WeAre8 launches crowdfunder for its social media app, where users are paid to watch ads

It feels like the world of social media is back into some kind of inflection point period with the recent interest in Musk, Facebook, and TikTok. Entrepreneurs are delivering and consumers are hungry to try new platforms. The app was launched last year as an ethical alternative to the social media platform. A new social media startup called WeAre8 hopes to pay consumers for their attention by going out for a round of equity investment.

I would be as skeptical as anyone else that these startups wouldn't have a chance against the BigTech social platforms, were it not for the fact that WeAre8 is the brainchild of a highly experienced advertising industry entrepreneur.

Sue Fennessy moved to New York to start her advertising data startup. The Standard Media Index provides data on global media agency expenditure data for all major media and product categories.

She became incensed at the amount of money going into social media platforms like Facebook, where they were being used to spread misinformation about everything from politics to the pandemic.

Fennessy told me that SMI had tracked $250 billion of ad money spent around the world, and all of it was going to Facebook. I became distressed because we were seeing journalism collapse. The average engagement rate on a digital ad on Facebook is under 1%, even though we saw misinformation about the climate, and the Pandemic. We wondered how we could have $100 billion last year, and a billion of that was from charities.

She decided that a model where consumers were paid for their attention might have both good traction with consumers as well as the potential to attract ad-spend from brands more effectively. WeAre8 was born as a new social media app to take advantage of this model. The majority of ad spend on WeAre8 goes directly to its users.

Fennessy says that Facebook made it easy for anyone to buy ads. She plans to build out an equally easy ad-buying back-end to WeAre8 so it makes it easy to buy.

Fennessy has attracted institutional investors, won a partnership with EE, and brought in investors including the UK's Channel 4 TV channel. It also has several large talent agreements, in the form of sports commentator, Rio Ferdinand, rugby union player, Ugo Monye, dancer, and CATCH-22 actor Harrison Osterfield.

Consumers watch an ad for 2 minutes a day and get paid for it. The startup says this will put people and the planet back into the business of social media. Some 45% of the ad-spend on the platform is shared directly with people and charities, with another 5% going to a creator fund for micro shows and monthly challenges on the platform's main social feed.

Sue Fennessy is from WeAre8.

Fennessy is quite the person about this issue. Social media is a framework for democracy and should be owned by the people. She says that WeAre8 has built this technology.

She has found passionate supporters in her celebrity investors. Balding says that he is careful about when and how he uses social media, so he is excited about how positive WeAre8 is. There is now a place where millions of people can come and give their time to make a small contribution, which collectively becomes a huge fundraising initiative for various charities.

WeAre8 announced its Series B investment from Channel 4 and Centrestone Capital last month.

New investors in the Series B round include UKTV Ventures, an investment fund by commercial broadcaster UKTV, whose parent company is BBC Studios, which offers startups advertising in exchange for equity, to the equivalent of $1.2 million in advertising airtime, that will be delivered over UKTV. It is the first TV advertising campaign in the UK for Channel 4 and All 4.

WeAre8 puts the user experience front and center and flips the script on the usual talent/consumer dynamic.

Fennessy isn't just talking these issues up for kicks. WeAre8 is a certified B Corp company, which requires it to report on ethical and sustainable values.

Assuming WeAre8 spends this money wisely, it has a chance at getting some users on its platform, and even claims to be aiming for 80 million people on the app by the end of 2022.

It will have to get more users in the US in order to do that, and celebrity endorsement is rarely enough to win over consumers. Paying people actual cash money may help, but it will also have to make sure the system isn't abused by people.