Proposal: Paid Advertising on Steem (with a Twist)
The Steem community is growing, and with it - so is the value of our attention. Already, many are paying hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars to bid-bots in order to be featured as one of the top trending articles.
Advertising = More Money into the Steem Economy
Online advertising is a billion dollar industry. Bringing that industry to Steem has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of capital flowing into our ecosystem. More money in the Steem ecosystem translates into more money for users, more money for investors, and higher STEEM prices.
Users: The Life-Blood of the Steem Economy
Many content creators on Steem struggle to earn sufficient income due to the lack of attention from large stakeholders, as well as the inability to monetize content after the seven day payout period.
What if content creators were able to further monetize their content through the use of ads? This is nothing new. Platforms like YouTube already offer this. Typically though, these platforms take a majority cut of the money. The content producer only earns a small percentage of the overall revenue taken in from the advertisements.
I am a firm believer in the mission statement that was written in the Steem whitepaper: Rewarding the users for the contributions they make to the platform.
If a user is generating content that is worth thousands of dollars to advertisers, why shouldn't they keep 100% of the ad revenue?
100% of the Ad Revenue - How is that Possible?
There are two parts to this:
- A standardized protocol for the advertising system to run on the Steem blockchain.
- UI changes to websites (like steemit.com, SteemPeak, Busy.org, etc.) to display the ads.
Part 1: Standardized Protocol
In order for the advertising system to work across multiple UIs, the data stored in the blockchain would need to follow a consistent format, so that all UIs would know how to render the data.
This is something that will need to be discussed with the various developers in the community (especially the ones running their own UIs), so this proposal is by no means 'final', but let me offer a simple prototype to illustrate how the system would work:
Prototype Protocol:
- Advertisements will be based on a time-based, payment weighted bidding system.
- Time increments can be purchased in one hour increments, up to a maximum of 7 days.
- To purchase ad space, the advertiser sends STEEM to the user whose content they want to advertise on, using a specially formatted memo.
- Advertisers can purchase space on a user's entire blog (i.e. all of their posts) or on a specific post. To advertise on an entire blog, the memo should contain a
*in place of a specific link to advertise on, and the payment will be divided equally among all of the posts that are active during the purchased time period. - Advertisers will only be able to advertise links to other Steem blockchain posts.
Here is an example of how the memo could be formatted:
ADVERTISEMENT:<num_hours>|<link_of_post_to_advertise_on>|<link_of_advertisement>
Some additional variations that could be integrated into the protocol include:
- Allow users to refuse advertisements via their settings.
- Allow users to specify a minimum payment amount via their settings (i.e. ads will only be displayed if they are at least 0.1 STEEM/hour).
- Allow users to specify whether they will allow NSFW advertisements on their posts. A global black-list would be needed for advertisers not complying with the rule.
- Allow users to set a threshold to only allow ads from advertisers who have a history of completed ads above a certain STEEM amount (i.e. only allow ads from advertisers that have already purchased over 300 STEEM in previous ads).
Part 2: UI Advertisement Rendering
Each individual UI will choose whether or not to display the advertisements, and how to render them if they do. UIs that decide to display the advertisements will be giving the content creators on their platform additional incentive to produce high quality content.
To determine which advertisement gets displayed at a particular point in time:
- Collect a list of all advertisements that are active for the current time, and enforce all of the soft-consensus rules for the protocol.
- Sum up the total amount of payments that are active for the current point in time.
- Take the percentage of total payment for each advertisement to determine it's chance of being displayed.
- Randomly pick one of the ads to display based on the weighted percentage.
To illustrate, let's say that a particular article has three advertisement bids:
- Advertiser A has bid 5 STEEM for their ad.
- Advertiser B has bid 3 STEEM for their ad.
- Advertiser C has bid 2 STEEM for their ad.
For simplicity sake, all three adds were placed at the exact same time, and are each for 24 hours worth of time.
Each time that a post is rendered on the UI, the UI picks one of the ads to display. Ad A has a 50% chance of being chosen; ad B has a 30% chance, and ad C has a 20% chance.
Discussion Encouraged
This would obviously be a major change for the platform, and would require significant effort across the developer community to get off the ground. At the same time, it has potential to dramatically increase the utility/value of the platform. I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
I feel like it is a good take on how ad revenue could be added. Internal promotion is one way but personally I feel like we need the ability for advertisers to utilize external fiat money to advertise as well. It is simply too complicated right now for large companies to try to set up Crypto exchange accounts at Coinbase, Kraken....etc and then buy BTC, or ETH and then send that to Bittrex or Binance and then send it to a STEEM account and go through the steps to advertise. It is just too complicated and for them to get the OK to do it is unlikely. I feel like there needs to be the ability to pay with credit cards through a custom ad engine for banner ads on pages like Trending....etc as well.
I like your concept and think that could work as well but I feel like most of the promotion that way would all be internal promotion of projects and other's blogs who are trying to get viability which is cool too.
In all I think it is a good concept but I don't think we will see it on Steemit. I could see one of the 3rd party sites doing a concept like this if they felt they had enough of the traffic.
Ultimately I think we will see this type of concept implemented on a future platform on a different chain. ;-)
The fiat -> STEEM problem is definitely something that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately the regulations in the US are a nightmare. It would be interesting though if there were a front-end website that could charge for ads (under this new system) and handle the fiat->STEEM conversion in the background. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like it might not be regulated the same way since the person paying in fiat is not really buying cryptocurrency - they are just paying for ads.
Yeah personally I think there are a couple different ways that portion of it could be handled. Let's pretend a company like Steemit INC utilized some system like that and did a 50/50 revenue split on those kinds of ads. They could take 50% of it and buy STEEM and do distributions in STEEM Power to accounts that qualify under certain criteria utilizing some sort of engagement metrics....etc. That way it would create buy support for STEEM. Or just not have to dump as much of it which would have the same effect on the market. Then if everyone is getting SP distributions the money would be vested to begin with.
Yeah I don't think there would be any issue with US regulations if part of the money was used to buy STEEM and then distributed to users but then again it also could get interpreted as paying users commissions....etc and then suddenly the same laws could apply where if the person goes over like $500 they would possibly have to issue 1099's like affiliate commission sites or adsense does. That is a headache for sure. It seems to make it a lot less of a headache if there is a way to distribute out of the reward pool or give people more of an influence over the reward pool with delegations.
That could be one way around it. Have the "Ad fund account" and when people meet certain criteria they could get delegations which will give them more power for a period of time. I don't like that idea as much but it could reduce a lot of headaches.
Well one of the differences between the ideas you propose and mine is that mine is really 100% decentralized. Nothing would require a centralized party in order to use / make it work. Individual websites would offer front-end services on top of the protocol, but they would not be doing anything special that could not be replicated if they were to disappear.
Yeah that is a cool feature for sure. With Advertising I'm not entirely sure that a totally decentralized mechanism for doing it wouldn't get out of control . You addressed the NSFW stuff but I fear that ICO scams and ponzi schemers could go out of control. Kind of like on CoinMarketCap there was Bitconnect and LaserOnline ads all over the place.
I don't know what the right answer is on that stuff because I'm sure a lot of people got sucked into that stuff through the ads but how much did it really hurt the reputation of CoinMarketCap by allowing those? Ultimately I still go to CoinMarketCap so I can't say it destroyed their rep and they made a lot of money as a byproduct of those systems
i wonder if someone could work with coss- i think they plan on bringing fiat pairs to all crypto in the exchange
I'll pass the info on to Steemit's exchange team.
I can't hand on heart say I'm against ads given that my ad revenue from WP.com helped me quit my job this year!
However I don't think ads would do anything for smaller users... ie 99% of steemians... their audience is so small there would be no demand for advertising on their blogs... ad revenue doesn't even kick in on WP.com until you get over 20K views a month.
Also, to create a viable market we'd need to switch the page views display back on or give potential ad space buyers some way of telling how many human views they are getting!
I have used FB ads to drive traffic to my WP blog.... on that basis I'd need to know exposure and click through rate to make a value for money assessment.
Ironically if we could get ads to work it might reduce the influence of bots - advertisers want actual human users not bot votes!
It would also probably need communities to be sorted so as to.allow for targetted ads.
Do 17 of the top 20 witnesses want ads...?
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This is not a hardfork proposal, and therefore would not be dependent on witness votes. It would really be up to individual website UIs to decide.
Thanks for the clarification. It's getting hard to keep up with all devs on here, let alone the potential ones!
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I am only a part supporter of this idea. I will get the negative out of the way first.
I hate ads and I love steem being ad free. I also think we would be monitizing in this way far to early in the life cycle of the steem ecosystem.
That being said, ads have the ability of generating substantial revenue for content creators. Top bloggers online could be more attracted to the platform if it offered the ability to generate revenue from ads.
@paulag,
Advertisements don't have to be odious (although most are). Could you live with this one being run on your blog?
https://steemit.com/poetry/@quillfire/would-this-make-a-good-nike-ad-the-power-of-poetic-advertising
I like this idea. Ad revenue and author sponsorship's should be facilitated by the platform. Some random thoughts/ideas:
The big problem with this is that it is impossible to measure across all the different platforms. For example, what happens when a user posts an article via steemit.com, only gets 5 views from the users there, but they get 10,000 views from SteemPeak.com?
Well, advertisers would really be choosing which users/articles they want to advertise on. There would likely be a large need for ways to collect and present data to potential advertisers so they could make good decisions.
It would probably work similar to how thumbnail previews are done today.
Interesting idea. I remember when I had it over a year ago...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ats-david/advertising-revenue-and-distributions-on-the-steem-blockchain
Problem is - Ned already shot that idea down, so don’t expect it to be supported by their dev team or added to their UI.
Well, a lot has changed in two years. Maybe we'll have better luck. I doubt they would jump on board right away, but if we can get a standardized protocol agreed to by the developer community and a few sites (like maybe SteemPeak.com) to start the integration - they may be willing to accept and merge a pull request if a community dev does the work.
(It will be an up-hill battle, but there is a good chance we can make it work.)
I think getting Steem Dapps to use it would be a better/easier idea. That way they get more funds to reward there users/take less money out of posts this letting users earn more.
Ned has a bad track record. I wish he would step down, and let smarter people take over. We got to get people with a proven track record, to take over positions in the company. Investors should ask him to make room, or resign.
It's not hard to figure out when someones burnt out. The guy treats his account like his personal Instagram. There's very little content or insight coming from him lately.
The smartest thing for NED is to keep his Steempower, and find better executives and programmers to replace him, then sell his position, when Steem rises to an all time high.
I think bringing adverts to Steemit might help the steem economy but will destroy one of the best attractive things of steemit. No Ads! I love that about the blockchain and if possible I don't want that changed.
I agree with this, I have (kind of) friends in our steemit #gaming communities but most of them have the same SP as me. Less than a minnow, more than a toddler. Thinking on it though I rather not having a whale attention that making Steemit contain ads.
I wanted to contact you at https://steemeconomy.com/contact/ but decided to read comment & upvote one of your posts instead. I have a weekly shop on steemit and I accept STEEM/SBD (here's the current week) and recently crypto and #steembasicincome shares too, of course with conditions. Are posts like these are accepted in steemeconomy gaming section?
even though I'm not fully with you in it.
We are not taking about bringing ads to Steemit. We are taking about bringing ads to Steem. It will be up to individual UIs to decide whether to show ads. If you really don’t like ads, use a UI that doesn’t support them.
As far as SteemEconomy.com if you have a business that sells something (good, service, etc.) and there is a clear way to pay with STEEM/SBD then it should qualify. Just fill out the form with the necessary information.
Oooh, sorry I skimmed through your post and didn't read that part:
My shop is in form of weekly posts should I make my page, as the store page @ahmadmanga?
Hmm, there is a lot of non-store stuff there. Could you create a second account using SteemConnect for your shop and then resteem everything from there?
I liked your idea and made this account: @ahmadgameslist
Anyway, can I send it to steemeconomy gaming section now? should I contact you from the site itself? https://steemeconomy.com/contact/
Still thinking if I should write original posts for it or change to it completely though. Or let it as it is now.... Resteemer account!
Yes. :)
source
lol
Wow, never thought of this, Thanks a lot for the idea... It's great enough to add you to the my contest!
I went REALLY skeptical into reading this article, yet one line switched me almost 180º
This would solve for the most part the issue of ads being just obnoxious for most users, and really irelevant, however much effort may be put into targeting and profiling efforts.
Yes, I can see a scenario where adverstising, rather than being the classical relationship of a company shoving bogus product into user's mouth, would instead be more of a cross-promotion between various steem users.
Yes, companies can and will create bland steemit posts to which they will redirect through ads, but those posts tend to die naturally on this platform from what I saw.
And as long as the platform is not in a conflict of interest (i.e. having to ensure neutrality, but relying on advertisers for income) it shouldn't be much of a problem, any imbalance would sort itself out. And since blockchain is not a company, I expect to have this risk minimized.
Yes, I would find it interesting to see an ad system implemented, but only in the way described above, as a cross-posts, cross-author promotion, thus making the life better also for the reader, as he may get links to other relevant posts.
I am mixed on this. While I like the idea of moving more revenue into the Steem ecosystem, I'm pretty sure that the majority of our users would not appreciate seeing ads. But like you mentioned in another comment, this could be up to the different UIs and the users (showing ads on their channels).
My question is, what metrics would an advertiser use to decide which channels to display ads on? I imagine you would need some serious viewership in order to get noticed by advertisers, and that's something most people don't have unless they're promoting their posts with bid bots.
Allow me to Play Devil's Advocate
So I feel that what would happen is, people would be try to hit trending (even more than they do now) just to get noticed by advertisers (improve their views/metrics). But they likely won't improve on their actual content, which means that their content is likely to get flagged down. Then what happens to the relationship between the content creator and advertiser?
I think this could be done, but with some careful considerations. You would have to ensure that there's a healthy relationship between the content creator and advertiser, allow some type of refund to the advertisers in situations like I mentioned (perhaps an intermediary escrow), and decide what metrics you would provide to advertisers (and how true they are).
I agree with you on your concerns. I don't think we should let people keep ANY ad revenue. Instead, I would like to see all advertising money go towards boosting Steem, and increasing the rewards pool. Lets let the community decide who they want to support with their increased upvote power. This should be the only compensation.
Let the advertisers to pay directly into the rewards pool, so we can all have more powerful upvotes.
This way will get better content, because there will be more money coming into the system, but the only compensation writers should get, is from the increased upvote value. What do you think of my proposal?
Could you imagine a threefold increase in Steem, and a tenfold increase in upvote value? If first time users were getting a dollar per post, instead of 10 cents, it would make a huge difference. It would create a self-feedback loop, because many new users would want to join Steem.
We can also create some filters to turn ads off. Maybe by default, people get a flat rate of compensation, if they choose to view ads.
The main purpose of advertising, would be to get money into the system, without having to rely on exchange speculation. All ad revenue should go towards boosting Steem, increasing the rewards pool, and minnow support, so we can reduce the income inequality, and attract new users and investors.
Just don't make one mistake. Don't divert money from the rewards pool, but allowing elite users to keep ad revenue. That will do less to boost the price of Steem.
@brandonfrye,
This is why you have to kill all vote-gaming mechanisms (bidbots, multiple-account-self-upvoting) and channel "upvoting capital" into manual curation. If Hot and Trending really were "the best quality content," (like they're supposed to be), advertisers wouldn't care about Follower counts. They want "quality content" and "honestly engaged audiences" and placement in Hot or Trending would be evidence enough and many would pay a premium for it.
Each author interested in attracting advertising would fill out a Certification Checklist prior to posting: Subject Matter; Profanity; Graphic Images; Political Controversy; etc. Advertisers could then tailor their desired audiences accordingly.
BTW: Some advertisers WANT profanity and/or political controversy: Nike and the "Colin Kaepernick Ad" ... that was a deliberate attempt by Nike to "create a controversy" (and thereby generate a ton of FREE advertising via news coverage and social media warfare).
Besides advertising on legit Hot/Trending posts, some advertisers may decide to regularly advertise on all of certain authors' posts, perhaps seeking a long-term advertising relationship with guaranteed placement and a fixed cost. Others may seek to advertise solely within certain categories (tags).
The controversy at YouTube respecting demonetization was about YouTube demonetizing certain videos for "ALL advertisers" (because of the sensibilities of a few of the largest ones). Why didn't YouTube just insist that each video be accurately tagged according to its content, and then let each individual advertiser apply their own criteria?
"Speech Suppression" now comes into play ... many (myself included) believe that YouTube (Google) is deliberately trying to silence certain kinds of speech, by bankrupting the speakers, and using "advertiser objection" as the excuse for yielding the cudgel.
Quill
Did this get your attention? Some ads are interesting, and entertaining. We could embrace user-friendly advertising.
@TimCliff. You have giving me a lot of hope! I'm 100% behind this. We can have a debate over the advertising structure, but deciding weather or not to go with advertising should be a no brainer.
Right now, the main thing backing Steem price, is speculative trading. Do we want to remain at the mercy of private investors, or shall we take control of our own destiny? Personally I don't find ads annoying, especially if they secure the platform. I rather "suffer" through ads than worry about the price declining.
Steem NEEDS to evolve and become less dependent on speculation. Once we get advertising set up, WE need to create a market to buy and sell goods to other users over STEEM.
We have Steempower right? What if we provided discounts to people who power up? What if we create a new way of locking STEEM, like a subscription service, so members can get constant discounts, when they prove they are committed to the platform?
I hope you will brainstorm ideas for a market. One person can't think of all the ideas, so it's better to put 1000 brains together, and ask for on great idea from everybody. As I said before, let's create a curation trail, for people who submit good proposals! Let's brainstorm the concept first, and then will worry about the programming later.
You won't be able to do everything Tim. Make sure to branch out and find great partners. If you try and do everything on your own, you will burn yourself out. Get dozens of people to collaborate with you.
By the way. You can purchase that 3D printer for $180, but I won't tell you where to get it. If it were a real ad, how tempted would you be to click, and find out more information? This could be the STEEM experience.