Sold short: why so many owners part with their data for less than it is worth
The books say a company's data is worth nothing, and people price their own data by how the question is asked. Buyers know better.
Picture made for ABURA Bureau.
Ask a finance team what its customer records are worth and the honest answer is often nothing, at least on paper. Under the international accounting standard for intangible assets, customer lists and similar items a company builds itself are not recognised on the balance sheet at all. Years of records, logs and history exist, but the accounts never show them.
Buyers see something else. In January 2024 Reddit signed data licences with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million, on terms of two to three years, according to its own filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The posts were written by its users for free, long before anyone thought of them as training data.
People are no better at pricing their own data than the books are. In a field experiment by Acquisti, John and Loewenstein, shoppers given a $10 card that kept their purchases private were offered $12 for a card that tracked them: 52.1% refused. Shoppers given the $12 tracked card were offered privacy for $2: only 9.7% paid. Same data, same $2, and the answer turned on where people started.
Put those together and the pattern is plain. When the books show zero and instinct sets the price, the first offer feels like found money. That is how data gets sold outright, in full and for good, for a fraction of what a market would pay to lease or license it.
The fix starts before any sale. Find out what kinds of data you hold and how much of it, take personal data out, and let more than one buyer see a small preview set. A lease or a licence lets you learn the price while you still own the data. Selling it outright is a choice you can make later, and only once.
The value of data is set by the people who want to use it. The owners who do well are the ones who let those people compete before they decide.
