A Proposal to Make Promoted Posts Worth the Price Without Spamming Up SteemIt.com
A Proposal to Make Promoted Posts Worth the Price Without Spamming Up SteemIt.com
Here's my proposed solution.
Show one promoted post at a time at the top of post 'list' pages (home page, feed, category/tag pages).
On each page load, this post should be chosen in a way that more highly promoted posts are more likely to be shown.
Here's a simple example. Imagine that in the photography category
Alice promotes post A with 50 steem dollars.
Bob promotes post B with 30 Steem Dollars.
Charlie promotes post C with 10 Steem Dollars.
Doug promotes post D with 9 Steem Dollars.
Evan promotes post E with 1 Steem Dollar.
Then, Zed decides to browse the trending page of the photography category. There would be a 50% chance that he would see post A, a 30% chance that he would see post B, and so on. One out of every hundred times, Zed would see Evan's post. Sure, there is not much chance that Zed will see Evan's post - but if a hundred people are viewing the Photography trending (or hot or ...) page, one of them will see Evan's post. This seems like a fair way to show only one ad while still rewarding those who pay more with more views. It also fits in with the "casino" philosophy discussed in the white paper (in spirit at least).
Thoughts?
[image source: Wikipedia - Creative Commons]
Bryan Gmyrek [verification post] lives in sunny Arizona with his wife, three sons, and two golden puppies. He earned a Ph.D. in physics for his work at Fermilab and also enjoys computers, nature photography and blockchains.
great proposal, I will have the devs look into it
This is how I figured promoted posts would work anyway, similar to how ads on kijiji or various real estate listings have 'featured' listings.
Yup. When I saw that you had to click the 'promoted' tab to see the promoted posts I figured it was kind of a temporary test to see if doing that would work. I think it's been long enough though - doing that won't really work - you have to give people something of value for their money: eyeballs.
Would it say "promoted" under it .... Kind of like how Google shows "sponsored" on it? It is an interesting idea. That could gain people more visibility.
Yes, the fact that it's "promoted" should be clear for sure.
I agree. Paying to get your post under the "paid" tab is worthless. Even if the cost is more to promote, they need to be shown randomly throughout all categories. The same way a paid commercial interrupts a tv show.
For proof of this, you need look no further than the history of the paid ad market on the 'net. Most people don't know this, but before Google's "amazing innovative creation" of AdWords, a man named Bill Gross created a site called GoTo.com. GoTo.com was a "pure pay to play" search engine. Bill tried to sell this technology to Larry and Sergei and (from what I recall reading) they were basically rude and said Google would never do something like that. A while later they came up with AdWords - which was basically plastering GoTo.com style ads on Google.com. The truth is the Google guys had a point. People don't want to "just" see promoted stuff. They want to see "organic" stuff - and people understand a little promoted stuff mixed in might be necessary.
p.s. The good news for Bill Gross is that he did sell GoTo.com to Yahoo (by that time it was called "Overture") and it became "Yahoo Search Marketing". I think they sued Google for some money too. A couple million ain't bad but it can't compare to the Billions Google is making.
p.p.s. This is all from memory so hopefully it's accurate. The main point is that finding the right mix of organic and paid is not easy but it's important. I actually like duckduckgo.com's model of one paid ad per SERP as I think Google.com SERPs are too crowded with ads.
Bill Gross Wikipedia Page
A lot of the info from this book can be applied to the SteemIt ecosystem.
https://www.amazon.com/Search-Google-Rewrote-Business-andTransformed/dp/1591841410
This is a good proposal.
I hope the Steemit devs will consider it