This is pretty interesting.  I don’t really have a take on it, but it’s worth sharing.

The Federal Trade Commission has launched www.admongo.com.    Admongo is an adventure game, where kids have to travel around identifying advertisements, answering questions, collecting points, etc.   The purpose is to make kids more aware of marketers and their intentions.   Or as the site puts it…

Welcome to Admongo where advertising is all around you.
Online. Outside. On television. Who makes ads?
How do they work? What do they want you to do?
Here, you will explore, discover, and learn.
Can you make it to the top?

It’s an odd use of our tax dollars, but hard to argue with anything that protects children.   However it does raise the question…what are we protecting kids from?  From being too valuable too marketers?    Marketers are spending billions on this incredibly valuable audience.   If that money went into college funds, wouldn’t the game be different?

How about a game where you increase your consumer value and rack up the money as you see ads, share buying preferences, provide personal info, invite friends,  write blogs, build social networking profiles, and provide product feedback?    Let kids (and adults too) see what makes them valuable as consumers so that they can maximize the value as they choose.   Sounds more fun.    Of course it only works if the money flows to the consumers.   But think about it…maybe kids’ll think twice before spending $50 to wear and Abercrombie & Fitch logo on their chest.   They’ll still wear the shirt….if A&F pays them $5 to do so.  What parent can’t see the logic in that?

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I’m not the only one noticing how much value we are all generating for the companies that sell out time, attention and personal information.

Vitrue has built a “Social Page Evaluator”  to measure how much money your Facebook page is worth.   How much your “brand” is worth on Facebook.    The tool looks at page traffic, the effectiveness of your social media efforts, and a few other points.    Certainly not hard science, but it’s another step in understanding just how valuable we are.    And understanding how much money is being exchanged buying and selling us.

This tool only looks at Facebook.  Imagine now adding in the money spent on all the ads you see on the web, TV, radios, magazines, billboards….now add in all your personal information that had been collected, bought and sold.    Plug all of that into a calculator and you’ll see that you have a massively valuable asset that you are letting others monetize.

Your value belongs to you.

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau just released industry data for the first quarter of 2010. 

Advertisers spent $5.9 billion buying online “media”.  We know of course they were not buying media…they were buying access to consumer time and attention.

Meanwhile, ComScore reported that advertisers bought a record 1.1 TRILLION  ”display advertising” impressions in Q1…the graphical ads you see around the web.   I love the way ComScore refers to this…”US Internet Users received a record 1.1 trillion display ads“….exactly.  Why didn’t US Internet users receive the record money spent on those display ads?

1.1 trillion ads served up to consumers.   $5.9 billion changing hands.  And that’s just for 3 months.   

The money goes to the companies who amass a large audience of consumers and have the real estate to present ads to those consumers.   On Gomper, we enable consumers to join together into large audiences.  We provide you with the real estate via the Gomper Companion, and we take care of the rest.    How many more trillion ads do we need to see before we realize it’s us the advertisers are paying for?    $5.9 billion…say it with me a few times….

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The outcry of concern over Facebook’s plans for your personal information is fast and furious.   Every day there are more bloggers, more journalists, more consumer advocates, more politicians….all concerned.   Some are scratching their heads over the usage and accessibility of personal information.   Others, like me, are more concerned over the economics of who should receive the value generated by your personal information.

This very cool, and very scary graphic is something you gotta check out.  http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/  (It’s best viewed in Chrome or Firefox). It’s an interactive 5 year progression of the default privacy settings for your Facebook account.     While checking this out, imagine the enormous amount of money that our information will be generating….for Facebook and their business partners.

It’s a personal information land grab.  The gold rush of 2010.  Facebook is planting flags in all of our backyards claiming this land in the name of the King.    I say…power to the people!

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I’ve written about this before but it continues to amaze me so I’ll continue to write about it now and again.   Last year, Yahoo! spent $100 million buying advertisements on competing media companies trying to grow their audience of consumers.  It didn’t work.  Home page and search traffic did not change. 

So now they are at it again.  Yahoo! just announced a $75+ million ad blitz on TV, the web, and outdoor billboards.    So websites that you are loyal to will be suggesting that you leave them to develop loyalty for a competing web site.    I still have trouble wrapping my brain around that.  TV networks that are fighting desperately to keep you in front of the TV will be encouraging you to head to your computer to check out Yahoo!.  “Your favite stuff all in one place”.  Not here on our network or on our network’s website….no, it’s over at Yahoo.

And here’s another thought.  Yahoo has to spend $175 million in advertising to try to collect consumers into big enough audiences to attract hopefully more than $175 million in advertising revenue for Yahoo.   And they spend it with companies who spend similarly trying to grow their own audience of consumers.     Advertising dollars flowing every which way to try to temporarily gain access to you so that more ad dollars can flow.    Everyone’s getting paid except for consumers…the folks who actually control the supply of time and attention.   Should we be surprised when it doesn’t work?

Gomper thinks advertisers who want your attention will have a better chance if the money flows directly to you.

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