Evolution

Data marketplaces are a recent phenomenon, but their roots go back decades. In the 1990s, data brokers, such as Axciom, Experian, Nielsen, Epsilon, IQVIA, and CoreLogic, began consolidating and aggregating transaction data in specific industries for sale to industry players. This quickly became a multi-million dollar industry.

In 2000, the advent of easy-to-use digital consumer marketplaces, such as Amazon, Apple iTunes, and others, gave impetus to the desire to create online marketplaces for data. Amazon was one of the first technology companies to launch an external data marketplace open to any data provider or data consumer. Others have since followed suit.

Today, software providers have raced to improve the underlying technology driving data marketplaces to make them more attractive to both sellers and buyers. This new breed of data exchange platforms creates a “data value chain” that creates a frictionless process for packaging, productizing, selling, browsing, evaluating, buying, ingesting, and integrating external data.

Vendors on the forefront this latest incarnation of data marketplaces include Dawex, Narrative.io, Harbr Data, Revelate, Snowflake, Crux, Informatica, and Databricks.