PARIS – Retake control of your personal data and get paid for it. This is the straightforward concept behind the recently launched French startup Yes Profile.
On its platform, Yes Profile allows the user to create a profile with a certain amount of information – from email to age to interests and preferences such as favorite hot beverage or cereal.
“The data collected is totally anonymous, apart from the postal address. The conditions are completely transparent,” explains Yes Profile founder Christian-François Viala. “Users know exactly what content they are sharing, with whom, and how much they’re getting paid by brands for access to their profile. The current system is based on users’ profiles, but they don’t control their information anymore. We give the users their control back.”
Once part of the users’ profile is sent to advertisers, users receive personalized offers from the brand. All of which are centralized on the Yes Profile platform: there is no need to be logged in to be able to see them.
The benefits users may expect from every advertising campaign are of course relatively limited, stretching from a few cents to a few euros. But, “revenues for each user could reach 100 euros a month,” says Viala. Users can even redirect the funds to an organization of their choice. Yes Profile has a partnership with Doctors of the World.
“The brands are interested in our concept because the information we supply them with is guaranteed authentic,” says Viala. He says his start-up provides the cheapest prices on the market: half as much as it would cost to obtain an email base, for instance, with superior click rates. On the fee paid by the advertiser, 65% goes to the user and 35% to Yes Profile.
The company will soon launch its iOS and Android apps. Yes Profile is aiming for 500,000 users by the end of the year and hoping to enter the U.S. and UK markets before summer.
