I would absolutely not like to see advertising on Steemit. In fact, I don't even want to see businesses with more than a single employee (the owner) represented on the platform.

The way large entities can buy SP can really distort the entire platform experience. $1M is SP for an individual makes them a one of a kind "whale." For a corporation? Child's play.

So they wouldn't need to run ads per se. They could just promote their posts (which are really just stealthy long-form ads) with bots or their own upvotes and dominate the trending page.

In fact, over time, once corporations do discover this platform, not only will they not need to pay the platform itself for ads or in any way contribute to the rewards other receive, but they will be able to rip off the rewards pool with their own powerful self-votes. That's in addition to dominating the trending page. We may need to do away with the trending page entirely to stop their advertising reach. But they can still just keep ripping off the rewards pool.