The race is on to find innovative ways to give consumers more control over their private information, but the actual value of that data remains in flux.
A new Richmond startup founded by mother-and-son team Tabitha and Johnathan Geary says 25 cents is a good place to start.
The Quartr app, which launched this month, is paying users to watch ads and give feedback to brands. After reviewing a video, photo or other campaign, users reply to a set of questions and are rewarded at the end by a 25-cent deposit into their Quartr account.
Once an account reaches $20, users can deposit the funds into a connected bank account or keep them in the app for a later pay day.
Brands displaying their ads pay Quartr monthly subscriptions, split into tiers based on the amount of people they want to reach, how many ads they post and segment targeting. Those subscriptions run between $2,500 to $25,000 per month, and brands pay out the 25 cents per ad view.
To make sure bots don’t fill the app, which would harm both Quartr and the brands reliant on authentic data, the startup added a feature that requires users to verify their identity before cashing out.
Fear not – your identity isn’t handed over to the brands that solicit feedback on the app. All of the user feedback is aggregated into larger data sets that don’t give companies identifiable information about individuals.
“The ecosystem is really changing, with so many data breaches and so many privacy issues,” said Tabitha Geary, CEO. “So everything is aligning so that you have to communicate with consumers in a transparent, honest way to get feedback from them.”
With those foundations in place, the idea is taking off quickly.
Without spending any significant money on marketing, Quartr established a waitlist of 25,000 users pre-launch.
About 1,000 users participated in the app’s first beta test in January, with a second beta pulling in 500 more. Within a month of launching the first beta, Quartr had amassed 1,200 users and 500,000 data points for brands across 12 industries. More than a third of testers completed the entire beta – about $30 worth – within a day, signaling heavy consumer demand for the service.
“For the last two months or so, we had a heavy focus on brand voice, marketing and sales materials,” Johnathan Geary said. “We did the brand identity development and now that it’s sorted out, we’re targeting all the companies we’ve been talking to.”
To lead its expansion, Quartr hired Katie Szumowski as its first CMO, following her stint on the marketing leadership team at Vonage. It has eight full-time employees and is raising money through crowdfunding to bulk up its sales and marketing teams, Geary said.
For now, the app is available on iOS and a web platform is available on Android devices. Geary said that in the startup’s early stages, it will be easier to upgrade and fine-tune the app on one operating system before rolling out to others. It is also available only to U.S. users, in order to keep the scope of brand feedback from becoming too broad early on.
