YouGov Safe : The New Mode of User Data Collection

There are web programmes that have emerged on the internet which offers the user rewards for transferring their personal data like shopping and surfing behaviour. YouGov Safe is a web extension that asks permission to track your online habits in exchange for rewards. Brave is a programme that asks the user to show ads in their browsers in return for crypto-reward points. Shackleton, from Accenture, is an agency that provides users with consumer goods like AirPods in exchange for sharing their shopping behaviour. These companies are intermediaries between the brands and their consumers and hence would definitely need brand partnership to survive.

While media enterprises and publishers are willing to let the third party in and even suggest their presence as necessary, major brands are not willing to accept their presence. The brands are trying to build a direct connection with their consumers by building data programs.

YouGov Safe is an extension that could easily be added to your chrome browser. Once you install the extension, it tracks your online behaviour and in exchange for it, the consumers are rewarded either with points or with money. Hamish Brocklebank, chief of YouGov Safe, stresses that they are only trying to create a more ethical relationship between the consumers and marketing agencies that need the consumer data and behaviour for bettering their performance.

According to him most of the agencies illegally collect these data. If the customers can benefit from parting with their personal data, they might give it willingly. This method is a much more ethical method than the other one. The data is only used for market research and the user identity is erased while sharing it with marketing agencies.

Publishers are also not ready to let these intermediaries between readers and advertisers. Companies like Brave Browser might ruin the ad experience that the publishers are trying to develop and make revenue from. Though brands try to keep their relationship with customers as direct as possible and obtain data the new policies of Apple and Google to protect the privacy of the users are making this difficult. The best manner to obtain data might be the new scheme of offering the users rewards to part with personal data.

Brave Browser allows people to watch ads in return for ‘Basic Attention Tokens’. People could use these tokens as payment methods on many websites or transfer them to cryptocurrency and withdraw it. But they allow the user to watch ads that are approved by them while blocking any other ads.

Shackleton provides the users who share their data through filling out questionnaires with real physical rewards like Apple Air Pods. This method makes it clear that data has real value in this world, according to Pablo Alzugaray, CEO, Shackleton.