Meet Guillaume Kendall, Founder & CEO at Zedosh: A Company Rewarding Gen Z Users For Watching Ads

Guillaume Kendall, Zendosh

Zedosh is a new way to think about how we spend our time and get paid for our attention. It uses user permissioned Open Banking information – which millions of UK consumers use already – to make sure that users see ads that they will find relevant and it means that brands don’t have to gamble on whether they are reaching an audience, they know that people who are interested are actually watching their content.

Because of the way Zedosh is designed, consumers actually enjoy being advertised to and brands can reach consumers in a safe digital space without being attached to content that pushes misinformation, hate or worse.

We’ve created a marketplace for attention that is cookieless and doesn’t rely on tracking or any other common data points – so it provides a great solution as iOS and Google changes give people the ability to be fairly rewarded for opting in to sharing a single source of data.
Brands can also rely on the fact that the people seeing their content are real – so there’s no click fraud going on and for consumers, we are FCA approved.

We’re aiming to reach GenZ, the cohort that knows a lot more about its data and who is gathering it or selling it. We don’t sell data. What we do is pay real money directly into their bank account in return for their attention to video content from relevant brands. We also create our own video and podcast content on financial topics so they can level up their knowledge and learn to manage their own finances better.

Instead of making people wait to continue a game, or watch a video clip and waste their time while trying to get to what they want, we are changing advertising and taking away that enforced interruption to offer a reward as well as autonomy over the time people spend online. Brands get the undistracted attention from consumers who are in a mindset to engage with the content.
 
 
Zedosh launches opt-in platform paying users to watch ads that are targeted  based on their banking data | Mobile Marketing Magazine
 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I came up with Zedosh when I kept seeing totally irrelevant ads. I realised that all the data ‘big tech’ was harvesting was not being used to do a good job. I knew I was not the only one frustrated by seeing bad ads all the time and then the penny dropped, big tech companies make money regardless of relevance and the ad industry has somehow been convinced that a less than 1% hit rate is ok. It’s not. It was the first idea I’ve ever had that actually got better the more I looked into it. Digital advertising is in such a mess! I’ve had many other ideas that didn’t quite survive to the next day.

I have a background in fintech and I knew about Open Banking data and how it’s used in financial services. I realised that this could be used to make advertising better and reward people for seeing ads, changing the balance so it’s no longer a passive, friction-filled experience.
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
During the pandemic, Zedosh has grown from the seed of an idea to a business with a team of five and over two thousand users in a short time. It’s never easy getting a startup off the ground but we are proud of the work we do, the big changes that this can make, and that we can serve something different to a generation that knows it doesn’t want to be handing over data in order to create profit for someone else.
 

What can we hope to see from Zedosh in the future?

 
We are in a growth stage at Zedosh, so we’re onboarding new consumers who can take advantage of the fair exchange and talking with more and more brands so that we can offer both sides of the business access to better content on fairer terms. In the long term, we are working to make a change in the way that advertising and content works for brands and for consumers.