• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 6 hours ago

The average U.S. consumer generates about $1,605 per year in advertising value, according to a recent report that analyses and estimates the annual advertising value that different people generate for Google's ad platform.

Proton, a Switzerland-based technology company focused on privacy, published the report last week. "The Price of Free Google" draws on more than 54,000 demographic profiles and applies real cost-per-click data from live advertising campaigns to assign a dollar value to each.

By putting a "price tag" on U.S. citizens, the report aims to highlight the financial value of personal data and encourage users to switch to their own privacy-focused services.

Applying real advertising auction benchmarks to each archetype determined the "cost-per-click figures reflect[ing] live market rates drawn from aggregated, anonymized pricing data across active campaigns — what advertisers actually pay to reach these demographics in Google’s auction system," explained Edward Komenda, journalist and author of the Proton blog post.

Interestingly, the top 10% of profiles -- heavy desktop users -- generate 43% of all value for advertisers.

During the span of a decade, the average American represents roughly $16,050 in advertising value, and the most monetized profiles can reach as high as $180,000.

For example, a 35- to-44-year-old man in Bozeman, Montana without children who is using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches generates an estimated $17,929.30.

An 18- to-24-year-old father in Fort Smith, Arkansas using an Android phone and making low-value searches generates $31.05.

There is a 577x difference between two people using the same free service, Google.

The author called out one caveat -- the analysis estimates advertiser demand for access for a given consumer profile. It does not reflect the exact revenue Google receives from any individual user. The model, instead, reveals the maximum price that the market puts on the person's attention. 

“Most people would not knowingly hand a corporation hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime to process their email,” according to the post. “But that is what the system is built to collect.”

Proton’s repot lists the 10 most valuable U.S. ad markets. The top five are Edmond, Oklahoma; Bozeman, Montana; Naperville, Illinois; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Durham, North Carolina. The five least valuable are West Valley City, Utah; Lowell, Massachusetts; Fort Smith, Arkansas; Gulfport, Mississippi, and Greensboro, North Carolina.

It’s interesting what the report says determines a U.S. consumer’s value to Google.

Non-parents are worth approximately 17% more on average, he explains, and once a profile is flagged as a parent, it shifts from $6-per-click wealth management ads to $2-per-click ads for minivans and preschools.

The highest-value profiles are defined by a combination of signals such as devices. For example, a desktop user is worth 4.9x more than the same person on Android. An iPhone user is worth 2.7x more than on Android.

The report suggests that advertiser value peaks between 35 years of age and 44 years of age. By 65, average value drops to $511.

Older Americans do not disappear from the ecosystem — they are reassigned to a narrower set of high-spend categories such as Medicare supplemental insurance, pharmaceuticals and financial products targeting dependency with lower general value, more aggressive targeting from a smaller slice of advertisers.

Google’s auction is driven by local service providers, so value is partly set by zip code, as many local companies bid against each other for local clicks.