- The new rewards program from Verizon (VZ +0.2%) is offering customers entertainment perks and phone upgrades -- so long as they give up some potentially very valuable personal information and let the company look in on its Web browsing.
- Verizon says it needs information to personalize the rewards it's offering and deliver more targeted ads (and, along the way, build a business that can compete with twin ad behemoths Facebook and Google).
- The rewards program, Verizon Up, will offer credits usable for concert tickets and movie premieres along with phone upgrades.
- The company's digital ad unit brings in about $7B a year; the company has about 4% of the U.S. digital ad market, vs. 41% for Google and 20% for Facebook, eMarketer says.
- Verizon's being up front about what it's looking for, unwilling to risk consumer and regulatory backlash for data collection methods.