MyMindShare: Putting a value on attention

Mark Gibbs' Web site tips, plus network applications news headlines

Detailed insight into what we pay attention to, and our demographics combined with our response, is the stuff that advertisers' dreams are made of. A new Web business called MyMindShare plans to capitalize upon this need. Advertisers who want the attention of MyMindShare’s population of users bid for their attention, and compensate them for doing so.

Currently MyMindShare asks for 20 seconds of your time. After registering you click on an offer and are taken to a page that displays whatever it is that the advertiser wants to put in front of you. After 20 seconds you can rate or vote and optionally comment on what you’ve seen, and the advertiser's bid gets added to your account which will eventually be redeemable via PayPal.

So, for example, the XYZ Company might bid 30 cents per 20 second view to offer you a pitch on their product along with a discount coupon. If the product is something you’re interested in you’ll probably give it a positive rating, accept the discount coupon, and collect your 30-cent payment.

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Detailed insight into what we pay attention to, and our demographics combined with our response, is the stuff that advertisers' dreams are made of. A new Web business called MyMindShare plans to capitalize upon this need. Advertisers who want the attention of MyMindShare’s population of users bid for their attention, and compensate them for doing so.

Currently MyMindShare asks for 20 seconds of your time. After registering you click on an offer and are taken to a page that displays whatever it is that the advertiser wants to put in front of you. After 20 seconds you can rate or vote and optionally comment on what you’ve seen, and the advertiser's bid gets added to your account which will eventually be redeemable via PayPal.

So, for example, the XYZ Company might bid 30 cents per 20 second view to offer you a pitch on their product along with a discount coupon. If the product is something you’re interested in you’ll probably give it a positive rating, accept the discount coupon, and collect your 30-cent payment.

That’s the core of what’s going on. The idea is simple and potentially useful not only to the consumer – you get paid for your time – but also to the advertisers and marketing companies as feedback and response should be of a very high quality.

Another wrinkle to MyMindShare is the use of “cliques” - common profile groups that you have to ask to join that increase the value of your mindshare to advertisers by qualifying your demographics. This is a clever way to collect the information needed without directly asking for it.

As a registered user you can convert your earnings into requests of others mindshare – in other words, you can become an advertiser. If you need more funds you can add them via PayPal.

The specification of a campaign includes the bid text; the cost per click you want to offer; the target URL or question you want to ask; the campaign’s expiration date; the cap spend on the campaign; the origin of the users (country and metro area); the user’s gender and age range; and their “reputation” (quantified by their clique memberships).

It would seem that the typical MyMindShare user would be a very different beast compared to the average member of the consumer market given that the entire system involves complexities that would put many regular consumers off. That said, when you consider the acquisition cost of a consumer for premium goods and services ($50 each and often much more) MyMindShare users could be an excellent test audience for promoting new products so that advertisers could hone their pitches.

MyMindShare’s business model works as follows: “When you accept a bid at MyMindshare, the advertiser is charged a 10% admin fee. Also, when you go to cash out your mindshare revenue, you will be charged a 10% admin fee.” You can see that the volume of user interaction will be everything if they are to make money.

If MyMindShare can build a big enough user population particularly in professional markets they could become a very powerful marketing mechanism. There are also all sorts of derivative services and collaborative ventures I could imagine them developing to increase their reach and given that the advertisers’ content can be anything from a flat-out ad to professionally useful information to entertainment (all of which, in turn, can drive their own advertising at a potentially high value given the known user demographics).

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.