So, someone please explain to me how 3rd party cash back apps like Upside function?
I can understand my local gas station giving me 3-10¢ off with their in-house loyalty program, but how does an app like Upside afford to provide me $20/tank cash back?
I assume they’re more like Google or Facebook than say Walmart – inasmuch as they’re not really selling a product or service as much as they are collecting and selling data – but what data?
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What gas station you use and how often you fill your tank, so they have a good estimate of how far you drive per week, quite an important piece of information to some companies, including car retailers.
While average tracking cookies and such don’t know exactly who you are, what you do or exactly what you buy, these companies do.
You are basically selling your own data, but data that is much more valuable to companies than just aggregated data from millions of people.
By telling the company that you’re Jim, a 45 year old Caucasian male car salesman with an ex wife and 2 kids and then telling them that you frequently buy beer and Doritos on Fridays during football season, prefer margarine to butter and will impulse buy beef jerky on days you’re late for work. Add that to the other 15,000 people with similar demographics to Jim and then they can go to an advertiser and say “You should boost beer and Doritos ads on weeknights”.
They can also partner with companies to see if their targeted ads are working. When Beer company X upped their advertising, did more guys like Jim buy it over their usual brand?
This data is incredibly valuable to the right people. Real world data is gold in the world of marketing, so these companies can charge a good premium for packages of consumer info.
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