Advertising Revenues and the Exploitation of User Content

“Every one of over 1 billion Facebook users […] work averagely 20+ minutes per day on liking, commenting, and scrolling through status updates. That is more than 300.000.000 working hours of free digital labour per day.”

Taken from DataEthics, this finding addresses the collection of user data and content. The concept is neither new nor unknown; however, the dimension is mostly unseizable for the individual.

As people living in the age of technology, we are aware that there are entities who gather our data for unknown purposes. Big companies come up with increasingly innovative ways to profit from user data. They are tracking what we do, where we go, what we like. The methods and purposes of data collection keep expanding, with seemingly no end or limit in sight.

The companies which increase their sales volume through user data and content are popular market leaders such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. A major reason for the success of these companies is that they have embraced the mindset of “data as an asset” (see The Guardian). Treating data as a form of capital means that firms gather, commodify, and make as much money as possible out of the collected data. People often do not know how their data is taken and used, let alone how to give meaningful consent.

According to data and analysis agency Zenith, online advertising has overtaken television to become the world’s largest advertising medium. Especially great online players such as Facebook and Google have realized this trend and adjusted their business strategy. During the last years, the two companies have effectively established a duopoly in digital advertising revenue.

Organizations and members of the media industry have been increasingly critical of Google and Facebook for their online advertising practices. One of the critics is journalist Tina Brown, who rose to prominence as the editor of Vanity Fair and of The New Yorker. In an interview for recode, Tina Brown says: “I am very angry and upset about the way advertising revenue has been essentially pirated by the Facebook-Google world, without nearly enough giveback — no giveback, really — to the people who create those brilliant pieces […].”

In contrast to companies who benefit from user data and content without letting their users participating in their sales, repay.me remunerates its users: the repay.me marketplace offers up to 100% cashback which is taken from their advertising revenues. While other companies make large sums out of their user data but keep the assets for themselves, repay.me users benefit from an innovative cashback system: the more involved the users are within the repay.me community, the more cashback they get. repay.me users receive cashback from every purchase. The cashback is paid back in small daily amounts until the full price is reimbursed. Additionally, activities such as recommendation of the marketplace to friends or writing a product review can boost the user’s cashback engine. The company will also issue its own cryptocoin, the REME-Coin, in 2018. The REME-Coin will accelerate and ease up the cashback process, and will be applicable online and offline. Right now, repay.me works on the global acceptance of the REME-Coin.

Companies will gather and sell user data. The producers of this data, namely the users, will not profit from it. repay.me offers you the chance to benefit from marketing your data.

You can decide yourself if you want to have a piece of cake as well.