JibJab, the e-card and video company perhaps still best known for a viral video from the Bush-Kerry election in 2004, has been acquired by Mode, a company with a very 2026 business model: rewarding app users for sharing their data, including for AI training.
The deal includes up to $29.5 million in cash and stock. Mode says the purchase marks its 11th acquisition since January 2025 and its largest this year. The company plans to integrate JibJab with its rewards and monetization system, dubbed EarnOS, though the details remain to be determined, says Dan Novaes, Mode’s cofounder and CEO. JibJab is profitable and generates tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue, he says.
In general, Mode offers access to premium app subscriptions and other rewards for users who opt in to data with businesses conducting consumer research or, more recently, artificial intelligence training
Novaes says the model grew out of the realization that only about 5% of app users typically pay for premium subscriptions, while others might be interested in gaining premium access in different ways.
“We thought to ourselves, could we provide a rewards and earning exchange amongst consumers to get the premium version of the product,” he says. “If you don’t want to spend $40 a year on a subscription, then if you take this action, we will give you a light version of the subscription for free.”
Exactly what those transactions involve varies from app to app, though Novaes emphasizes that users will always have to opt in, even as the AI industry has become known for acquiring training data through sometimes questionable means. “These AI labs have essentially sucked up the entire internet,” Novaes says. “And most of that data was done in a way that you know consumers didn’t necessarily opt in.”
Offering premium services or other rewards in exchange for consumer data isn’t new
Even in the dial-up era, some internet providers offered free access in exchange for watching ads or filling out surveys, and plenty of discount programs, including supermarket rewards programs, operate on a similar model. But the app economy, along with the near-universal adoption of phones equipped with cameras and location sensors, has opened up new opportunities to monetize data and activity.
In some cases, Mode apps such as games can capture users’ interactions to train AI on various tasks. Apps can also prompt users to perform particular actions, filming themselves doing real-world activities to gather robot training data, in exchange for rewards, Novaes says.
Other apps can be more directly tailored to data buyers’ needs. The email unsubscribe tool Trimbox, which Mode also acquired recently, is expected to soon offer an enhanced free version that gathers anonymized purchase data from users’ inboxes for consumer research and AI training. “Through EarnOS, users will be able to opt in to consented inbox and purchase data in exchange for rewards, generating the anonymized, aggregated signals that data buyers increasingly seek to build and refine AI and analytics models,” Mode announced in June.
Other recent acquisitions include TLDL, a student-centered app for transcribing lectures and transforming them into study materials, which the company says will bring Mode to a new audience of students
Mode also recently acquired Smart Cleaner and Easy Clean, which help remove duplicate and unneeded photos and other content on phones. In general, while many of Mode’s businesses deal with potentially sensitive data, Novaes says, the company has also always focused on ing privacy laws Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and California’s Consumer Privacy Act.
Mode also recently announced the acquisition of Orchard Insights, a consumer research company that helps businesses evaluate potential marketing concepts through online advertising tests. Novaes says the deal could allow Mode to combine that data with additional behavioral insights from its other businesses.
“That one actually kind of deviates a little bit from the average model, because we tend to focus on consumer products or consumer apps,” Novaes says. “That one’s more of a strategic acquisition, just given the nature of the end buyers that we are ultimately targeting for these data insights.”
Acquiring, or “rolling up,” existing internet brands appears to be a cyclical trend that has grown more common in recent years, particularly as buyers point to AI as a way to quickly update software and fix bugs
Novaes says AI also helps Mode integrate its monetization platform into newly acquired products, while a diverse portfolio of businesses gives the company experience across a range of markets.
“One of the benefits of this model is that you can see so many different companies, and then you learn these playbooks that work within one product that you can apply in another,” he says.
Mode, which claims more than 100 million active users across its various businesses, has raised more than $120 million from more than 65,000 investors under the SEC’s Regulation A+. In late 2025, the company drew attention for acquiring the anonymous messaging app NGL. The app had become popular with college students and teens several years earlier, before entering a settlement in 2024 with the Federal Trade Commission over billing practices and allegedly fake, machine-generated messages that the FTC said induced people to sign up for subscriptions.
Novaes says 2025 was Mode’s first profitable year “on a pro forma basis,” and the company remains interested in acquiring businesses with established customer bases
“We’re starting to go up in the scale of our acquisitions,” he says. “What we’ve noticed internally is it’s the same amount of energy to acquire a product that’s maybe producing half a million dollars a year in profits to a product that’s producing 5 or 10 or 15, so that’s something that we’ll start focusing more deeply on.”
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Fastcompany.com
