Durham-based startup Rewarded Interest is aiming to change how consumers engage with third-party tracking pop-ups in their browsers.
The startup is tackling the problem through its flagship Chrome extension (also dubbed Rewarded Interest), which it describes as a “personal consent agent for consumers.” The extension enables users to control consent across the web and, if they opt in, even get paid when advertisers use their data.
“Our goal is to provide consumers with agency and transparency,” said Thede Loder, who co-founded the startup alongside Scott Spencer (who is CEO). “A simple and straightforward experience where they are confident that their consent choices are going to be respected.”
Stars aligning
The co-founders’ backgrounds led them to see that meaningful change was possible when it came to consumer consent on the internet.
Loder’s past spans early consumer internet platforms, work on spam mitigation and a stretch leading industry standards efforts on email authentication—including via the development of a verified identity system for email senders that was later adopted by major platforms such as Google, Yahoo and Apple.
“I got to see through that experience the power of coordination with other stakeholders,” Loder said, “And it made me realize, if we’re going to solve big, hairy problems like consumer consent and the desire of companies to get consent and provide something of value, you have to align the incentives so that everybody feels like they’re getting a good deal.”
Spencer previously spent more than a decade at Google, where he worked on core advertising infrastructure, including the company’s ad exchange; he later led privacy and safety initiatives focused on improving transparency around how and why users are targeted by ads. That work exposed him to the idea that consumers are willing to engage with privacy controls when the tools are usable.
“Consumers are actually willing to take action and change their settings when the tools make sense. They don’t have to be treated as a silent group with no agency,” Spencer said. “Right now, consent online is basically stuck between ‘accept all’ or ‘block all,’ and anything more detailed is so cumbersome that people just give up.”
Loder and Spencer share the beliefs that consumers need a simple, centralized tool through which to exercise real agency over how their data is used, and that incentives should be aligned across consumers, advertisers and platforms. Their unified sense of purpose in these areas led them to incorporate the company in 2023, raise funds in 2024, and spend the past year building and iterating Rewarded Interest in its current form.
The product
Rewarded Interest functions as a personal consent layer inside a user’s browser, enforcing privacy preferences in real time. Through its Chrome extension, users set up a centralized consent policy that applies across websites, reducing repeated interactions with cookie banners and tracking pop-ups. Rather than simply signaling preferences, the tool actively blocks trackers, cookies and data-sharing mechanisms that fall outside any of a user’s chosen settings.
Users can take a broad approach to consent or fine-tune their preferences, with those choices persisting across browsing sessions. Loder said a major benefit of using Rewarded Interest is that consumers can set their privacy preferences intentionally, rather than being forced to make rushed decisions from among externally curated options while trying to use a website.
“It is impossible for a consumer to evaluate the detailed options some consent dialogs present when they just want to read an article,” Loder said.
Beyond blocking tracking, Rewarded Interest introduces a user-controlled, anonymous identifier designed to replace the many opaque IDs used in digital advertising today. If users opt in, advertisers can target them through this single identifier rather than via third-party cookies or device fingerprinting. In return, users receive a share of the advertising spend associated with that targeting.
“We give you, as a consumer, your own ID,” Spencer said, “If you decide to let people use it to target personalized ads to you… you’ll get those personalized ads, but you’ll also get the benefit of receiving 5% of what companies are spending to send you those ads.”
The company frames this as a shift in the economics of digital advertising, redirecting a portion of the value of targeted ads back to consumers. Rewarded Interest only generates revenue when users do, aligning its incentives with those of the people using the platform.
Big picture
In the near term, Rewarded Interest is focused on growing its user base to the scale needed—hundreds of thousands of users—to activate its paid rewards model. That’s what would allow consumers who opt into targeted advertising to receive a share of ad spend.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Rewarded Interest
Co-Founders: Scott Spencer (CEO), Thede Loder (CTO)
Founded: 2023
Team size: 5
Location: Durham
Website: rewardedinterest.com
Funding: Raising pre-seed
“[This year], we want to reach that critical mass and have the partnerships in place with a couple of demand-side platforms so we can start the rewards part of our business,” Loder said.
Looking ahead, the team plans to expand beyond the browser into connected TV and emerging AI-driven platforms, where consent mechanisms are often limited or inconsistent. The founders see these environments as the next frontiers for centralized, enforceable consent, particularly as advertising and data-sharing become more deeply integrated into streaming services and AI tools.
