Datacoup

Enabling users to monetize their own data without passing personal information to advertisers

Key facts

• Datacoup¹ is a personal data exchange platform for consumers to aggregate and sell their own anonymous personal data.
• Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York City, it has approximately 400 employees and received $440,000 in a single funding round.
• Datacoup’s mission is to help people unlock the value of their personal data.

Uniqueness

• Datacoup makes it easy to connect data from the apps and services customers already use – from online social data to offline spending data.
• It gives users the tools to better understand their personal data and the control to sell it themselves. For example, consumers can see the location data they are selling linked to their social media accounts.
• Datacoup allows consumers to sell their data in a protected, aggregated and anonymised market.

Value

• Customers have connected their accounts and reviewed their profile, their data is ready to be entered into Datacoup’s data market.
• At present it is Datacoup purchasing consumers’ uploaded data in order to build an inaugural data set. However, the company is eventually looking to sell the anonymized data profiles to marketers. To succeed, it faces the challenge of signing up a large enough user base to create sufficiently large pools of data to attract advertisers.

Approach

• Once a user has connected their accounts to Datacoup’s system, they then build a profile that provides an overview of their data for potential data purchasers.
• The profile shows the individual data attributes, or data points, that have been pulled from each connected account. Data attributes include categories such as gender, education, or monthly spending.
• Each attribute contributes to an overall base price for a consumer’s data which is determined by the market and their willingness to buy it.

Footnote:
1. Sources: Datacoup; WEF/Accenture Analysis