Our Time. Our Money.

Madison Avenue is abuzz this week about the latest university research which found that 2/3s of American consumers don’t like being tracked online. I’m not really sure why this is shocking or even newsworthy.

Not surprisingly, all the pundits are jumping on the privacy angle….consumers don’t want anyone to know anything about them!! I think that’s BS. We share personal information with realtors, car salesmen, neighbors and strangers daily. But when we do that, WE receive the value, not someone else. I don’t think consumers are freaking out that Ford wants to know what car you drive. I think we are freaking out because that info is gathered behind our back and sold without any benefit to us.

If the question is asked honestly, what the advertising industry is really asking is this…

“How can we get consumers to feel OK about having their personal information collected and sold despite the fact that we are unwilling to share any of the bounty and value their personal information generates?”.

If consumers, who own their personal information, received the money that was spent buying that information…does anyone think 2/3s of Americans would object?

For those of you who have been checking this blog patiently (or not so patiently) wondering when I was going to stop sharing theories and start sharing solutions…the time in now. A few friends of mine and I have been trying to tackle this problem/opportunity. Frankly, it’s taken a bit longer than I had hoped, and we still have a ways to go, but today we are announcing the invite-only beta launch of Gomper.

The Gomper Companion is a simple little application that enables you to rent a small portion of your computer screen. You get paid for your time, not your actions. When the Companion is open and you are using your computer, you get paid. You can close the Companion in one click at any time and everything returns to full size. The consumer is in complete control.

Gomper is completely free to join. This is not about charging consumers, it’s about paying consumers. And this isn’t a trick to stick you with Spyware or other garbage. Just the opposite…the goal of Gomper is to be a consumer advocate. To give consumers a voice and a seat at the table. If it’s not good for you, it’s not good for Gomper.

The advertisements you’ll see in the Gomper Companion are very similar to ads you’ll see when you are surfing the Internet. Both are from advertisers paying money to reach you. Only with Gomper, the money flows to you, not to the companies that collect you. And as the money starts flowing from advertiser to consumer, I’m confident Gomper members will have a very different opinion of advertisers than most people. When advertisers see better results with ads to Gomper members then the ads they buy from media middlemen, they’ll spend more with Gomper and all our members will get a raise.

In other words, as more and more people join Facebook, the more money Facebook executives make. As more and more people join Gomper, the more money you make. Since the money is being spent buying your time and attention, this just makes more sense.

Please check out www.gomper.com. As mentioned above, we are in an invite-only period, so the information on the website is still pretty vague. But I encourage you to request an invite as we already have ~50 people using it and will be expanding the invite list very soon.

I’ll be posting more details more frequently now. Please post or email me with questions, comments, feedback, skepticism, support….whatever. If a year from now, Gomper has 1 million members, we will change the world. I hope you will choose to take part.

I would imagine Blogging 101 graduates would frown on this long and complicated subject line. Truth is, I don’t love it either. But I’m too confused to think of anything simpler.

I’m reading about Yahoo’s massive new advertising campaign that is about to launch. Yahoo is buying tens of millions of dollars of advertising from competing media companies with 2 goals in mind 1) reposition the brand to a dwindling consumer base and 2) reposition the brand to advertisers, reminding them how many of us they still reach.

A media company like Yahoo spends 10+ million in advertising with competing media companies, like USA Today. All with the hope of grabbing the consumers’ attention away from USA Today and over to Yahoo. If the advertising works, they will go to other advertisers and ask them to spend $10+ million advertising on Yahoo. Maybe USA Today would be interested in buying ads on Yahoo. They can get their users back.

Why do advertising sellers buy and sell ads to/from each other? In this case, advertisers are no longer convinced that Yahoo has control over enough of what they want…our time and attention. Likewise, advertisers are not sold on USA Today having enough control over our time and attention. If they did, USA Today wouldn’t have to resort to taking ads that help grow their competition.

The whole process makes very little sense. The only thing that makes sense is this: Everybody wants to either buy our time and attention or demonstrate that they have control over our time and attention. Yahoo is willing to spend millions just to try to convince advertisers they still got us. The point of all this? The value lies within us. We are who advertisers want. We are who media companies want. We are in control. If we seize it. Paying consumers makes a lot more sense than paying competitors to share their consumers.