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Bloomberg Completes Acquisition of Second Measure


Adds consumer transaction data analytics to enhance quantamental company research

Published on December 25, 2020

Bloomberg L.P. announced that it has completed its acquisition of Second Measure, a consumer data analytics company that analyzes billions of anonymized purchases to help investors and businesses gain insight into company performance and consumer behavior. Bloomberg acquires Second Measure’s proprietary analytics for daily tracking and real-time exploration of thousands of public and private companies, providing users with insights that complement Bloomberg’s company fundamentals and market data.

The fast-growing demand for alternative data by investment firms pursuing more data-driven investment strategies has resulted in an overabundance of new datasets that present significant challenges in acquiring and processing the data and deriving actionable insights, especially for firms that do not maintain large in-house data, science teams. Second Measure decodes transaction data that is typically difficult to decipher, enriches, and normalizes the data and produces insights and visualizations that are directly consumable through a web application.

Second Measure’s broad coverage of thousands of companies and brands helps users streamline their research and analytics workflow. Investors can identify fast-growing consumer companies, gain industry insights, validate investment theses, and track company performance intra-quarter. Consumer brands can gain competitive intelligence, determine growth strategies, and analyze consumer spending patterns.

“Our clients are increasingly incorporating non-traditional data in their investment and business strategy decisions. We’re committed to helping them extract high-value insights from those datasets faster, through innovative technologies and sophisticated models like those developed by Second Measure,” said Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer at Bloomberg. “By combining our strengths, we will be able to expand access to this intelligence and reinforce our commitment to providing transparency and discoverability of high-impact data.”

Mike Babineau and Lillian Chou, co-founders of Second Measure, added: “Bloomberg’s leadership, scale, and complementary products will accelerate Second Measure’s ability to deliver novel insights to our clients. This provides a tremendous opportunity to bring new data, tools, and methods to the market, helping to usher in a new era of company and consumer analysis.”

In addition to this acquisition, Bloomberg will continue to evaluate data partnerships and further developments to provide robust solutions for clients seeking increasing sophistication levels in applying alternative data and analytics in fundamental, quantamental, or fully quantitative research workflows.

Business Editor