Cash for personal data does not add up, says Ipsos boss

Companies should not offer to pay people for personal data because the rich will simply opt out, says the head of one of the largest market research companies.

The idea that Facebook, Google and others should pay internet users for information does not stand up because the sums involved would not attract wealthy consumers, Didier Truchot, president and co-founder of Ipsos, told the Financial Times.

The wealthy, who are generally the most valuable to marketers, would choose privacy over money. “People who have some money” would not sign up, he said. “Just the poor will do it.”

A system of micropayments has been backed by some commentators, who argue that people see little benefit in surrendering their data to technology companies.

Jaron Lanier, an early pioneer in virtual reality and a critic of the business models of some Silicon Valley stalwarts, has said payment for personal data would create a “real information economy”. This, he added, could bolster a middle class that is losing jobs to robots and computers.

The rise of online tracking has led some consumers to change their behaviour. Nearly half of US consumers say they use adblocking tools that also help to protect online privacy, according to a survey by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

“There will be many more regulations than now. It’s a bit like the banking industry,” Mr Truchot said. “In the future, you will need more explicit consent” from consumers to use their data.

That regulation was likely to take time. “It took years for the US government to limit the use of the telephone for marketing,” said Mr Truchot, who helped launch Ipsos 40 years ago.

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The company’s survey-based research would remain relevant even as sources of so-called big data proliferated. “It’s like saying that the intelligence service will disappear because the [National Security Agency] is becoming more efficient,” Mr Truchot said, referring to scepticism about surveys. “Our ambition is not to be the CIA or the NSA but to be the company which can be on top of that.”

Ipsos owns Ipsos Mori, which, along with rivals such YouGov and ComRes, was criticised for the accuracy of its polls in the run up to the UK general election in May.

The UK company overestimated the opposition Labour vote by nearly 4 per cent, while underestimating the Conservative vote by nearly 2 per cent. It attributed the variation to 3m “lazy Labour” supporters, many of them young working-class voters who failed to turn out on polling day.

Ben Page, Ipsos Mori’s chief executive, said: “We were the most accurate — or if you prefer, the least inaccurate — pollsters. The margin of error on 1,000 respondents is 3 per cent and we sometimes forget that.”

Mr Page said there had not been a drop of commercial clients since the election. “May was fantastic,” he said. “1992 was a bigger problem for the polls than 2015, and the industry grew very happily [afterwards].”

Commercial clients were more realistic about the limitations of surveys that used small samples and had few questions. “The clients are spending millions on their research, not buying it for practically nothing like the media, and their expectations are more rational,” he said.

Political polling represents less than 1 per cent of Ipsos Mori’s revenues.