Whose Life Is It, Anyway? Consumers are learning their data is currency and new companies are betting they can help them cash in

paidcontent reporting:
To hear it from the Federal Trade Commission, an online data collector is an awful lot like a Hollywood paparazzo.
Companies that track and collect online consumer data can act like “invisible cyberazzi,” said FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz during a speech at the National Press Club in October. The chairman, while noting that he doesn’t want to “pull a Sean Penn” and get rid of behavorial targeting, said, however, that these companies, hidden in shadow, trail people on the Web, nabbing personal information and snapshots of activity that they then share with marketing firms.
There’s another way in which this exchange of consumer data is like the trafficking of celebrity snaps: It’s a big business. Each year, companies in the U.S. spend more than $2 billion on third-party consumer data, according to Forrester Research. Add in the money spent on credit data, market research and other kinds of derived information, the research firm says, and you’re looking at a multibillion dollar industry. In fact, the volume of digital data created by consumers is growing at such a fast clip that the World Economic Forum and other futurists have called personal data the “new oil.”
Many consumers have begun to find this surreptitious cookie- and beacon-enabled tracking (“discovered” when they see ads and content that match their activities) disconcerting at best. Indeed, in the past few years, companies that rely on Internet tracking, including tech giants such as Google and Facebook, have come under fire for collecting, using and sharing consumer information in ways critics say are not only stealthy, but also erode privacy. (The business is self-regulated, with much-hyped guidelines making slow progress in Congress.) And as mobile technology gains adoption and the demand for location data grows, concerns about under-the-radar data trackers that can follow digital footprints in real time loom even larger...
In response, a growing number of companies, including Personal, Azigo and Experian, now aim to give consumers a degree of control over their data. Through so-called “data lockers” or similar kinds of online destinations—places, in essence, where selected streams of information can be deposited and managed—they offer tools that help consumers decide how much data they want to share, with whom and for what purpose. Describing it as a win-win situation, these companies say that in exchange for sharing data, consumers can receive deals and, in some cases, cash, while marketers can reach consumers on their terms, gaining the insights that will make their offers even more relevant and effective.
“The market is set up for a pretty big shift. People have to understand how [data tracking] works and have some control over it or else it’s going to become way too spooky and invasive,” says Personal CEO Shane Green. “We believe that the more people have that ability to aggregate their data and set permissions on who gets it, the more they’ll be willing to share data with companies, advertisers and marketers who can actually deliver real value for them.”
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/whose-life-it-anyway-137537