How many people are willing to sell their data for a free TV?

It is a universal constant of human nature that people like free stuff (or at least the idea that it’s free). It turns out that there are a lot of things we’re willing to give up in order to get things without having to spend our hard-earned dollars on them. Take, for example, the startup Telly. At the cost of a lot of data about them that fuels ads they will constantly see, customers of Telly can get a "free" smart TV.

The TVs are reportedly worth about $1,000 and consist of a 55-inch 4K screen with an additional smaller screen below it. The viewer controls what they see on the big screen, but the smaller one displays targeted advertising based on all the data they handed over in order to get the TV. This includes information like name, age, gender, home address, ethnicity, viewing habits and purchasing behaviors.

Fortunately the advertising, which is 24/7, only takes up the far right corner of the smaller bottom screen. Users can customize the rest with widgets to see things like the weather and sports scores, and it also functions as a control panel for the main TV for things like brightness and volume. And people want it. Within 36 hours of launching, 100,000 people had reportedly registered to receive a Telly TV. By two weeks, that number had gone up to 250,000. Telly is prepared to ship up to 500,000 units to consumers this year, with millions more planned for 2024.