Top Digital Innovator: Pureprofile

Name: Pureprofile
Smart50 Award: Top Digital Innovator
Revenue: $21.72 million
Growth: 33.85%
Founder: Paul Chan
Head office: Sydney
Year founded: 2000
Employees: 147
Industry: Communications and marketing
Website: pureprofile.com

Pureprofile is a consumer insights and technology company based in Sydney that rewards people for sharing their views on certain products.

The business turns over more than $20 million and has snapped up this year’s Top Digital Innovator Award for the way it is disrupting digital marketing and creating new revenue streams to fund online content.

Founder Paul Chan knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur ever since he had to spell the word in a year five spelling bee.

Chan started his first business – a real estate company – while he was still at university.

It was a few years later when he got the idea for Pureprofile.

“I was working in Silicon Valley developing a real estate portal during the dotcom boom in the late 90s,” Chan says.

“I started thinking about a person’s profile as an asset they could leverage the same way as property. I believed the information in a person’s head about their preferences, intentions and habits had great value to advertisers and marketers, and that this could be used to benefit the individuals themselves.”

Chan says 2015 has been an exciting year for the company.

In July, Pureprofile listed on the ASX and acquired a programmatic media company called Sparc Media.

The purchase of another business allowed Pureprofile to “turn the traditional advertising model on its head”.

“Pureprofile is pioneering a new era for advertising, in which the consumer is no longer a passive bystander but a participant in the marketing process,” Chan says.

“This is a new media model that creates new solutions to the big challenges currently facing brands and publishers, giving more certainty to advertisers and keep quality content essentially free for consumers.”

Chan says the media, advertising and research industries are currently undergoing massive structural changes and he hopes Pureprofile is coming up with a solution.

“I don’t believe in just adapting to the changing industry, because you can get caught out and end up behind the curve that way,” he says.

“If we’re doing our jobs right, we should be changing the industry from within.”