Omg Steemers, look how much ad-revenue we are missing out!
Who doesn't like Ads? Right?
They are the best, whenever I just sit there staring at the screen thinking of nothing I want something to pop up and remind me of what I don't have.
If I for once am enjoying watching a movie, who doesn't like a break in the middle of the best scene to fill some of your receptors with something totally different reminding you when it will start.
Whenever a new movie is about to be aired, I just love watching the trailer over and over and over again until I already am so sick of the movie that when I go see it I feel dead inside.
- said no one ever.
But if it doesn't show ads, how can Steemit sustain? Must be scam!
I was remembered of one of my first posts where I instantly thought about "why don't they just place ads and from the revenue pay the active users who get to see them."
I have to say I agree a lot more with @pfunk here. Its awesome being on a site that doesn't spam you with ads. Sure you can find posts that are advertisements but you still have the control with 1 button to mute that user or that follower who might be taking it too far.
Steemit doesn't need ad revenue, and I personally would love it if it was kept like that. As I was thinking about this I googled a traffic ad-revenue estimation calculator and stumbled upon this. I am not sure if it has gone down in value a lot lately because of the Youtube drama or if it always has been like that.
There are ways to include ads into our platform that doesn't infringe on the user's flow of usage. The way I see it, pop up ads is as good as a badly placed real life billboard because over the years, we have conditioned ourselves to block these ads out of our mind. we see it, but we don't see it.
Just look at Facebook and how they used ads. Although by now they have gone to the extreme what with forcing down organic pageviews all the way to 0. But when it started out I was really impressed. You can't even see the ads at all. But it's effect is there, you have watched an ad without even consciously being aware of it.
Or take Reddit. Imagine if the company were to use pop up ads. World. War. 3.
So I believe sooner or later, there will be ways to make ads on Steemit. When the network effect is more valuable to some entrepreneurs then the Steemit money.
I feel that the "burn steem" feature is one that is currently laying dormant. Like a sleeping dragon. Because, hopefully, soon, people will start to buy steem just to burn it for a post they want Steemians to see.
Edited: pesky but.
Great comment!
Is there more coming or what is the "But" doing there? :D
Thanks for pointing out! Hahaha.. I must have left it out and did not delete it during my edit.
Were you expecting more? :P
Haha the comment was already great, but wouldn't have minded hearing more. :D
I have run several websites since 2009 and all of them have been ad revenue based. Only recently, due to a severe drop in ad values, I have taken one of my sites off of ad revenue ($0.10/1,000 views is not a good rate). Anyhow, there is a major problem with ad revenue being your only source of income.
Ads are greatly dependent on the content and the user viewing those ads.
Say Steemit used AdSense by Google (one of the many I have tried and can attest, is the highest paying for years running). If someone is invested in Google (uses the search, LIVES on Plus and clicks ads regularly, even using an Android phone with Google's operating system) then Google will give more weight to views by that person. That weight is placed against the value of the ad being seen and the weight of the site showing the ads (rumors have circulated that heavy clicks from sites can lower your percentage of the revenue from ads). This is great, if you have nothing but heavy Google centric visitors coming and have content that Google has high paying ads for that they give to those visitors.
Now, if you are writing about stuff that Google has no high paying ads for, no high value users visiting your site, and you have, say, a record of high clicks through ads then you can see hardly nothing from those banners and pop ups.
Other than annoying visitors.
Ads are the number one method to monetizing a website. Thankfully Steemit has another monetization option available and it works much better.
Rather than Google, or someone else, declaring the value of a visitor, or content, the members of Steemit do that. That is if Steemit would operate under revenue share or simply be like Facebook (and keep all the money).
I could see targeted ads working - those that are sold without the assistance of a third party "all or nothing" option like Google AdSense. This is harder and more time consuming, part of the reason most sites don't bother doing it. The rewards are much higher though.
The blockchain technology backing Steemit is a great idea and shows it can work - allowing ANYONE interested in owning a part of it to do so.
I prefer user promoted content minds.com style
The cool thing about the steem blockchain is that people can make different ways to view it. If someone wants to make another site that displays the same information for ads I won't immediately object. If I don't like it I'll simply not use it. Right now we have Steemit, Busy.org, eSteem, and of course the steemd.com back end type thing. I view them like different television manufacturers each with special features and we get to choose which one we want to us, or perhaps alternate between using different ones.
You are not forced to choose one way, and that is part of the beauty of it.
This is another great view of understanding the blockchain.
Advertising is psychological manipulation.
I consider it abuse.
I expect that in about 100 years, humanity will look back on advertising as a criminal activity. Of course, I don't expect most people to agree with this in our current time period. We're heavily indoctrinated.
To condemn advertising (psychological manipulation of the human biocomputer) in our present-day would cause too much cognitive dissonance in 99% of people. Our world is based around the idea that you have to trick people into buying things, rather than have them naturally discover them.
As we all know, advertising/marketing was developed by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, and used manipulation of the subconscious mechanisms Freud discovered to get people to buy things they didn't want or need.
This was extensively covered in the BBC documentary Century of the Self.
If Steemit started putting adverts on the site, I would leave immediately.
I don't participate in the abuse of human consciousness.
Awesome comment, thank you! I agree with many points you made. Ads are pure brainwash for gullible people.
Thanks :)
What scares me most about advertising is that I am myself susceptible to it.
I walked down the street yesterday on a microdose of LSD and was acutely aware of the profound effect all the different billboards were having on my deep subconscious. Usually this would have been sub-perceptual.
Although I was not necessarily being drawn to buy any particular items, I was aware that I was being fed a cruel diet of fantasy landscapes and people that (had I not been on a microdose) would have contributed to a dull pervasive sense of being "not good enough" or needing something "more" to fulfil me.
Then, like many people I would probably have bought something to temporarily fill the hole amplified by the imagery.
One objective of advertising is to create anxiety.
I feel it's not just the enticement to purchase a specific item that makes advertising abusive, but also the idealisation of people and environments; the constant implication that we are incomplete and a product (any product) can complete us.
Ugh yes I agree. Materialism is so annoying, many people seem to feed on it.
I am also very surprised at how little people care about reviews.
"Oh look new Iphone, it costs 800$+ so it must be the best!"
"Oh look, headphones by Dre, they cost 3x more than regular ones so they must be the best!"
They don't realize what marketing is and its effects on making something that is the same as something else look better in your eyes and mind.
ad revenue sucks man , all the work money going to Google ?! . Not having it here
That is another thing, by using a third party service like AdSense, you are given what they deem is fair. I think the current split is 30 to 40 percent going to the site showing the ads. It may be the other way around so don't quote me on that. I know it is super low value stuff right now unless you have ideal candidates viewing your site (and those ads).
There should be an ads on the right side (sample below) that Author can advertise their post and also allow other ads to advertise, and they pay in Steem Dollar.
Then this payment can be distributed to SP holders as interest/dividend.
Yeah that's what I thought a year ago when I first joined as well.
Dude, if I see ads on Steemit I'm out!
:D
extra Steem for watching Ad's ? im in !but i hope this happen soon while steem is cheap! :)
It is refreshing to be on a site where you are not bombarded with ads. I don't miss this.
I actually have some of these on my blog but they are my ads, my choice, not Steemit's.