Every day, billions of people give away the raw material of the digital economy for free. Their searches, clicks, locations, messages, purchases, prompts, images, contacts, habits, preferences and behavioural signals are collected, analysed and monetised by some of the world’s most powerful companies. Users may not pay financially – but it is their data that often underpins the business model.
This White Paper estimates how much commercial value is being extracted from people through the Big Data and AI economy. Its central finding is stark: personal data is not a marginal asset. It is a major source of annual and lifetime economic value that is being captured by platforms, advertisers, data brokers, AI companies and digital intermediaries rather than the people who generate it. It also finds which companies are extracting this commercial value and how, today, our understanding of what should be considered Big Data must expand far beyond the confines of Silicon Valley into far more traditional sectors such as banking, health and insurance.
Using the latest methodological techniques, the model finds that in the United States the average person is worth $6,563 in data-derived commercial value each year. In North America as a whole, it is $4,643. In the UK and Europe, it is $1,604. Even in the rest of the world, where monetisation rates are far lower, the annual figure is $265.
