UBDI, the revolutionary data monetisation platform built on digi.me, officially launched its groundbreaking new app at personal data and privacy conference MyData in Helsinki.
The US-based consumer and business app, which allows consumers to obtain a universal basic data income, estimates users can generate $1,000 or more each year selling anonymised insights gleaned from their data to researchers.
UBDI has recently announced $825K in pre-seed funding and also declared it was coming out of beta earlier last week during a showcase at Finovate, the United States’ largest fintech conference. The company, the first in-market model built on digi.me, has big plans to disrupt the $76 billion market research and insights industry.
“Most technology companies today are data collection centres, selling personal data to advertisers, hedge funds, market researchers, governments, and others — all without our knowledge or ability to do anything about it,” said Dana Budzyn, co-founder and CEO of UBDI. “Our model empowers users to decide where their data goes and be compensated for its use — all while protecting and respecting their privacy.”
“Companies know that data is valuable, and it’s long past time that consumers see some of that value in their own pocketbooks,” Budzyn continued. “That is the very heart of our model and that is what our platform allows consumers to do.”
UBDI enables individuals to earn an income from the value their data creates. Because a consumer’s anonymised data prequalifies them for certain research studies, researchers are able to provide better financial incentives than traditional studies by reducing waste and generating higher quality results. Individual studies pay between $5 and $250, and UBDI believes that consumers can earn $1,000 or more annually with minimal set-up time linking accounts, and just a few hours over the course of the year approving studies and answering a few follow-on questions.
Earlier this year, UBDI announced a strategic partnership with digi.me, which is required to use UBDI. Digi.me is integrated with thousands of sources of data, and once an individual connects their accounts, millions of accurate, verified data points stream in to their data vault for use in research studies. UBDI’s PrivateMatch technology ensures researchers find exactly the population of participants they are looking for without UBDI or the brand knowing who they are.
“I’ve been working to solve the problem of how people can ethically and responsibly capitalise on the economic value of their data for over a decade,” said Shane Green, UBDI co-founder and chair and CEO (US) of digi.me. “Silicon Valley wants us to think our data isn’t that valuable while selling Wall Street on its value behind our backs and making billions of dollars in the process. UBDI has cracked the code on how to deliver enough value to each of us by starting in research, where brands pay handsomely for insights from small populations.”
The UBDI consumer app allows individuals to participate in financial, social, entertainment, fitness, and health research studies while protecting their privacy and identity. Through its online research portal, businesses, government, universities and organisations can create studies and analyse aggregated, anonymised results that deliver far more insights than current approaches.
“UBDI allows individuals to be matched with studies at a very granular level while technically and legally preserving the user’s anonymity,” says Mark Kilaghbian, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at UBDI. “The reduction in friction in finding the right people to study, combined with the fact that our data can answer more than 70 per cent of questions traditionally asked in surveys, changes the game entirely.”
Individuals can join the UBDI community — and companies and researchers can learn more — at ubdi.com