Episode 076 - Neil Sweeney on Consumer Data Deception

Welcome back to another episode of out-of-home insider today's episode is all about data privacy in what you need to know about its effect on brand marketing strategy. And specifically out of home joined by Neil Sweeney, CEO of keeley.io, a platform that pays you the users. To use your data and enables brands to use the richest data source available in our privacy centric world, where targeting and measurement rates Supreme, while staying ahead of the curve on brand safety, the serial entrepreneur Neil got his start in out of home and has built and sold multiple data and location targeting companies.

To learn more about creating a data privacy proof brand. Visit one screen dot. Without further ado. Let's go welcome everybody to the out-of-home insider show, a podcast like no other hosted by the one and only Tim Rowe.

You ready to have some knowledge dropped on. You went to be entertained because nothing is more valuable than food for your brain. So sit back, relax. We're about to dive in as the best industry podcast is the bathroom.

You know, so, and that's a good place to start. Neil is, is you're, you're a data guy. You're a location data expert, but you started in digital, out of home, which I got to imagine was at the beginning of digital, of, out of, out of home. So tell everybody who you are and how you got started. So, yeah, I started, well, I started in digital, out of home and it was before digital out-of-home was I think called digital out of home.

I started at a company called the elevator news network, which got bought by a company called captivate, you know, is, you know, clearly, you know, operating today. And, you know, we started in Toronto, which is where I'm from. And, uh, you know, this is, I don't know how many years ago this has gotta be like 20 plus years ago.

But for some context, like we were running cable down, elevator shafts, plugging them into monitors and then booting up Microsoft, like, so you'd see, you'd see like the, it seemed like that. Boom, boom, boom. Yeah, it would, it would bubble up and then you'd see like the, what do you call that? The sand time thing?

Like just loading. So, yeah. So, and then what you do is like, there was basically. Uh, you know, the equivalent of like a radio player, like, uh, and you would literally have to hard, hard load a loop, you know, kind of elevator bank by elevator bank, you know, in these individual and these individual towers. And, uh, yeah.

So, you know, you see these, you know, you see screens like Bloomberg today, or, you know, CNN and it's like, multi-dimensional screen. Uh, we were doing that. Like we were running a non-standard format ad unit in the bottom, uh, kind of video animation in one part of it. And like, we were responsible for kind of selling that.

And so, you know, I was pretty, I was obviously brand new and kind of was getting my feet wet and it was like, You've got to, uh, you've got to figure out how to convince people to do out of home. Uh, so nobody knew out of home, nobody knew me, nobody knew the company. And so you needed to get pretty creative.

And I do think, um, I do think almost everybody should, should start that way. I kind kinda, I I've said this to like graduating classes in the past where, you know, you've kind of done the commenced teachers. I do think, you know, you've been conditioned as, as a, as a, as a kid to go to school and, you know, get a job.

You know, I, I tell everybody, the first thing you should do is you gotta join a startup because you've got nothing to lose, you know, whether or not whether or not you decide to be an entrepreneur in the future is irrelevant, but you should, when you're young and you've got nothing to lose, um, you should join a startup because you'll learn more there because you kind of have to do a bit of everything.

Um, and ultimately, uh, if, if, if you kind of get the bug, then it's totally hands on training. And if you don't, what I was telling everybody is that all these companies that are looking for, you know, smart up and coming young people, professional people, there's no better talent pool than pulling people out of startups because you know, they know how to get things done.

So, um, when you get older, it's, you know, startups are kind of a young person's game. So it's hard to kind of vent into the startup when you're older. So anyway, I started in a startup, uh, you know, trying to figure out how to educate people on, you know, this emerging, digital, out of home space. I left there and went to a big kind of media company.

Did, did a couple of stints there that clearly wasn't for me. And then, you know, it started kind of kicking, you know, kicking down into, you know, building my own stuff. So, um, I do think it's almost like. It's the combination of experience at bigger companies and experienced in smaller companies. You know, if you can find those two things together, you know, you've got a pretty good formula for figuring out how to run a business at a later stage.

And it's such a cool opportunity that we're in right now. You know, obviously the world shutting down because of COVID and now things have opened back up, but so many companies have gone remote. So the opportunity for. A young person to, to join a startup without having to move to major metropolitan area.

Like that field has been leveled to a degree. Like for me, joining the team at one screen, I live in rural New Jersey. I was never going to move to a big city. I want to stay close to my son. And you know, that that opportunity never existed before for me, uh, until now, how have you seen that? Uh, how have you seen that change?

Well, So first my quality of life has never been better. So that's sort of, it sounds counterintuitive, but you know, this is the first time that I, 1:00 AM not traveling every week. So my typical schedule is, you know, Tuesday to Thursday, New York, Monday, sort of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Toronto, or, you know, there's the odd trip somewhere else I've been doing that literally for, I don't know, a dozen years.

Brutal brutal. Just brutal. Be able to say to me, oh, Neil, do you miss the travel? And I'm like, I don't miss LaGuardia. I can tell you that. But like, you know, I do, I was in New York last week and you know, I do miss New York. I miss the energy. I miss the pace, the pace and the change in the settings of the cities and places that you go, but I don't miss the travel.

So for me, I would say it's the first time I'm not traveling. It's also the first time, probably in a, in a dozen years as well, then I'm not running two businesses. That's big. Yeah. So Kelly, the business today, which we'll obviously talk a little bit about, you know, it was incubated inside a freckle, which was incubated inside the juice, you know?

So like there's this Ukrainian doll. Scenario that there's really been kind of no break. It's been, you know, handoff to handoff, to handoff three startups in a row. And even before that there was another startup. Right. So like, and that doesn't even include, you know, the captivate stuff like before. So like, you know, I've been in this game for this racket for a long time.

I will say, you know, as it relates to kind of. Travel. I mean, I think a story about, about COVID is one. I'm not convinced that it's going to go, it's ever going to go back. And I always use the analogy is like travel was never the same after nine 11. I don't think business is going to be the same after COVID.

Um, you know, there are challenges though. I find, um, with the business and it's not. Um, you know, I think what I've been pleasantly surprised about is that, you know, if you've got emotionally intelligent, responsible people working for you, they're going to do the work. So like this notion that you gotta be sitting in a desk is antiquated.

And the companies that don't adjust to that are gonna, they're not gonna, they're not going to the way that buffer levels, like you don't have time to babysit these people. I think the challenge though is to. How do you drive culture in a remote environment? And secondly, how do you drive innovation? So this is the part that nobody ever wants to talk about, which is, well, culture is, you know, there is the human interaction.

And so how do you develop culture when everybody is working remotely and on a video call, um, culture is the glue for, um, for your organization. It's, it's also what creates. Loyalty, um, emotional attachment and I think nobody ever talks about this. I actually think the remote culture will actually lead to a mobile.

Two more turnover because there's not enough emotional connection to the companies that you're working. It's more transactional. I get onto a zoom, I do this function and then I log off of my computer and I do it again tomorrow. So not only can you work for anybody anywhere, but you also don't have the emotional tie to that company because you don't have the friendships.

With the relationships with those same people. So for somebody who's running a company, that's a challenge. How do you maintain culture or build culture in a remote environment? Nobody ever talks about that in like, you know, the media, they all talk about, you know, getting people back to work and they don't talk about the culture.

The second one is innovation. And I actually think that COVID is going to have a dramatic impact on innovation because. Innovation often happens in a collaborative setting. You know, it's not the mistake that people. Often have, is that, you know, innovation is this light bulb moment. That's ridiculous. It's not, it's sort of this collision of conscious of ideas, some conscious sub sub, some subconscious that sort of bang against each other.

And it also happens with, you know, you know, similar types of conversations with people that you actually have. So it's the conversation you have with a client and a colleague at the water cooler over lunch with something that you've read. That's what kind of creates innovation and. I find it. I don't know if you guys find the same thing is that a remote environment puts, especially in small companies, puts an enormous amount of pressure on the founders to be, to drive innovation because, you know, you're, you're sort of responsible for, and I worry about, you know, the ability for companies to scale when innovation is sort of is.

Um, so I think the notion of kind of being able to work wherever you want, whenever you want is, is, is a positive. But I think it's missed, it's misleading to suggest that, you know, the, the remote work environment is all positive. There's some challenges to it as well. For sure. Yeah. Like we added, um, Not that the world ever needs more meetings, but we added an office hours before the day actually starts.

So our standup starts at nine o'clock and we added office hours from eight to nine. And it's, it's, it's just that it's to try and make up for that water cooler time. You know, when you're getting your coffee run into somebody and you know, they also getting their coffee and, oh my gosh. Did you see that thing on the TV last night or whatever?

Did you watch the game? Talk, maybe about a project. Get some of that collaboration. It's not the be all end all, but, but we saw that as something like, Hey, we're missing that time. And that time is really important for just people getting to know each other. And what'd you do last night with your family?

What'd you do this weekend? It building that time into the, into the calendar so that they can have this conversations. We have a similar thing and we do a, you know, a quarterly. Survey with all the employees and it always comes up as something, you know, like a lot of like a lot of these servers. We do.

And I'm big on this notion of like start, stop and keep, and I'm sure you do it yourself, which is what do you need to start doing? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to keep doing? Um, and that's always part of the survey and it's just very, these quick hits to give you a proxy or directionally, like what's working, what's not working.

It always is like, Are th the, the woman that runs HR for, she runs out kind of a coffee on a coffee break on like Thursdays it's generally well attended. And it's always on the list of things to keep doing, keep doing this kind of coffee, always. So I, I agree is that you have to, culture is just not going to happen.

Naturally. You've got to figure out ways to do it. And it was weird, you know, for me traveling last week, I went to Florida and then I went to New York. Um, I was meeting people that have worked for me for over a year, for the first time. Wow. So, you know, as much as it was kind of a work offsite, it was as much of a, Hey, like let's get to let's, let's actually get to know each other.

So it was more social than it was kind of work driven. So anyway, this is the world that we live in. So, you know, flexibility is key for sure. And speaking of flexibility and the changing world that we live in, let's talk about what, what you do with Achilles. And, uh, the, the topic on everyone's mind and out of home, which is data, specifically, location data.

You come from the location data world, right? That was what you did before, before, prior to Keely, you were, you, you had a location data company. Yeah. So we could spend a lot of time on location. I definitely have some unpopular opinions on location. Uh, this is a safe space to share them, so it's okay. I'm pretty direct, you know, so I don't mind kind of, you know, throwing a few grenades out there.

So it's interesting. Like when the, the business that I had before Franco was a company called. And it was, um, a mobile DSP, uh, so mobile programmatic buying platform, which might seem kind of routine now, but it wasn't, we were kind of one of very few of these individual platforms. We built it up from scratch and sold it, but ironically, um, When you're buying media in a mobile environment, most of the time, the number one targeting parameter that people are using is location.

Why? Because people have a mobile device on them. So, you know, why would you be targeting a handset, you know, at that time, because you want it to target people who were seen in a McDonald's the dirty secret about mobile buying. Is that the location call it actually manifests out of your device is usually an actual.

Hm. So the entire state, usually if we put a percentage to that 90 plus percent of that's a lot, that is usually so not all of it is outright fraud, but a lot of it is so naturally just think of it. The math here, if you don't pass a location, calling some of this has changed now. So in fairness, some of this has changed.

If you didn't pass a location, call the value of your inventory was less. So you would have you'd see applications in during those times hard coding locations where no matter where the phone went, it would always fire the same location and the location would be, you know, these very, you know, big metropolitan areas.

So they would try to attract dollars. Um, the other thing too, is that when you're pinging location, it has a dramatic impact on how you build the application. It actually draws power from the device. And consumers don't like applications that draw power. Sure. Right. It's less, again, less of a problem now because the technology has improved, but then it was problem.

So, and this is we're talking like, you know, kind of first and first generation iPhones. Right. So, um, blackberries were still around. So I've got some funny stories about blackberries, like. Audio is trying to run video streaming on blackberries, which was another business that we had. So that was an interesting one, but, you know, as it related to that's how I kinda got into mobile was through that business.

But, you know, as it related to location, it was the gap in the market was simplistically that, um, everybody was using a location called to target people and I knew it was inaccurate and we were trying to figure out how we can make it more active. Um, and there was a company at the time, a company called factual, which is very popular.

And, um, you know, we ended up having a conversation with them and I said, look, you know, the point of interest that you're actually targeting is fine, but the location call that comes out of the application is usually wrong. So like, You know how effect, like, how do we make this more effective? And in short, there really wasn't a solution.

And everybody kind of said, well, this is the way the industry works. You so deal with it. That doesn't work with my personality. I'm like, ah, well, that doesn't make any sense. So I'm not doing that. So what we ended up doing. We ended up creating a beacon network and we did it initially as a, you know, as a side project.

Um, we, again, not to bore you with all the, all the nuances, but, uh, beacon would allow you to actually do fine-grain location in a, in a physical spot. It would also allow you to do fine grain location in a mall, on a floor, on a shelf, right. So you can get really, really micro, so you could deploy actual hardware to.

Yeah. I'll say that. Yeah. So, so wait, it gets worse. So we ended up applying for this mobile futures contest that was run by mandolins, which is this sort of international contest and we want it right. So we want it. Wow. It was one of these ones, which was, again, freckle was very, very small. Um, but our whole philosophy was, well, we're going to supplement the inaccurate location data.

That's derived out of the. With a D with a more precise location call that is coming specifically from a beacon. And if we could actually build this up, the intention was is that we were going to build it into the mobile DSP that we had to actually offer kind of this premium, hyper location as an act, as a targeting call.

Um, that was sort of, that was the philosophy. Um, so, you know, as time went on, you know, we moved away from. We did some interesting stuff. Like we did a, we did a deal with Cisco where Cisco had the router had had literally the, had the technology. Major department store. Um, they had a late and beacon sitting in that hardware they still do, or the actual network within the store.

So we used existing hardware to, yeah. So for, uh, for us, it was, if you want to beacon, you had to like literally physically deploy a beacon. And so when we won that Mondelez contest, the, the initial client that we worked with was seven 11. So we had to go and deploy beacons and all seven 11 stores, literally hand bombing beacons into store throttle.

So. No, that was like, okay, this is tricky to scale. And then you had to obviously have software inside of applications searching or listening for that beacon also. So we made a decision to kind of focus on one side of the equation and not the other meaning that we want it to not be in the hardware side.

So we partnered with Cisco who had the hardware. We install, we instead focused on the software. And what did we have? We had a mobile SDK collecting that was initially looking for beacon calls. And then we reconfigured that to actually also to just basically look for location calls and then there you have it.

So there's an iteration on, you know, so when people say. You don't understand location? My response is, ah, I understand location, trust me. Like when you were hand bombing, physical beacons onto, you know, onto shelves and stores and, you know, building SDKs and putting them into applications and then. We know location.

So, um, yeah, I mean, we know location, but location, as you all know, is under enormous amount of pressure. Um, you know, some of it rightly so some of it not so much, uh, but the location market's dramatically changed. And so, you know, with freckle, we ended up selling that business into place IQ one, primarily because we wanted to actually get onto the Kelly side of the business, but we also felt, or more specifically, I also felt like.

I think location's going to zero. So that's why do you think that? Well, so, you know, uh, Apple's ATT tracking says 90 plus percent of consumers don't want to be tracked. Right? Well, the whole location market is basically based on this notion of actually quietly or silently collecting location signals, unbeknownst to the consumers.

So it's a bait and switch, you know, you're basically arbitraging human data without the person. Yeah. Ask any consumer let's play this game. Sure. So first of all, would you allow me to track you persistently 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which would on average, give me approximately 500 location pings, you know, kind of per day.

Oh gosh, I'm going to say it that way. Absolutely. That's true. Most people say no. And for those that say maybe, and I said, okay, well, what about, should you be compensated? You know, if you, if you felt you should be compensated for, what do you think the fair value of that 24 7 kind of pervasive location tracking is worth to you?

What do you think it's worth like sure. Yeah. Right, right. If it's going to happen anyway, I mean, yeah. Make me an offer, make me an offer and you know, and then I can, I can decide what it would be worth. So would you be willing to actually get less than one half of one penny from one half less than one half?

No. No, I don't think so.

So, so the going rate for location data is a penny per month. 95% of consumers don't want it. You actually have to have fit. You have basically Armageddon on the iOS side from apple and Android. You have consumer awareness inflecting, and you have privacy legislation running up the back door. Good luck with the, a put it like that.

We locked, man. And everybody's like, so the typical argument and location is, it used to be the case. It was like, oh, you know, our graph is primarily Android, so we don't care what happens with apple. Okay. Now Android is getting rid of the identifier as well. Oh, that's a bit of a problem. Well, now it's about, well, we work on a model anyways, so that, so the amount of location does it doesn't really matter.

Um, no cell, no first tier publisher in the world. Well, Carrie a location-based SDK in the future. Forget it. Why? Because they don't want to be featured on the front page of the wall street journal, collecting data on consumers as T-Mobile how that went for them. Not so hot. Secondly, um, yeah, that was like, I was surprised when that came out.

Like that was just recently, right? Yeah. Or, you know, you have, you know, you have like, you know, wall street journal, like doing an expos, a. You know, companies like X mode and others about, you know, collecting location data on the military. It's like, it's, it's, it's, you know, I don't think a lot of the location stuff that's happening is nearly as nefarious as people make it out to be like, I don't, but it, unfortunately it takes the brunt of a lot of this low, a lot of the kind of paranoia around surveillance, a lot of it.

So, you know, I think there's twos too many external pressures on location data, whether. Consumer awareness, the unit economics, the pressure from OSTP privacy legislation, tier one, publishers, not wanting the cup to carry it. So the question becomes like, first of all, you can't get precise location. And if you can get precise location, can you get an identifier?

And if you can't get an identifier and, or a precise location, you know, how do you operate? So, um, it's not going to go away automatically, overnight. Um, that was part of the reason why we moved away from location data was because I actually felt location was going to be under pressure, potentially going to zero.

And I actually actually felt like location, you know, as a proxy for attribution and measurement was wrong in that the market would move more specifically to, you know, using credit card and purchase based data as a, as a sort of a true proxy for attribution. And so prior to us selling the freckle business, Um, I was telling everybody internally, we're getting out of location.

And that was like, what, what do you mean? We're a location coming in. Like we're getting out of the location before location gets out to us. Um, and we were, we were quietly, you know, moving towards. Building a model specifically on purchase based attribution, which is a much better truth set than location.

As a proxy, you could tell it, the person went to the gap, but without a transaction record, you don't know if they bought anything. So, and that's what every advertiser cares about is yeah. Cool. Brand lift study, or, you know, my website traffic went up, that's fine. Did people buy more of my stuff? Exactly.

And that's ultimately what it comes down to and that's why. You know, again, it's why the performance market and advertising, you know, is, you know, is rolling, is doing so well. It's like, you know, people want a return on the investment and the traditional sort of, it feels good. I think it's working, but I can't prove it.

Uh, that's that's a tough pill to swallow. Yeah. And that's such a strong attribution conversation to have, as we see some of those things going away and Facebook and Google analytics, and we don't have as clear an attribution story as maybe we were once used to. And it makes sense. What's that? It's going to get worse.

So, you know, and that's where we see such a great opportunity for out of home because it's, it's based on movement. It's based on people, how they move through the world, going to places it's real-world behavior. But what you're doing at Akili kind of closes that loop with some of the things that makes sense now, understanding your story and how you got to where you are today with.

Uh, how, how does Keeley, how brands do understand that they have story? How does Keeley help, uh, you know, maybe create a fair trade data, privacy conversation for brands to consider in, in, in their, in their brand identity? Yeah. So. Um, you know, like all these businesses, they're all sort of derivatives of, you know, the previous, the business that was before then.

And it's usually something happens in the business. So I'm an inherent, I'm an entrepreneur, which means I'm inherently neurotic and paranoid. So. I'm paranoid, always about being unseated, right? So who's, who's, who's, who's working on something that we're not paying attention to. And my philosophy has always been better to unseat yourself than let them do it.

That's my that's always been on my kids better to pick and move. Uh, Versus, you know, kind of waiting around and then letting some upstart come and get you. And so I often say, it's like, look, we do what's next. When the next becomes the, now we move on to the next, that's what we did. That's kind of, that's sort of the motto.

Um, and if you're always on your toes and you're always moving, um, then you're always moving with the market as opposed to the market moving without you. Um, you know, interestingly, you know, one of the conversations I had with a publisher, um, when they were pricing out location data was. You know, they were talking about their data and they were talking about the price of their data.

And I was increasingly getting annoyed with them. And I'm like, hang on a second. When you say your data, what do you actually mean? Because I actually use your product and I don't remember actually giving you the authority to, to resell me. And I. I don't, I don't recall ever given you authority to have control over my data and you know, that was an uncomfortable conversation.

They're like, ultimately at the end of the day, like, look, this is the way it worked in y'all so get over it. And I'm like, oh yeah, well, we'll see. So, you know, for us, when we originally built Kelly, we built. Initially as an opportunity for us to kind of offset exposure, location data that we were getting through publishers, and we wanted to have an organic source.

Secondly, we wanted a source that had a clear line of communication with the. Um, as opposed to one that was sort of a black box of arbitrage. Um, and we felt that in addition to that, you know, this opportunity to, you know, do, you know, allow consumers to answer questions and be compensated for data was, you know, vending them into the value chain.

That was the right idea at the time. But I think what became very clear, very early on when. Um, one, there wasn't enough scale and building that, you know, as a standalone application, and more specifically, as we just talked about the unit economics, the location data, didn't make it worthwhile for us to run a business.

What was more interesting was all the information that you weren't able to get in the market. So things like credit card, data, et cetera, where, you know, if you have a direct relationship with the consumer, you have access to data. You know, people that don't have a direct relationship don't have access to.

And so, you know, we, it became clear that maybe this started as a way for us to, you know, offset exposure to location data, but it became very clear that yes, this was solving a problem potentially for freckle, but it was going to solve a problem for everybody. And when you zoomed out of this notion of like trying to just collect location data, but actually collect.

All different types of data from all, you know, to satisfy all of these different needs, but then also doing it with, you know, explicit consumer opt-in. We felt that it was first party data intersecting with privacy and compliance and in, and around that time was when GDPR was first coming out in Europe and was like, look, this is a tsunami that most people in the U S are going to be ignorant to too, because they think, oh, it's, that's a European law.

It has no impact on us. And it was very clear to me. It was like what the whole data market is going, is going to go upside down here. The whole data market is going to get spilled out and it's going to all move to a consented market. So, you know, the economics of it are, it's a $250 billion a year market in the us.

It's a $400 billion market internationally. There's a database, it's the data piece. Wow. None of which is consented. None of which, you know, none of what, you know, you get a piece of none of which you have visibility on. You know, and as time has gone on, I think what doesn't make any sense to me. And I think this is, this is the part that always sort of speaks to me as, you know, as an entrepreneur is, I was like, if it doesn't make sense, I start kind of scratching at it.

And then when people sort of just fluff it off and say, oh, well, that's the way things are. I'm like, no, that's not the way things are. So wait a minute, you know, if we're having this conversation, Tim, like, so we would agree that you have a data profile, right. It's floating around in the market. We all agree with.

Okay, well, there's 300 million people in the United States, you know, 270 million of which are over the age of 16. So there's 270 million profiles of people over the age of 16 floating around, but yet not one of them can get access to that data profile. One of them can see what data is being collected.

Not one of them can opt out. Not one of them can be compensated. That's crazy talking about that makes no sense. And don't, don't buy this nonsense of like, oh, we need the data to run the product. That's garbage, garbage. They're choosing the big tech is choosing not to include the consumer on purpose. They don't want it to cut into their margin and they don't want to expose to the consumer how much data is actually being collected on them.

So, you know, the park. Annoys me about the data market is this is a $400 billion market. That's probably should be worth a trillion dollars if you included the consumer, but yet there's no way for a consumer to get access to their data. I'm like, okay. So the philosophy of Kili is quite simple. We aspire to be the front door for consumers to access.

And as a by-product of providing them access to the data that is already out there in the market, we provide the optionality to allow them to do a variety of things. One of which is to be compensated for the data. The second of which is to protect the data. The third of which is to edit the data, the fourth of which is to add data and the opportunities become kind of endless after that.

So, you know, I think as I feel this one in my bones, in that it's like, If you're trying to tell me that five years from now that consumers are still going to be out in the cold, that data is going to continue to be transacted and sold without their inclusion. There's just no way. There's absolutely no way that's going to happen.

There's too much political pressure. You know, you've got apple using privacy as a way to differentiate themselves in the market. So our whole philosophy is like, look, you don't have any problems with data. If you didn't disintermediate the consumer in the first. The reason to consume the reason that you have CCPA, CPRA, GDPR, you know, antitrust changes to apple, all of these issues, fraud, fidelity.

These are all due to you. Excluding the consumer. If you didn't exclude the consumer in the first place, like didn't turn them into what I call like a human CDO. Um, you wouldn't have all these issues regarding fraud, fidelity consent, transparent. But we, as an industry decided to do that, we decided to kind of create a legitimate silk road and arbitrage, consumer data to power all of our businesses.

And historically there's been nothing wrong with that, but the law has now changed. And so I foresee. The largest pivot happening in the data market that it's ever seen. It's going to move from a complete opaque black market to one that has consumer inclusion. It's all going to happen within 24 months.

And the companies that actually don't have a line of consent directly with the consumer are going to zero. Right in that date down July 27th. I don't know when you're hearing this July 27th, 2021. I appreciate that the silk road reference, we actually had a Mrs. Old brick on the podcast because they did a big billboard in times square on behalf of.

Um, so I really appreciate that. And for folks that don't know the story of Ross Ulbricht and silk road, he found himself at the convergence of some very tricky places that the government was not a fan of you and I having control over. Right. We see it, we see it happening with crypto, right. Silk road was very early on in the crypto and kind of the war on drugs in these places where, uh, you know, Free market for people to transact as they felt that they should, uh, or could as adults, um, responsibility on the internet.

So I appreciated the silk road reference. I appreciate the approach that you're taking this Kelly. I'm a user of the product. I love it. And you, you get compensated for these things. The surveys are fun and easy, and you can take a one minute survey and earn credit. And then there's lots of ways to exchange that credit for different practical uses, right gift cards and different things.

So it was a good segue. So we recently introduced crypto as a redemption option, just redeemed some of the theory on the other day. Yeah. So. You know, I think where my philosophy on it has changed is that when we originally started, it was, you know, we were trying to include the consumer in the compensation, um, in the compensation cycle.

I actually think the bigger opportunity is providing access to the data. So, you know, we recently, you know, uh, pulled 500 million Facebook profiles that were leaked into the killing environment to provide to consumers, to see if they've been hacked to take that data, put it under a killer profile if they choose to, but there's no obligation to do that.

So like, We're trying to build more transparency around this, you know, this data ecosystem, which, you know, again, like for the 320 million people in the U S in April, we unveiled profiles on them. So you could come to Kelly, put an identifier, we'll show you the data that we can find online on you. Then we unveiled, you know, the Facebook lead data.

There's 500 million profiles there. You put, if you were in both of these buckets, you can put them together. You now have a holistic profile. It's first party, it's consented, it's high fidelity, it's transparent. Um, and then if you're, if you decide to sell it, which you don't need to, um, then you're compensated for it and you get a record of a transaction.

And then with that, you know, the redemption model is just, of course you can pay it in cash or you can get paid in gift cards, or you can give it away to charity. But, you know, we. W w we implemented, uh, you know, crypto redemption, you know, primarily through Coinbase, um, because, um, we think that that's the future.

And, you know, what's interesting is most people don't know this, but when we originally built Kildee Kili two years ago, um, we built it on the blockchain. So most people don't know that, but everybody's all kind of hot and sweaty talking about the block. Two to three years ago, we built a product that was encrypting data on the device, and then writing a, mute, an immutable transaction onto the blockchain.

We did that three years ago. Right. So, um, you know, come to the party. Yeah. So like, we, we, we feel that we feel that those two, that, that the data world and the crypto world, or more specifically the data world in the blockchain world are on a collision course for sure. Um, we recently did a kind of a webinar on this and you know, what I find interesting about the blockchain is that it's an immutable record.

Um, it's driven by the individual consumers. It's about kind of having control a lot of people in that community, um, are very like-minded as it relates to the blockchain in the same way that people are like minded around kind of whether or not they should have control of data. Um, all the regulation that's kind of going on in the world today.

To me, if the blockchain evolves the way I think it's going to evolve becomes redundant. You don't need CCPA. If identity is stored on the chain, right? Why? Because it's an immutable record and it's it's self-governing and the thing about the blockchain is nobody wants the government involved anyway. So, um, that's another thing that nobody else really wants to talk about.

I think what's been interesting about data is. Around the world. All these, all these countries are actually changing the privacy policies to, for the right reasons to include the consumer. But what's happening now is private enterprise is actually picking up the Baton and running with it. And I think that that's where the innovation is going to come.

Is that it's, you can't regulate your way to compliance. Um, it's not going to happen that way. Um, you've got to regulate the best way to kind of get to a better mouse trap is to have a better entrepreneur and have a better business. So what's happening is I think. Um, smart companies and smart people are kind of picking up, um, the opportunity as it relates to privacy and starting to kind of build there.

And I think if you asked me where it's going, um, my belief is identity is definitely going on the chain. Um, for sure. Uh, the question is when and how, and, but, you know, we have some ideas around that for sure. And we come out of that background. So we've always kind of kept our toes in the water. And, um, but we sort of foresee that happening is that.

We think that that's a really interesting concept is, you know, can you actually give consumers back control of their data, but then, you know, have them have control of it, you know, on, on, on chain that gets, that gets really interesting. Um, so it's those kinds of new protocols and sort of the changing in the market.

There's no way these legacy data companies are going to be the ones that do that. It's going to be the young upstarts that, you know, kind of break the ceiling. Build data and build identity, you know, on a different protocol. And that's what new protocols do is they eliminate the monopolies. So. That's my, I could ramble on that.

I think it's great. We're probably going to have to do a follow up for somebody who wants to take back control of their data for somebody who wants to learn more about Kelly, where do they go? There's an app, there's a browser plugin. Point them in the right direction and give them that last. Yeah, go to kelly.io, for sure.

That's the best place to start, you know, from there you can download the application, uh, or you can go to the website as well@kelly.io. Um, we're on all the social channels, you know, sort of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera. Um, so, you know, I think if, if you're a consumer and you're interested in the direction of where, um, consumer data is going, um, following along with our progress is probably a good idea.

And then. Um, if you're just interested in, in kind of getting a better handle on, you know, the world of data, um, we're trying to do, uh, we're trying to highlight, you know, for everybody that's following us to the trends in the marketplace. So, um, That's the best place to follow up with us important. I strongly strongly encourage that you do that.

Kelly's doing it better than anybody. I don't, I don't even know if there's anybody else taking the same approach. Let me use her, the product. I love the product. I've referred other people to the product. They all love it. So Neil has been a real pleasure having you. Thanks so much for being here. I've been dying to get on this podcast.

Die in the havea. Thank you for having me. I got to get one of those hats too. I got to absolutely. We'll get you swagged up. We'll get you swagged up. I'll get your address after. If you found this helpful, please share it with somebody else who could benefit as always make sure to smash that subscribe button down below in the corner and we'll see you.

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