Most commercial flights operate in a small number of fairly narrow corridors. Is there really a billion dollar market for aerial imagery of those flight corridors? Seems unlikely.
Maybe--time will tell. We run revisit estimates with FlightRadar so I can say that there's a good amount of deviation in routes generally, but I also think narrow corridors are the mechanisms that makes rapid revisit even more powerful. When you can achieve minute-level temporal resolution for heavily populated areas using smartphones (to start), the cost is more or less negligible compared to satellite imaging.
I know of one market-maker HQ'd in Manhattan that currently pays $16 million/year for two satellite images per day of the oil storage tanks in Cushing, OK. Analysts determine tank volume by looking at the shadows cast by the floating lids on the tanks and use that data to set oil futures prices. There are roughly 1,500 flights over the same area every day. We're very much a hypothesis-become-startup at the moment but I'm optimistic!
I know of one market-maker HQ'd in Manhattan that currently pays $16 million/year for two satellite images per day of the oil storage tanks in Cushing, OK. Analysts determine tank volume by looking at the shadows cast by the floating lids on the tanks and use that data to set oil futures prices. There are roughly 1,500 flights over the same area every day. We're very much a hypothesis-become-startup at the moment but I'm optimistic!