insights.  

Podcast data 

‘Podcasting’ is a very hot space in which companies are now seeking to enter, compete, and promote their ‘tailored value offering’ as part of their ‘organic’ marketing efforts. Ad agencies,  sponsorship/audience analysis tools, and other martech entities, all have a vested interest in mapping, and analyzing niche-specific podcast territory.  

Define podcast data 

Podcast data is any publicly available information pertaining directly or indirectly to a space that your company is trying to compete in including:

• Audiences – This may include who the listentening demographic is, as well as  how/where they discover, and engage with target shows
• Competition – Where is your competition advertising their shows, what messaging is working, which search phrases do they rank for, what content do they offer, and what are they missing.
• Mapping – Before entering a space you will want to ‘map’ which topics are most competitive, and where there is room for growth. Which genres are most developed or underdeveloped. 
• Discovery –  This may include finding new advertising, collaboration opportunities, podcast publishers to work with, and new audiences to target in order to increase your market share 

Concrete collectible podcast data points 

In order to obtain relevant insights, companies have started crawling podcast platforms (Google Podcast, Soundcloud) , search engines, social media platforms, digital advertisements, and blogs. The data being collected includes, among other things:

• Listener data – Including audience volume, podcast ratings/reviews
• Podcast data – Popularity (vis-a-vis traffic, and download volume, for example), most listened to episodes, titles, meta descriptions, publication frequency, emails, URLs, thumbnails/artwork  
• General data – Currently existing relevant genres, categories, publishers, artists 

Depending on your use case, you may want to consider buying historical data sets or collecting information in real-time. 

Video/streaming data 

Video/streaming data is similar to podcast data in the sense that they both fall into the ‘entertainment data’ category. This information is of particular interest to SVODs (Subscription Video on Demand) providers, such as Netflix, and Disney +. 

Define video/streaming data 

These companies along with other digital media providers, advertisers, and marketers are primarily concerned with data that sheds light on:

• Content engagement – Which content is trending on social media, what content are consumers looking for on search engines, which audiences in which GEOs are searching for what content
• Customer registration – Which digital content apps have the most web traffic, and downloads. Is a successful customer registration achieved as a result of a desire to gain access to one ‘big ticket’ show or is breaching the language barrier with subtitles converting customers?
• Client retention – Data collected can enable enhanced user experiences, providing insights into what subscribers are looking for over the mid to long term (high quantities of content? Classics? New tv shows?) 
• Advertising metrics – Competitor ad messaging, engagement, Click-Through Rates (CTRs), organic social posts, influencer trends 

Concrete collectible video/streaming data points 

In order to obtain relevant insights, companies have started crawling streaming platforms (Hulu, Amazon etc), search engines, social media platforms, digital advertisements, and blogs. The data being collected includes, among other things:

• User data – Demographics, age, location, gender, interests, streams per day within predefined timeframes 
• Show/movie data – Which are the top trending shows, collecting movie ratings, and reviews (think: rottentomatoes) 
• Industry data  –  Web traffic, streaming data, and Google analytics data (mostly for marketing, web ranking, and platform/show performance analysis). 

These data sets enable content creators to determine where entertainment interest currently lies among different target audiences, GEOs, and across different age/gender divides. Streaming data enables marketers to devise better strategies and data at the consumption level enable design teams to create better user experiences driving up retention rates. 

The bottom line

No matter which industry you are in, there are relevant data points that can enable your teams to make better, more informed decisions. Images, for example, have ‘Alt text’ which helps search engines index them for search results. Marketers can collect ‘Alt text’ from competitor blogs, and use similar keywords to compete in rankings. Songs also contain metadata, such as ‘songwriter’, or ‘publisher’, which when omitted, can result in owners being deprived of their rightful royalties earnings.