A HYPER ISLAND STUDENT PROJECT IN COLLABORATION WITH MEECO BY WILFRIED N'GUESSAN, JONATHAN SVÄRDH, AND STEFAN NORMANN
The Internet and social media were never free. Companies of all sizes spend billions of dollars annually on personal information about you. This can range from your browsing behavior to your health conditions. This data is used to advertise to you, grant or deny you insurance and decide whether or not you’ll get your next job.
We do not accept the premise that your information should be traded without your consent. It’s both in your and brands’ interest to partake in a mutually beneficial transaction. The way the system is broken is that you, as a citizen, are constantly targeted with advertising that’s not pertinent to your life and companies waste money to reach an audience who’s not in buying mode.
The value of your data changes with time, but right now it’s already being traded on the data brokering marketplace—that’s where companies buy your personal data unbeknownst to you. Just in the US, there are at least 500 companies in the Banking and Insurance industry. At least 196 pharmaceutical companies. Over 500 non-profits. Over 600 retail department store companies. And many more companies in different fields.
We rounded up the average CPL (Cost Per Lead) that these companies pay to acquire us as consumers in their respective industries—either through advertising or other methods. These businesses buy data about you. But what if they could pay you to access information about you? Startups like Meeco make it possible.
What if companies could request to pay you for information about your browsing history, your health situation, your marital status, etc. Depending on how many companies want to receive that information, you could make your data work for you. The value of your data could then become:
DV (Data Value) = BCPL (Brand Cost Per Lead)
X Requests
The numbers can add up pretty quickly.
We see a future where customers are in control of the conversation and decide what companies they want to keep in touch with. In the digital age, where privacy is a major concern for a growing part of the population we, like Meeco, believe in data sovereignity.