Due to the price of blockchain management and development concerns, there is increasing talk around the introduction of advertising on Steem. I am not a fan of advertising and do a pretty decent job of limiting my exposure by staying away from television, newspapers, news sites, magazines, aggregator sites... you know, I spend my time on Steem.
Pretty much all the things that are wrong with the other sites from privacy concerns, algorithm crush, censorship and demonetization all come back to advertising revenue. One might like to get paid to advertise a product but in that process, soon the audience and users are likely to take a backseat to the maximization of return. Sound familiar? Once the reliance on advertising revenue for survival happens, just like the death of journalistic excellence, contributors will tailor their content to who pays them.
We already see it and I can name several accounts that used to post interesting content and are now only posting based on who will provide them income, shilling all kinds of random stuff. That is fine, it is their choice and I don't need to follow them. However, this is the problem because once reliant, the risk of demonetization if non-compliant comes into play. So much for freedom of speech when what you say is going to determine whether you eat a meal that day.
Almost a year ago to the day I wrote this piece called, The curse of advertising revenue. if you want a little blockchain history.
Concerns aside.
Having said that, in the world that is an attention economy driven by advertising dollars and product sales, it is pretty much inevitable that this is going to come increasingly to Steem also as if it does not here, it will on other chains and they will have access to massive development budgets and incomes to grease palms. It is an economic arms race.
Essentially we need to find a way to keep the lights on without becoming what we have been running from, centralization. Advertisers are centralized organizations and if contributors are influenced to create for them for income, by proxy Steem is centralized to a large degree also, by the very people who Steem was designed to avoid.
But... options. It all comes down to user choice and that is something I think needs to be remembered on this blockchain by everyone, including me.
One funding option is Stake lock:
This is one part of the reason I am for the ability to lock stake away for 100% return from the inflation pool as it gives the option to invest passively. It would also give the possibility for the higher staked apps and users to lock away funding from the inflation pool for development while leaving the visible content side of the demographic to their own devices.
It would essentially get rid of most bidbots (often developer run) voting on user posts and can instead be used to invest into actual Steem development itself while still locking up stake and providing RCs for bandwidth. Investors cold then use some of their gains from the pool to back projects, hire developers, pay for nodes without it costing them their direct stake, just a portion of their return.
Back to advertising...
At SteemFest I spoke to a couple of familiar people about advertising through users directly as using highly influential / visible users as advertising vehicles will get a hell of a lot more eyes on a product than boosting a post to Trending (@nonameslefttouse has good stuff on this). As said, options so this would in my opinion have to be an opt-in process where a user could list themselves in a market place and based on some kind of ranking algorithm (similar to @steem-ua) be ranked for pricing and product type. The user can then choose what advertising they are willing to show as it is possible that bsed on it, their supporters will be happy, or not. This is a very good way to distribute value to visible users (usually the ones with consistent track records of quality and engagement) and bring attention to products, applications and services.
Inwardly outward facing
To decentralize Steem requires more Full nodes that are spread across diversified points globally. As far as I know (taken from @exyle) there, are only a handful of witnesses running a full node, @gtg, @good-karma, @aggroed with @followbtcnews, @ausbitbank, @curie, @anyx, @privex, @thecryptodrive with @reggaemuffin. Some of those are running applications and services @steemmonsters, @esteemapp, @buildteam etc. These apps and services need to continually keep driving the face of their application outward for external investment purposes and of course, onboarding new users as the case may be.
When it comes to freedom of use on Steem, there is absolutely nothing stopping any application from building an advertising marketplace, introducing advertising models, forcing users to view banners through their interface or whatever. It is not up to Steemit Inc. It is the community that drives development here and while Stinc refocuses on their cor competence of blockchain development, it is up to the layer up developers to pick up the ball.
A large part of this was already seen (and mentioned at least by me) in the move away from Steemit being the onboarding mechanism and pushing capabilities to communities and apps.
However, the game
The issue for applications is that in a decentralized and free environment like steem, they have to create a compelling enough project that investors are willing to buy-in, users are willing to use, advertisers are willing to leverage and consumers are willing to view. This can be difficult when they gear their experience to advertising revenue alone in a community that has been trying to move into an area of financial self-sufficiency.
But, for crypto to really do well it has to continually encourage traditional players to make the move over to blockchains and part of that is demonstrating to them that they are able to streamline their businesses, reach users and reduce the cost of transaction and communication so that they are able to do more with less cost.
This makes it all a bit of a balancing act of sorts where the crypto industry needs to define itself as a standalone industry while courting the traditional behemoth corporations and industries without getting swallowed. As much as immediate investment funding is needed, care needs to be taken in how much control is given away in the process. Knee-jerk reactions rarely lead to good consideration.
But of course
None of the philosophical and idealistic ideas of the blockchain actually need to be considered if profit is the only goal. But then, why be decentralized at all? The reason the centralized platforms are able to generate such huge profits is because they can choose exactly what changes will be made, who is allowed to be included, who can develop and, they can choose precisely who they are going to distribute value to on their platform and, at what level. How much of the entire value goes back to contributors and users? That value is advertising revenue and data sales.
Data is free on Steem for anyone who wants it as it is all open, uncensored, available. Where data can be somewhat closed off is through the applications as they (like Dlive did) can store parts of their information off chain and make it inaccessible without permission. That in itself is an opportunity that applications could leverage to various degrees of effect, especially if they offer a compelling user experience or real-world solutions.
Lots of complication
While there is a great deal of options on Steem, each adds layers of complication that compound to create complex dynamics of various sorts. One change toward a desired outcome can lead to several more undesirable making a potential negative of the net good. We have seen this many times in the past already and I would predict that the foray into advertising revenue is going to raise many more complications. Is this bad though?
Again, I am someone who looks to maximization options so that people can choose more of their own lives ahead of them. There is going to be some degree of good and bad in every choice and with every gain, there will be associated costs incurred. Some will be financial, some will be to the community or individuals themselves.
It is going to be interesting how various applications and groups approach the future of advertising here and whether it will lead to the vast sums of cash they expect it will. How many users does an advertiser want to see before they start advertising?
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]