How best to monetize my website?

I've collected shopping interest data for individual users of my website (I have data for about 250k users).  How can I best monetize this information?

• The data is lists of explicit shopping interests that each individual has put together. Includes general items like cars, clothing, travel, event tickets, consumer electronics, etc.

• Answer:

  Privacy check: Do you have the right privacy disclosures and consents in place? (eg. have the individuals given you the right to sell this information for the purposes of advertising?) If yes, then working with an adtech firm is the best way to monetize the shopping interest data. Here is one way to do it: You work with an adtech company, who deploys a tracking pixel on your website. That pixel fires anytime the user visits your page, placing a cookie on their machine for later re-identification. The pixel also records some details about the page, including any explicitly declared information you might have (which includes the user profile information you described). That user gets bundled into an 'audience segment', which is used for targetting to better serve ads to relevant audiences. After a period of time (usually a month for activity gathering, then 45 - 90 days for payout) you receive a revenue share based on how often the audience data was purchased. The above example is method that's very turn key, requiring little effort on your part to monetize. Keep in mind though, you are paying a partner to track the data, bundle it for sale, identify buyers who could use the data, forming relationships with those buyers, and ensuring compliance and reporting throughout the process. The more work you take on yourself (for instance, building your own audience segment, going to advertisers directly, etc.) the more revenue you can generate, although it may not be very profitable given the small scale of data you have. Good luck!