Audience Commodification

This article reports on a research project aimed at developing a business model by changing the value-creation mechanism. The essence of this change is to persuade customers to perform actions in favour of the service provider. Such actions include responding to advertising clips to unlock value. The business model was generated from the concept of audience commodification and is based on the idea of looking at the users as source of a tradeable asset in business-to-business markets. Here, attention and actions are the assets that users pay to access the proposed value. The research includes two phases of surveys and experimentation. In the first phase, the tendency and acceptance level of users towards watching advertisements to unlock value are measured. In the next phase, a platform prototype is developed to test and understand user actions towards receiving value. The sample includes 52 users of different nationalities who were seeking relationships on an online dating platform. Results revealed that users accept advertising and will perform requested actions if they can perceive the delivered value. Practical implications of this research include insights to help move away from the current “view-based” advertising model toward new models of partnership with users in the value-creation process. This research may also stimulate further research into developing sustainable business models based on advertising revenue.