Say Hello to The Startup Looking To Change The Fabric of Advertising
Zedosh sees a brighter future for both consumers and advertisers.
After long discussions with Zedosh’s founder, Guillaume Kendall, it’s obvious to me that the advertising industry needs some disruption. Zedosh is working diligently to revolutionise the way businesses and consumers interact.
How?
Radical innovation.
Where did it all go wrong?
Zedosh conducted a survey in which 562 respondents have answered. All respondents are aged between 18–24 (the core Gen Z demographic) and are based in the UK.
Key findings:
- 60% find irrelevant ads on social media quite annoying or very annoying
- 85% see ads for products that they have already bought at least occasionally
- 55% say they do not like having ads on social media
- 79% see ads for products they cannot afford at least occasionally
It’s clear the advertising industry is failing both consumers and agencies.
- Ads lack relevance because the way media channels identify relevant consumers is inherently flawed.
- Consumers will choose to block or ignore ads because they lack relevance.
- Ads are reaching saturation point, where consumers are bombarded with ads across all digital channels.
- Consumer attention has become increasingly scarce because of these failings.
The advertising is not geared towards benefitting either party involved. Zedosh is looking to fix this.
The Attention Exchange™
‘An ecosystem for digital advertising that benefits brands and consumers.’
This proposes a new form of advertising — one where the consumers are rewarded for their attention. Rather than the advertising money going into the big companies pockets, it would go into the consumer's pockets.
Market research has shown the demand for this;
- 84% would like to earn money for their time from brands that want their attention at least occasionally
- 82% would watch ads to make money at least once a day, with 34% stating that they would watch ads as often as they could
This would create an open marketplace for both consumers and brands alike — where the value of the attention is accurately and ethically distributed to the provider of the attention. Giving the power to the consumer to be able to sell their attention to the brands wishing to advertise to them.
Alongside this, brands can sleep comfortably knowing those that are getting paid to watch the ads are people who would potentially purchase the product or service. The one ingredient needed here is relevancy.
Purpose Driven Advertising
‘The key to making this relationship work? Relevance.’
The conventional approach in the advertising space is all about maximising reach. Zedosh does not care about reach. Zedosh cares about conversion. Therefore, Zedosh cares about relevance.
The simple fact is that relevancy falls flat in the advertising world. An arbitrary search for a Lamborghini brings a world of irrelevant ads your way.
This is known as advertising wastage. Businesses pay for that wastage. The sad fact is that when you see an ad that isn’t relevant to you - thus you wouldn’t ever pay any money for it - a business pays for that.
Patek Philippe recently advertised to me while browsing on LinkedIn. Sorry, but I won’t be buying any of your watches any time soon. Patek Philippe, through no fault of their own, wasted money here. That same cost to show me could have gone to someone who is actually in the luxury watches market.
Relevancy has the opportunity to be majorly improved. Zedosh is on its way to developing this. Using banking transaction data the algorithm which finds the best-suited consumers for each advertisement gets a better understanding of the individual consumers purchasing power and purchasing habits.
Zedosh is fine-tuning this approach that would result in me only getting show highly relevant ads that are of value to me. I would not be shown any ads for Patek Philippe as I don’t have the means to purchase a luxury watch, nor have I ever purchased one in the past.
Zedosh would know that I wouldn’t want to purchase a Patek Philippe before Patek Philippe tries to advertise for me. This is invaluable.
The great benefit this has to businesses is almost immeasurable. This approach will vastly improve the ROI to the companies currently spending millions on advertising waste.
It's a symbiotic relationship between the consumer and advertising; the consumer only gets shown ads they want to see, the advertiser gets a much higher improving conversion rate through relevancy.
As the founder said, businesses get the opportunity to ‘do more, with less.’
The Takeaway
There is a multitude of problems in the advertising industry. Primarily that advertising are spending lots for very little and consumers are frustrated with how irrelevant (and valueless) ads currently are.
Zedosh believes they are the solution to all of this. Using relevancy to maximise conversion puts money back in the businesses pocket. Simultaneously paying consumers for their attention using the businesses budget.
Zedosh is taking power away from a broken system, and re-distributing it back to the businesses and consumers that are the lifeblood of that system.
We are on the precipice of revolution.
If you are interested in getting involved and learning more about Zedosh then please visit their website for more information.
If you have or know of a startup/business doing innovative things you can reach out to me for collaboration at kieran.audsley@gmail.com
