Rooting For A Great Sales Lead - Forbes.com

Liz Moyer of Forbes writes about the inverted, unmarketing model being championed by Root/Markets:

[from Rooting For A Great Sales Lead - Forbes.com by Liz Moyer]

Root/Markets is based on the premise that consumers—being ordinary folks—should be able to control the information collected on them every time they log on to the Internet, fill out forms and sign up for stuff. Every click an individual makes on the Internet is recorded and stored by some marketer looking to sell them something or some spyware scammer looking to steal from them.

So Root has developed a software program that allows consumers essentially to spy on themselves, sending every click into a “vault” of information at Root that can be stored, edited and used to the individual’s liking.

Here’s where the market comes in. Individuals using RootVault can make their data available to marketers they want to reach. For example, someone looking for a new apartment could make their personal data available to mortgage lenders and real-estate agents.

Root’s idea is to create bundles of customer leads that would trade like futures contracts on the exchange.

Root takes a fee from both sides of the transaction—the publishers or sellers of ad leads, and the advertisers or buyers. Root also would act the way a stock-exchange specialist would, by stepping in and buying or selling contracts in the event of a market imbalance.

I love the premise — that we, individually, would assert what we are interested in being promoted to us — but the Root/Vault approach, keeping track of where we spend our time on the web or on our desktop, is to me the wrong way to get there.

I favor a published profile, maintained by an independent arbiter, like Root/Vault, that would allow anonymized publishing of promotions to me. This allows me to retain my anonymity, while still getting relevant promotions. If I am interested in mortgages, for example, I won’t think its spam. Some people really are looking for low-cost viagra, after all.