Imagine you’re going on a much-needed holiday. You live far away from the airport, hate taxis and have loads of luggage, so you decide to drive your brand new car to the airport and leave it there. Once you get to the airport, you hand your keys over to the valet and — not giving it any more thought — make a charge towards departures and onto the plane that will take you away from the dreary, wet weather of the British mid-winter and straight to the beach. Two weeks later, you come back, relaxed and tanned, pick up your car and — surprise! — you’ve got a lot more miles showing on your dashboard than when you left, the driver’s seat has been pushed way back and there’s an empty McDonald’s cup in your cup holder. Someone drove your car without asking your permission, and that’s not not what you signed up for when you left it with them!
But this could never happen to you, could it? Maybe not to your car, but your data is constantly being taken for a ride. Data that you gave away, for example, when you took an online quiz to find out your dream holiday destination, or when you ordered a roof rack (so you actually had somewhere to put all that luggage). This data then ends up with brands and advertisers, who use this information to interrupt your digital experience with irrelevant ads about holiday destinations (for a holiday you now can’t afford), or roof racks (for your freshly racked roof).
This is clearly a situation that isn’t creating much value for anyone — brands are spending vasts amounts of money to reach people who aren’t potential customers and people are being presented with advertising they’re not interested in.
More and more people have simply had enough of irrelevant and intrusive advertising and are turning to ad blockers because of it. In the past year, there was a 30% rise worldwide in the number of people using ad blockers , bringing the total number of ad-blocking devices to 615 million. This is clearly a problem for the relationship between us and brands because — as you may know from experience — no relationship can survive without communication.
What difference does people.io make?
We understand that the relationship between people and brands is heading towards break-up city. Neither side seems to be able to communicate with each other, or understand each other’s needs. Think of us as your relationship counsellor — we want to create a new, open, and mutually-beneficial relationship by giving you a better way to communicate with each other.
We give you a safe platform to communicate with brands. With our platform, you give us as much information as you’re comfortable disclosing, and based on this information we’ll match you with brands that fit with your interests and needs, and enable them to pass on a message that’s relevant and valuable to you. For every action you take in the app you’ll be rewarded with credits that you can later redeem for charitable donations, digital products and online subscriptions. In effect, brands are paying you so that they can reach the person they actually want to target. In addition to this, you have the power to decide which brands are able to communicate with you, as well as how and when they do this. And you can do this safe in the knowledge that we don’t sell your personal data to any brands or advertisers. With our app, you own and have control of your data at all times, which allows you to enjoy a better digital experience as you no longer have to worry about who’s taking your data for a ride. Instead you can simply engage with brand messages that are much more tailored to you than was ever the case.
We want to create a whole new relationship. One in which brands communicate with people in a straightforward, clear and direct way. A way which reaches only the people that are interested in their products and are happy to hear about them. Essentially, we want advertising to regain its informative function — letting people with unique preferences and habits know about new products that will actually interest them.
In this situation, everybody wins — more value is created, less money is spent, and you finally have a rewarding relationship with brands.
Your future relationship with brands can be like this. Simply download the people.io app and see how you can get rewarded for licensing your data and communicating with brands — on your terms.
