Data is the most valuable asset on the planet, in its raw form data is useless but refined with purpose your data is valuable beyond measure. Each year big tech companies make billions of pounds exploiting your personal information and selling it to advertisers. The real question lies, how much is your data actually worth? and, can you earn from it yourselves.
How do big tech companies make money from your data?
With every like, share, follow, upload, and interaction you perform online, big tech companies profile you and create persona’s, they try to understand your behaviors and predict what you want before you know you want it. Ever heard people say they think their phones are listening to them? well, this is not entirely true, they just know you and know what you want to watch, read and even purchase. With this data, advertisers can narrow down the perfect customer and advertise to them. The money paid for the advertising from the advertiser and business goes directly to the big tech companies who hold this information on you. Is this fair? the data is about you, you gift them this information, they make use of it, profile it, predict outcomes with their algorithms, they then sell this to advertisers and give you nothing in return. Just platforms in which you cannot tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real, what’s real news and what’s propaganda. Facebook generated £171 million pounds per day from selling advertisements in 2019 and this figure would have increased by around 30% with the demand for online shopping increasing prior to COVID. Facebook made all this money from your data and they have the audacity to then allow your data to be leaked, misused, and allow news companies, researchers, and even politicians to lead you astray like in 2016 with the Cambridge Analytical scandal.
The Growing Industry
The advertising market is growing, with the advertising spend around the globe in 2020 reaching £487 billion pounds. Digital advertising takes up the lion’s share of advertising spend at a whopping 65% of all global ad spend being spent digitally. The current advertising spend is predicted to reach £694 billion pounds globally in 2022, up £51 billion from 2021 (Based on information from Zenith Media). This industry is built on the back of your information and you receive nothing in return. We are exposed to over 10,000 advertisements per day, on and offline but we receive nothing for viewing these adverts. Image if every time you scrolled past an advertisement on your phone, every time you watched and engaged with an advert, and every time you clicked and made a purchase you were rewarded. Better yet, imagine if you could choose when to watch advertisements, and, if you like to watch none at all when using social media or the internet. The growth of the data industry and the advertising industry is outrageous, data has now surpassed oil to become the most valuable asset on the planet according to a study from World Economics and the industry is predicted to keep growing, with more and more people around the globe adapting and becoming used to technology, the industry has grown 100% since 2017 based on big data market information from Statista.
Can I profit from my data?
The short answer is yes, if you know how. Reports online suggest one man sold his personal information to a number of different companies in exchange for Cryptocurrency and another generated over £500 selling his information to different companies. There are now platforms that exist that allow you to sell your personal information, along with us there is Gener8 which is a browser extension backed by Dragons Den that rewards you for browsing and watching advertisements. WeAre8 who is backed by Channel 4 and they offer a social media platform that pay you for watching adverts, you can keep or pass the money on to charitable causes. Oxygean is another, new platform which are currently in the early stages and only currently allow users to gain shares in the business by performing tasks. Minds is an older platform that rewards users in Crypto for content they share and interact with, the revamp of the mobile app is now like common social media platforms of today. The Big Exchange, on our platform users can choose what data to sell and which advertisements to watch. Users can answer questions about themselves and share data with us which they choose, this data is then offered to advertisers who can make offers to buy certain data points such as your email or phone number, they can also send you offers to view advertisements. You can accept or decline the offer, being paid if you choose to accept. The earning potential will vary and in time with more businesses advertising and the value of data rising, you will be able to keep earning from your data.
How much is my data worth?
Your data is a growing economic asset, currently advertisers pay from £0.05 – £5.00 per click on a PPC advertisement, they pay £0.04 to send a text message and various other amounts targeting you with online and offline advertisements. You may think these numbers are small, which they are, however, information such as aspirations, goals, medical data, financial data, dating activity and others can be worth a lot of money to the right company. Imagine a new dating platform could purchase your information if you had listed you are single and currently seeking a partner and you actively use other dating apps. This information could allow them to target you and turn you into a lifelong customer, the value of this is sometimes beyond measure. There are over 5.6 million businesses in the UK and over 400 million worldwide, the value of data seems small at first but when multiplied by the number of organisations advertising you can see how the big tech companies generate billions of pounds per year from your data. We have created a calculator free to use on The Big Exchange website, just bare in mind this calculator was created based on 2017 data from a financial times study in the US. Since this study the value of data has increased 100%. When I complete the calculator it shows £7, my data is valued at £7, if I sell this to 1000 companies I have just made £7000, if I sell to 10,000 companies I make £70,000. Of course, not every business needs to know everything about you, they may not even want your contact information, just to show you advertisements which is great. Research suggests we see 5000 – 10,000 advertisements per day, now imagine we were paid just £0.10 to watch 1000 of these adverts, the ones we see online only. This would equal £100 in one day. Do this a few times a month and it covers the increased energy prices. The Big Exchange app shows you the value of the data you input into the platform, this is current market data and is is always monitored to stay up to date, for an accurate calculation of the value of your data download The Big Exchange app.