How much is your data worth? To you, I mean.

I ask because several legislative proposals have been floated that would force the collectors and users of consumer data to pay consumers to use that data.

It sounds great, and logical, and I’m all for it – in theory. In practice is where it goes all to heck.

Consumer data may be the most valuable commodity in modern marketing. It can help marketers provide the right product with the right message to the right audience.

Think of it as the equivalent of a modern cancer treatment that only targets cancer cells, instead of bombarding the whole body with harmful radiation or drugs.

Consumer data can lower acquisition costs, increase customer loyalty, drive repeat purchases, allow for the creation of better and smarter products, and drastically improve lifetime customer value.

Given all that, you’d think that the formulas that are out there for valuing consumer data would put a pretty high price tag on it.

You’d be disappointed.

The highest price tag I saw for a consumer’s data was around $20 a month.

Sure, getting $240 a year from companies like Amazon and Google just so they could continue to pitch me the way they’ve been pitching me is found money, pure and simple.

The problem is that $20 a month is nowhere near an acceptable value for the use of the most valuable commodity in consumer marketing.

Even on its face that amount is absurd. For comparison’s sake, does it make sense that the average cable and internet bill is $200 a month when consumers under the best possible scenario would be paid one-tenth of that, just so companies can have unlimited access to the data that will shape the ads that make “Dr. Pimple Popper” possible?

Whew. I don’t even want to go there.

Let’s run through a little exercise to prove that $20 is a ludicrously low amount for consumers to be paid for access to their data.

Assume for a moment that you’re Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Lucky you. You make the world’s dreams come true and get to hang out with Lauren Sanchez despite looking like the earliest iterations of Elmer Fudd.

Knowing what you know about the purchase habits of your millions of customers, and knowing that that knowledge gets a little more complete with every order, you’re able to more consistently present a consumer with the right product at the right price.

Now, we know that the average Prime user:

Spends $1,300 with Amazon
Generates data that feeds back and generates even more orders
Requires little to nothing in the way of marketing spend
Increasingly buys an Amazon “house brand”
Pays $120 a year for this privilege

If Amazon spent only $240 a year to be able to market to a customer like this, that would be an incredible deal. The fact that they spend nothing, and are instead paid $120 for the privilege, is highway robbery.

And this is just Amazon. There’s the rest of the Internet to consider as well. It wouldn’t be outlandish for consumers to expect to be paid $500 a year by Amazon, $500 by Google, and $1,000-$1,500 by the rest of the internet.

Heck, you could just make Andrew Yang’s $1,000-a-month guaranteed income a quid pro quo for consumer data use, and the entities that use that data would still be coming out way ahead.

So why have the valuations of consumer data been so cheap? Fundamental misunderstandings of how that data is used.

Consumer data drives every marketing decision. It’s the fuel behind the modern economy. Getting access to consumer data is no different than an advertiser buying air time in the Golden Age of Television, when audiences were guaranteed and homogenous, for all intents and purposes.

Marketers in that era paid for what they got, but got what they paid for. And while consumers weren’t paid because they watched The Ed Sullivan Show, they weren’t paying for the privilege, either.

It may not have been entirely equitable, but it wasn’t as inequitable as it is now.

Consumers are increasingly being monitored, measured, profiled, and identified, often without their consent. It’s the super-logical extension of the proclamation in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House that advertising (read: marketing) “is a basically parasitic profession” that “makes people who can't afford it buy things they don't want with money they haven't got” – and it’s wrong.

Consumers deserve a piece of that action – their action – and it shouldn’t come cheap just because their name isn’t Amazon or Google.

Among the many things that need to change in this universe, this is high on the list. So let me ask you again: How much is your data worth?

How Much Is Your Data Worth? More Than You're Being Told