I loved your review of the smart media token. And the BAT token is an excellent token to compare and contrast. In my post https://steemit.com/smt/@morpheus212/understanding-smart-media-tokens-smts-using-the-new-york-times I wanted to explore similar questions as well.

With regards to the issue of advertisers and the token I think the way it would work is that advertisers would be the primary purchasers of the token. They would pay using the token to have their ad displayed on the most popular/ most upvoted articles. They might also pay to have their ads or products promoted by the most influential content producers within the system. Also users who want to consume content ad free might be willing to spend tokens to guarantee an ad free experience. These two forces might be good enough to soak up the liquidity from issued tokens and either maintain the token price/value or even increase it. I think the key thing is the economic properties of the token which are determined at the time of the tokens creation. It will be important to choose the perfect inflation rate that balances the need to give new users whether content creators or readers tokens as rewards for using the platform vs the need to maintain the price of the token by ensuring that enough tokens are taken out of the circulation by being purchased on the open market.