The Future Role of Steem In the Disruption of the Social Media Advertisement Industry

With about one million potential social media users born globally each day, the future of advertisement on the social media is bright.

Image credit: @majes.tytyty

Humans are well known to be psychological beings, beings whose emotions, rather than reason, drive their actions and decisions. This perhaps is the greatest reason why advertisement is a serious business for the ever competing mega companies.

The whole essence of advertisement is to capture the mind of the potential consumer, creating in him an unnatural craving that unconsciously sways his decision in favour of products he would have otherwise ignored. This perhaps explains why advertisement gulps down billions of dollars each year.

In 2019 alone, it is estimated that over 560 billion dollars was spent globally on advertisement. Of that amount, about 40 billion dollars came from adverts placed on social media with Facebook maintaining its place as the number one destination for social media adverts.

With about one million potential social media users born globally each day, the future of advertisement on the social media is bright. Of course, that is good news. But the bad news is that the users of the mainstream social media like Facebook, YouTube, Google, Instagram, Twitter, etc gets little or nothing from the revenues generated from their engagements. A large chunk of the revenue goes to the owners of the social media.

On top of that, the organizations are made to pay heavily for promotions whose progress cannot be precisely measured. Unfortunately, many of the organizations are helpless because of the presence of very limited alternatives.

The beautiful thing is that Steem has the potential to significantly disrupt advertisement on the social media. Having its own decentralized, blockchain based social media like Steemit and working on releasing community features, Steem has the potential of becoming the rallying point for players, products, and people.

Players, Products, and People

For players, Steem will provide an opportunity for them to convert the advertisement money into Steem Power (that can be converted back to cash) which can be used for promoting their products and rewarding loyal followers or consumers, as the case maybe. In this circumstance, it costs absolutely nothing to place adverts and directly impact the lives of the end users.

For products, Steem has different interfaces and tribes (many still needing great improvements) that can be used for showcasing and promoting products for free. With @threespeak and @dtube it is possible to even create free video contents for the products, broadcast it on the Steem blockchain, and even reward those resteeming the products or giving a review.

For the people, Steem provides an opportunity for them to interact with the products which the players have put up. But unlike Facebook and YouTube where the people get nothing for interaction, Steem makes it possible for them to get upvotes, upvotes that can then be converted to cash or even exchanged for some of the player's products - at the player's discretion.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, it is important to mention that Steem is still very far away from realizing the potentials highlighted above. The major reason is that the population of those using Steem at the moment is still relatively insignificant to command the required level of attention. For Steem to be taken seriously, at least its user base must cross the 5 million mark or more.

As for the infrastructure needed to carry out the disruption, most part of it has been built already and coded into the Steem blockchain. So, expansion is the major thing that is needed for Steem to go mainstream and catch the eyes of the players in the social media advertisement industry. The road to mass adoption could be tortuous and long but Steem will overcome.

Until I come your way again, I wish you a full STEEM ahead.