Several years ago I worked for a company that was in the market of marketing these kinds of data. Broadly speaking they had three types of data (which happened

Several years ago I worked for a company that was in the market of marketing these kinds of data. Broadly speaking they had three types of data (which happened to correlate chronologically as they looked around for ways to generate revenue). I recognise that the first two aren't really what this article is about. First, data contributed directly by users (through personality quizzes, typically) Second, performing lookalikes based on web accesses to sites they were able to track (beacons were installed on a surprising number of large, popular sites). Third, linking these data with some private credit bureaus' records - the link was in two directions. It meant they could do very targeted advertising - putting car adverts in the browser of someone who'd written off their car (which could be determined by them having just filed a insurance claim). The other direction was fascinating - subjecting credit seekers to quizzes in order to contribute to the determination (still made by the credit offerer, natch) of whether the would-be customer was a good or bad risk. Very early on there had been talk of being a portal for users to opt in or out of being tracked and analysed in these ways, offering this as a free service to users, while on the flip-side offering people actual money for opting in. This area was explored in some detail, including building a web service to demonstrate to people how much they were worth to advertisers based on (you guessed it, a quiz) whether they were in the market for a car/house/insurance, where they holidays, etc.