The way I think of alternative data is data about a business or industry that is obtained, collated, and analyzed through non-traditional communication channels, and helps to provide a better picture of how a company or industry is doing than just relying on trade data and financial statements. The best example of this I can think of is companies scraping AliBaba at certain frequencies, trying to ascertain the movement of certain products or raw materials. This data is then sold to investment firms and hedge funds, because they feel it gives them an edge.

One company that operates in this space is YipitData. From what I've been told, they started as something similar to GroupOn but then pivoted to this space after scraping for their own competitive intelligence reasons.

One example could be combining credit card data and location data to try and infer is bad weather affected same-store sales. Another use could be determining if a company was emailing loss-leading discount promos at the quarter to juice its sales growth. Another could be collecting Tesla VINs to see if it is hitting its target productions. In the last case, Bloomberg has made this available for free:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/

Alternative data is non-financial data which can be tied to various securities.

Financial data, for example, would be EUR USD spot prices. Non-financial data (i.e. "alternative data") could be healthcare reports which you could theoretically couple to e.g. pharma stocks.

There are quite a few, and I can think of these off the top of my head:

- Real-time weather data from major ports and across the main shipping lines

- Telemetry from crop and soil report systems

- Up-to-date satellite imagery of basically anything large under construction (solar farms, factories, ...)

Provide information like that in a machine-readable, consistent format and you have a business.

Btw... Using satellite images to track car manufacturers' inventory levels is an old idea, used for more than a decade.