Zedosh secures £400k Seed investment

Cookieless targeting platform that rewards Gen Z for watching ads officially opens to brands 

London, 9th September, 2021: Zedosh, a new smartphone app that pays Gen Z consumers to watch branded content to completion, is now officially open to brands after a successful beta test phase and having secured £400,000 of funding.

Zedosh offers brands an audience of engaged young people who are hard to reach on other platforms, allowing brands to run hyper-targeted campaigns using banking data which its users have consented to share – a marked break with the existing online ad model, where targeting relies on cookies and brands frequently interrupting users whilst running the risk of appearing next to unsafe content.

The new app, which profiles users according to their financial transaction data, is a safe, secure platform for brands to share video content with users who opt-in.

Zedosh users give their explicit permission to analyse their bank transactions instead of their browsing habits, so unlike other ad platforms, Zedosh can attribute brands’ ad spend ROI to payments made both online and on the high street.

It will have strong appeal to Gen Z consumers, who are digitally savvy, open to the idea of financial data sharing, and eager to get a fair share of the attention economy dominated by Google and Facebook.

Zedosh also offers a wealth of engaging content to attract Gen Z consumers, showing them how to improve their finances, providing career advice from influencers, and presenting fun information videos.

Brands that have already partnered with Zedosh include femcare disruptor Daye, challenger snack brand Well & Truly, and vegan carbon negative sneaker brand Elliott Footwear. Zedosh is a member of the Conscious Advertising Network and checks every piece of content to ensure it complies with the company’s values before it is published.

Zedosh’s targeting will be based on a proprietary algorithm called the Attention Exchange®, which uses Open Banking data, including recent transactions, to segment its audience. As with all organisations offering Open Banking services, Zedosh is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Zedosh has partnered with Moneyhub to harness its Open Banking technology to create the functionality behind the app.

Guillaume Kendall, Zedosh’s founder and CEO, said:

“With the end of third-party cookies in sight and consumers levelling up on data privacy, there is a real opportunity to take digital advertising to the next level. Zedosh provides brands with a much-needed solution by instantly rewarding consumers for watching relevant, targeted content in a distraction-free, brand safe app. In that way, advertisers get to use uninterrupted, quality time with their target audiences to grow their brands.”

Emma Holmes, Senior Marketing Lead at femcare disruptor Daye, one of Zedosh’s beta advertisers, said:

“We started working with Zedosh to contribute to the diversification of our acquisition channels, to improve our blended CAC and reach an audience who are proven to engage with our content. Higher engagement leads to a greater understanding of our multi-layered value proposition and better conversion rates.”

Zedosh users join the app by giving permission for it to access data from their bank accounts. The app adheres to the new Open Banking Regulations and is fully GDPR compliant. Over time, a model with dynamic pricing based on the value of a consumer’s attention will evolve. Users will also be able to benefit from exclusive offers, promotions and discounts if a brand chooses that route. Consumers will also eventually have an in-app opportunity to divert the money they earn to a good cause.

Zedosh is available to download via Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

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Editor’s Notes
Zedosh was in 2020 launched by Guillaume Kendall, founder and CEO, Matt McBride, CXO and Alistair Hutchinson COO.
All brands using the platform must adhere to Advertising Guidelines drawn up by Zedosh, which is a committed member of the Conscious Advertising Network.
Both Zedosh and Moneyhub are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

About Attention Exchange®
The Attention Exchange® is Zedosh’s proprietary machine learning engine that matches the right ad to the right consumer at the right time. Today, the Zedosh app is the primary delivery mechanism for those ads, but in the future it could be any online experience.

The Attention Exchange® is a transparent and fairer way for consumers to choose who gets their focus and time online and then they get paid for it. Advertisers benefit from knowing that their content is being watched by real, financially-validated consumers who are interested in their products and that they are not causing resentment or feelings of wasted time.

The audience and brands are matched by using Open Banking data. Users sign up for Zedosh by giving it access to the transaction data from their bank accounts. The Attention Exchange® algorithm analyses this data and serves the most appropriate brand advertising for each user. This makes sure that people are served ads that interest them, based exclusively on their immutable spending habits.

About Open Banking
Open Banking is a banking practice that provides third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction, and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows for the networking of accounts and data across institutions for use by consumers, financial institutions, and third-party service providers and is fast-becoming a major source of innovation that is poised to reshape the banking industry.

Safiya Marzook

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