A Bigger, Greedier Dog: Greed may be a solution to move towards Humane Technology

Society Sustainable business
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hi free,

Building a consensus around this problem is very important for me, I’ve spent years doing just that so far, so at least I am glad there are areas we can have a strong consensus.

So far, we agree that

  • Having a non toxic environment for advertising would be an engineer-able and preferred solution.

  • As a publisher, you’re only given the choice of distributing sponsored media that is toxic for users, you are not finding any other alternatives, and you participate in this eco-system because it is the only source of revenue available to you as a publisher.

I admit however that I am having a hard time seeing what you mean about the problems of advertising.

I could give dozens of examples covering all the different kids of ads, even ads by nonprofits and how they are almost always bad. The negatives include jealously, feelings of inadequacy, depression, wasted time and money, manipulations small and large, etc. I hope that I am understood? Do you agree?

I mean yes, I think I agree, I’m just not sure I’m seeing what you’re defining as the actual problem?

I’m not a fan of any type of manipulations, from companies to institutions to friends to strangers. That’s a social problem, and any solutions for that are generational and beyond the scope of just ad tech.

This confuses me because it appears you’re saying the problem is emergent from capitalism and marketing, with or without ad tech. I agree with that, but solving that is not the same as solving the “ad tech” problem.

To say that manipulation is an emerging property of advertising doesn’t seem fair, it’s putting the burden of a core human trait and blaming just one single industry for it, unless I am misunderstanding you.

Do we agree that much of what you are describing is not an epiphenomenon of ad tech though, it just emerges from marketplaces of any type, from black market to open market?

It is? And if it is, why is that any different?

But most media, from social media, to news, from the education sector to the entertainment sector, etc. are heavily manipulating attention.

Don’t stop there, don’t forget to add your mom, my mom, my childs mom, my ex-girfriend, probably me too even though I dont like to admit it to myself, and almost everyone I’ve ever met in my life and probably you in yours too.

That’s not making it “okay”, that’s just not emerging from technology, technology is just exposing what we’ve all been unaware of for so long, no?

That’s the point of identifying and educating everyone to the value of their attention!

I think we can agree that a fair way to put it would be “we all want each others attention” specifically, “we want attention”. It is human nature embedded into everything we do to want attention.

That is why attention is valuable. And an incredible and universal resource for everyone literally as part of our collective birth right.

Could we find agreement that we each individual owns their attention and has the right to any value derived from it?

Its going to be hard to solve a problem if we’re building a consensus on “all advertising is bad”. It seems like an unresolvable contradiction to “a non toxic environment for advertising” which is where we have consensus.

I’m going to return to the idea of placing value on our attention however as a pathway to build on over time that can evolve into more “honest” advertising.

I think you might be resisting something that, as a designer and problem solver, I prefer to use as part of the solution, not the problem. It just appears that your fight is against capitalism, which again I too see a dark side that needs to be addressed, but that is a much broader problem and nothing within ad tech created it nor will it solve that either.

Of course, I meant successful business endeavour, but let’s take it at face value to how you interpreted it. What if you COULD gain from doing good in the world? What if there WAS a business model that enabled you to help solve problems?

What if there was even a business model that this community could launch that could spread awareness of the concerns and enable people to make a living for their time?

As a developer an inventor, I can guarantee you there is 0% chance of me getting funding unless I show there is a pathway to a return on investment. That is just the way the world works, and tech is just one small aspect of the world working that way. I can also be honest with you and tell you that my inspiration for designing solutions is not centered around profit, but I do enjoy presenting something that I know can make money for other people.

Do I misunderstand you?

How does those non profits get funded? Most resources non profits spend is on raising money to pay their staff, which requires advertising campaigns. To be consistent with how you are describing the problem, that’s just as much, if not more, of a problem.

If you mean the adoption cycle, its not as challenging as it would appear. It’s actually an exciting element of our business plan, and partially why I am here because awareness at scale is what we have a plan to execute.

It doesn’t need to be an impossible scale at all actually, we choose the publishers to work with, and since we offer 100% publisher reach, just having the top 20 pubs in each vertical is enough supply to have critical mass to launch.

One the user side, adopting our technology (which means they download our app), we use our own technology to reach them, and since all they have to do is to download our app to literally monetize their devices, adoption there is likely easy (who doesnt want to make free money?)

We can have critical mass adoption within one year I believe.

I think you and I have much agreement on the problems, I’m just attempting to build consensus on how do we even begin to solve it, and I believe we have a plan to at least solve some of it and in such an interesting way that it would be infectious and viral, and will help build further awareness.

Users don’t need to sign up first for us to launch first.

We have a very elegant business plan and adoption model. While we have to play the middle man in the beginning, our full plan turns the entire ecosystem over to the users, publishers, and brands to manage - and we monetize by taking small percentages of transactions as a financial institution.

The only similarity between Brave and Native Smart is that brave claims to have an attention token. I’ve read their white paper. They have no real way to measure this other than some vague future abstraction, Brave is not a media company and from their claims it appears they don’t have experience in how media buying works at all.

Brave is an internet browser. We are not. Technically we are a content management and distribution system.

We already have a measurable system to monetize attention that works within the current ecosystem of media buyers.

Good question! I believe what will prevent that is not taking VC money and seeking an IPO. We have another way to raise money that will not require this.

I understand, but that’s not just an informed position. We have no “scale” issue, our business plan to achieve this is very simple and practical.

I request a little more optimism, and a little less cynicism :slight_smile:

But in some ways, I agree with where you are coming from. It WILL happen a few steps ahead of the game in chess IF we took money from VCs and seek an IPO.

We’re not. Wall street feeds into this problem, and we made sure we had a business plan that could scale quickly and avoid that model altogether.

Our longer-term model is a little similar to WikiMedia, once the ecosystem is launched, it is managed by users and we just oversee the technology and jump in when there is violations.

And, we can get there while being profitable, and ultimately, the internet user is the shareholder.

Additionally, and I swear this is true - our plan for adoption literally entails us generating awareness to millions and millions of internet users INFORMING them of the issues raised by CHT as a methodology of getting there.

I’ve been in this space for a long time, and have spent years and $700,000.00 getting to where we are now, I don’t say anything here lightly or even hypothetically.

If I can overcome your issue on the adoption cycle, where do we still need to find consensus that is within the realms of digital advertising and specifically the problems caused by digital advertising alone?

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

1 Like
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I am saying that advertising is bad for people who see it. That is the perspective we normally take on this forum, the view of the person (user) and how they are directly affected.

I think we as people have a blind spot to seeing that advertising is bad for people who view it, because we are used to it, and also used to trying to ignore it. Maybe we as techies know ads are dangerous and use ad blockers almost all the time. So we don’t see them, they are out of mind for us and we forget that other people are being tracked, manipulated, scammed and all the many negative psychological effects like jealousy, overpaying, bad decision making, depression even from the most innocent of ads.

Maybe you use and ad blocker, but would you want your family to be viewing ads? Remember how most people are affected, they are not techies, most people are affected 10x ad badly as us because they do not know the dangers of ads, or don’t came much about technical details or know how to block ads and tracking.

“the prevailing stance within academic circles is that advertising is harmful to society” - Goldie Hayko, University of Hawaii

“Richard Polley uses the metaphor of ‘brain surgery’ when he speaks of the influence advertising has on society.”

“In brief, they view advertising as instrusive and environmental and its effects as inescapable and profound. They see it as reinforcing materialism, cynicism, irrationality, selfishness, anxiety, social competitiveness, sexual preoccupation, powerlessness, and/or a loss of self-respect.”

The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising

I wonder the opposite, how it it possible to not to take into account the negative effect of advertising on the viewer?

Actually I think ad tech can easily do a lot to reduce the hams of advertising. Any more ethical ad system should have much fewer ads this is easily possible and also much higher quality ads whatever the latter means.

As you probably know showing only about 13% of ads will generate 80% of revenue. Showing about 23% of ads will generate 90% of total revenue. Showing 33% of ads will generate 95% of total revenue.

So we can easily reduce ad exposure by 87% (show 13% of ads) and still get 80% of the ad revenue because we are only showing ads to the richest and best targeted people. That means we can easily reduce the negative effects of ads on society, for only a small decrease in profits.

I’m sure that if ad tech can be used to track people and manipulate them, then it can also be used to raise the quality standards of ads. The problem is that there is no variable which rates the quality standards of ads, so publishers can not choose to balance the money they get from each ad vs its quality. If we introduce a quality variable to every ad, and introduce human quality checks, and introduce a law which requires every ad and impression to be tracked and recored in a public database, we are using ad tech to solve problems which could not be solved without tech.

That’s not what I meant, I don’t think I ever said it is only tech or only ads that have the problem. We’ve had many discussions here that say hey maybe its society that has the problem, maybe people are bad and so on. I don’t buy that because as people we have a unique trait to share and pass down knowledge, so we are not simply animals that are affected by hormones, instincts, and the law of the jungle, we also have this other ability to work as a team and uniquely create and share wisdom to do good. So the question is do we accept the law of the jungle as we have done for millions of years, or do we use our evolved organism to do smart and kind things, as one highly interconnected species that is hopefully building up our wisdom and compassion?

Well if I buy somethings on the black market, it’s not the same as buying from a regulated market or a market where the sellers have more compassion. So as we know different markets have vastly different levels of safety, of scams, of kindness, of honor. Our goal is regulated markets and markets with honor.

Because if a person does not know they are being manipulated, they are more likely to fall for the manipulation.

Guess we should look out for them too. Especially for ex-lovers.

Yes I that and I hope we can use that to help solve the problem, but to me it seems instead technology is making things crazier and more out of control, accelerating the problem.

Great idea!

This might be ideal if possible. We should discuss this more. I don’t have an answer.

Not at all it’s not a contradiction. I entered this discussion (while most other active forum members seemingly are ignoring it) because I am one of the few people here who believe in the gray area as the solution. I believe in ethical business, though many people here would say is that really pure humane tech?

Just because just about all advertising is bad for the viewer doesn’t mean it should be abolished, I’ve mentioned this before. For example saying alcohol is bad and is not for humans, that’s not the same thing as saying we should get rid of alcohol.

I think we can have a better environment for ads, a much better one and that is the solution I am aiming for. We can never get rid of all toxicity, but I hope that we can have things which are minimally toxic and allow our species to better survive the harmful effects of ads. But it is impossible to progress with that discussion without acknowledging that almost all ads are bad to the viewer.

Me too let’s build on that.

Great!

Unless you crowd-fund, take donations or get a grant from a wealthy donor or a government. You could also bootstrap, or have employees be the owners and time their investment. A few discussions in this forum about the dangers of having investors have control, many saying that is too much of a negative effect. On the other hand, I have advocated that it would be possible to get investors, but they would have to be very clear up front that this is not a normal company this is benefit company and this is for good and profits will always be second to other things.

Sure I agree. They are in it for themselves.

Top 20 publishers in each vertical, that sounds difficult but hope it could work. Who knows?

I personally wouldn’t want to download an app. Apps are dangerous and annoying and are unneeded for reading things. This should all be done in browser.

You should become a mutual / cooperative where your users own the company fully. That way you will grow faster and with greater trust, and it will be harder to disrupt you. Each piece of attention become a piece of ownership, all profits and voting rights go to users. Of course you can still use money for growth and running the company.

Couldn’t help but notice this, seems you are to create a “token”? Straight up I believe that all tokens are scams. Nothing wrong with having points or something like the points we get at the supermarket for being shoppers. But when people start to call points “tokens”, that is some kind of manipulation of trying to convince people that points are actually “tokens” like money and should be purchased. I know the flow in your model is for money to flow from advertisers to viewers, I hope there is never a case where any person would every spend money to buy points or buy shares in a company through points (so-called “tokens”), because that is a manipulation.

That sounds like a better description.

Yeah!

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I’m not sure if that is an accurate representation of academic circles, or of the paper?

Academia is going to include communications and business, two verticals where advertising is taught and trained in some cases. Critical Theory in academia is going to suggest concerns where they see them to their viewpoint and research everywhere and is not anywhere conclusive or scientific, just analytical and thought-provoking, but that’s not the same as “the prevailing stance in academia is advertising is harmful to society”

The paper critiqued various reviews from different studies, each on their own independent conclusions of advertising, and synthesized them, and also included some beneficial aspects to advertising as well.

Advertising is also a full spectrum, there are different types of advertising, and then there is marketing, outreach, Public Relations, etc

So the “bad effects” of advertising in this sense, which is more psychological, is not like a clearly defined problem with clear demarcations as say climate change or the known bad effects of the unintended consequences of digital advertising third party mediation platforms, data tracking, etc

I just want to make sure we are on the same page, distinguishing the concerns raised.

A horrible social problem, advertising is a “necessary evil” and you know it better than I, as you admit you depend on advertising to make a living.

The necessary evil of advertising is that it robs from Peter to pay Paul. Or better put, Peter feels robbed while Paul is getting paid.

Making matters worse, because Peter feels robbed because he has experienced so many toxic ads, Peter still feels robbed when he is shown an ad that isn’t.

Except on SuperBowl Sunday, when Peter tunes in, primarily for the entertaining commercials as part of the pizzazz of super bowl Sunday. Peter likes ads when they are entertaining, or funny, or informative.

As user, I go to your site, I’m the one who has my attention influenced and traded, without my permission, to a third party, so you can make revenue from running a business as a publisher.

But as a user, I am receiving value from you in exchange, since I’m not paying you directly for the work you’ve done.

So if Peter is getting something in return, why does Peter still feel robbed?

This is why digital ad tech is so crazy

All of us, me included HATE advertising. Before there was the internet, I hated ads on TV and Radio.

Magazines and newspapers were acceptable, I guess, but still required me to work more by turning more pages through the ads, or compete with my attention on the page, so they still annoyed me, especially when I was actually paying for the magazine or newspaper already.

Unless of course, I liked the ad. That’s a funny contradiction here with the “audience”. We all hate ads except when we like them.

  • On the internet, We hate digital advertising because it not just ROBS Peter to pay to Paul, but takes more and more of the revenue share from Paul too, robbing both Peter AND Paul and then robbing the brand advertiser by delivering fake Peters to Pauls website.

  • Worse, digital ad tech then creates fake Pauls (like clickbait fake news sites) to find real Peters, so they can rob them some more!

This problem is distinct from the academic papers you cited. I view this problem as a distribution and transactional problem.

  • This transactional problem has made Paul sooooo poor, that Paul has no choice but to run more and more third party ad networks, even though every year Paul sees less and less revenue from showing more and more ads.

  • So Peter decides to get ad blockers, so to hell with Paul. Now Paul has to run more ad networks and ads to maximize the smaller and smaller audience of his that isn’t ad blocker savvy.

  • Not only that, but now Paul has to run more and more “clickbaity” sounding titles and articles to compete with clicks.

What I am proposing with Native Smart is that the digital advertising eco-system, viewed solely through the lens as a distribution and transactional system, independent of the content with which it distributes, has inherent design flaws and by creating a healthy distribution and transactional system that removes these design flaws, we can have a system that pays both Peter and Paul, certainly more than each is currently, while creating more opportunities for more interesting sponsored content that Paul, the publisher, can choose or not.

I can assure you that if Peter is getting paid too, Peter will not feel like he is being robbed. Peter has the awareness that not just his attention is valuable, but that the collective and collaborative value of all internet users opting in is building true wealth that can be stored, increased, traded, and redistributed. Peter becomes a stakeholder in the eco-system.

Thus, the relationship with the advertisers themselves can change.

If Peter doesn’t feel robbed by ads, he is likely to have a different reaction to them, and a healthier relationship with the advertisers or brands abstractly speaking. Peter is more responsive, brands are happier with the KPIs, and publishers make more revenue without the necessity for a toxic distribution system.

Brands, Internet Users, and Publishers will naturally change their behaviors and habits when the environment for the distributional and transactional side of the technology change.

Can we build consensus that before we can address the broader problems of advertising listed by the critical theorists, that building a healthy distribution and transactional environment on the internet for sponsored media would be a good first step?

If we are talking about the abstract “dangers of ads” which is, at this stage, merely an abstract problem - let’s set that problem aside so we can build consensus on the problems of the delivery, distribution, and transactional mechanisms, which are independent of the abstract problems of the “psychological” effects.

Make sense?

  • Ad blockers are only defendable if third-party ad networks are using the ad to drop malware or clog data, ad blockers are not a solution because they rob the publisher creator, and there is no fair exchange between user and creator.

  • Ads, as delivered by third-party ad networks, have very easy to define other sets of problems, independent of the abstract problem of advertising broadly speaking. Dropping cookies or malware is one of those problems.

If you mean the “abstract and theoretical problem” of all advertising on society, we probably don’t because that is beyond our control, and only four things can solve that,

  1. public awareness for critical thinking.
  2. regulations
  3. channel control via publishers or broadcast channels. Limited, but still effective.
  4. removing capitalism altogether.

  • Number 4 is like sooo unlikely, so I don’t want to waste time on that one. I want to figure out how to work within the system to make the system better.

  • Regulations require influence in politics. Politics. oye, talk about another ecosystem which doesn’t work too well, which means NO one will really get what they want including users. Regulations can be gamed, new methods will be devised around them.

  • Channel control is decentralized, meaning you as a publisher DONT HAVE to run those ad networks, you could choose, like many publishers, to sell your media directly to advertisers you approve. You depend on the networks because they do your media sales for you. Native Smart does give more channel control features to pubs and advertisers

  • Public awareness will achieve critical mass when the average internet user is fully informed of the value of their attention in the eco-system, and feel that they are compensated as a partner for that contribution, not hunted like a product.

Let’s get to the fun stuff: a pathway towards a critical mass solution :slight_smile:

Read above why “fewer ads” wont work in the current digital ecosystem, the entire ecosystem would have to change for that to work and make financial sense. “Higher quality” ads are limited to publishers as the design flaw treating web publishers like magazines instead of broadcasters gives them few choices. Its always the brand that gets to define what the “higher quality” ad is, not the pub or the user, in practical real world marketplaces.

I’m not sure I understand what you are modelling here, can you explain it another way? 13% of ads what? viewed on a single channel? Paid for by a brand? Whose revenue? Brands ROI? publishers? Not sure I follow the transactional path here.

To understand what you are suggesting I just need this modelled and defined clearer.

I agree, but within limits. Ad tech can only change the distribution and transactional standards for advertising. Its just the midware. It does not “create” the ads themselves, that is at the agency or brand level.

“Quality” is very subjective, publishers should be able to control that and the responsible digital advertising ecosystem will allow you to control that, but it can’t “force” anyone to make a “quality” ad, just create an environment where quality ads outperform ads that are toxic.

make sense?

With Native Smart, publishers have direct control, and can even change the ad themselves, so if you mean the abstract psychological problem of the ad, technology can only offer decentralization to the responsible parties to make that effect.

Okay, I could see how something like that could emerge, but its impossible for that to emerge within the current ad tech mediation platform architecture, and it by itself would not solve the core problems of distribution and transactional which distributes the quality ad.

We are On the same page here. Keyword: evolve.

We have to design each step in the path of “evolving” there, I’m sure you agree it won’t happen with the push of one button somewhere, it could take a generation or more.

I like that, however Markets with honor do not require regulation, and regulation cannot force “honor”, only truce, but I agree in principle!

Maybe it is just the designer in me, but I think it is just environmental. I should confess my own thought leader here is Bucky Fuller, I am following his lead. Bucky said that if you want to change human behavior, simply change the environment that humans are interacting in, and the behavior will change accordingly.

You don’t think that eventually, most people become skeptical of claims from advertisers? That’s what sucks about ad tech, MOST people would never buy an affiliate BS skin cream. Only .1% would make that type of decision.

But if you have the reach of BILLIONS Of people, you can find that .1% gullible person who will if the CPM is low enough to get that click (Thanks Facebook)

And if you are the actual publisher, you are the one who can directly control that by not running ads from scammy affiliates.

We can use it to help solve the problem. I’m really a big advocate for Bucky Fuller’s thinking, even though he died before the internet, his principles of design are best placed here. His core philosophy was to work with all the forces in the whole system, every single one, and not resist any of them.

Tech is speeding it up and exasperating it, but also making us aware of it ironically at the same time! Sometimes I think that is the final “joke” of the whole social media/internet problem, it finally revealed who the REAL culprits are behind everything, and unfortunately, the real culprits are all of us. Companies, institutions and governments suck to the same degree that human nature can suck.

Hope: Human nature to respond to the environment, if the environment is collaborative naturally, humanity naturally adjusts. Add stresses and competition, darker side of humanity comes out to party.

I would like to propose that there is a way to have incredible profit potential in direct relationship to the amount of problems solved, without requiring the need for VCs or IPOs.

Publishers just want money. Adoption is easy when you pay them for it.

I like the idea of a browser extension, not sure I am on the same page as you as the app. I am more concerned with browser security, but plenty of room for experts smarter than I to weigh in. Either way same effect.

Exactly. You described it almost 90% accurately without any details from me!

I’m going to start this answer off by probably disappointing you at first, but hopefully converting you.

“All tokens are scams” is a tough hurdle if that is your position. All tokens are not scams. There are also distinct types of tokens, utility tokens and security tokens. Either of them CAN be scams, but not all of them are.

While the world of cryptocurrency reminds me of the early days of the internet wild west, with a few great gems plus loads of crap, the design principles in cryptocurrency, things like decentralization, smart contracts, shared ledgers, etc are very intriguing to play with as forces, and those forces don’t require cryptography or blockchain necessarily. So while Native Smart is not a blockchain or crypto, I don’t want to bash that community of developers by any means, I really get inspired by some of the innovation some are looking to achieve, and I still think there is lots more exciting things to come from fintech. Actually many of the problems in that community remind me of the problems in ad tech.

But our attention digital asset is not a cryptocurrency. I only use the word “token” because that is a word used on the marketplace.

Please, now let me convert you if you don’t mind. :slight_smile:

Native Smart’s entire ecosystem views attention itself AS a currency, meaning our attention has an inherent value to it, and all money follows the flow of attention.

We have a digital “asset” that stores the transactional value of five seconds of attention, and splits the revenue share between the parties involved, so this digital asset is more like a purchase order than a “token” like in cryptocurrency, however it is literally a purchase order for attention, which is the currency.

This is not blockchain technology or cryptocurrency at all

We call this a “Smart Insertion Order” and they are purchased by brands or advertisers (as all media is purchased via “insertion orders” already, ours is just more refined and Peer to Peer).

That purchase order always stores the value of the USD deposit in the bank that the brand paid for.

I would rather call that a “digital asset” than a purchase order, naturally - as for declaring attention a “currency” that is measurable is not something the SEC has a jurisdiction over - and we’ve just created way for our attention currency to function as a measurable and transactional event, since ultimately that is what everyone wants and everyone is trading, attention.

To summarize, this attention digital asset, which stores real-world monetary value, and is earned through viewing, distributing, and verifying sponsored media on internet users devices (our equivalency to “mining” without requiring cryptography) has many further interesting applications for the web!

This digital asset is easy to earn. I believe our collective attention as internet users is the true currency on the internet, and our smart insertion order allows for the easy flow and transaction of our natural attention currency, either to the publisher or to bank account deposit of internet users.

Whoever holds the digital asset can take that asset and either order “attention” from internet users or cash it in for USD, or hold onto it, store it, trade it for later, or text it to a friend who can cash it out into their bank accounts.

What’s more, internet users can pool the collective value of their attention into groups, and focus that value on direct action causes, fundraising, charities, college tuition, etc.

Pardon the pun, but do I have your attention here?

Looking forward to your response, and fyi, I think most are not participating in this thread because many do not understand the granular details of ad tech and marketplace, and I tend to write a bit too much! So thanks for staying in here with me and lets keep it going.

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It’s cool, I appreciate your ambition in trying to fix the attention economy. Hope that it works. I’m concerned that it has apparently been a couple of years or so and there isn’t much to show in the way of results. When things work, they just work and if there are too many roadblocks, well I’d bet those roadblocks aren’t going to vanish. And it only takes one roadblock for it not to work.

When I write here, I usually don’t look to find arguments that support my point of view. Instead I look to just explore and promote what I think is the truth. If there are things that go against what I thought was true, or against my own thing, then I accept those things because this isn’t a sales pitch here. Our goal is to expand wisdom. So for I example I acknowledge that the ads on my site are harmful and deceitful, and they also track people. I’m just looking for raw truths. That I make money from ads or that users get a good free web service for free doesn’t change the raw truths about my ads. However once those truths are put together, we have bad things and good things and hopefully the good things outweigh the bad things but that may not be the case. That is how I think, find the truth about things, all the good and bad points which will always exist in this imperfect world, and try to find a better solution.

The Community is mostly run by Arnold, along with us he’s shaping this place to analyse things based off improving wellbeing, freedom and society. The reason I’ve mentioned the harmful effects of ads is because we see things from the human perspective under that framework. I think it’s also clear virtually all people accept free ad-based services and highly prefer ads to paying anything. I also believe that paying for content isn’t really humane because it limits access to people who do not pay. Knowing these things, we will never find a perfect solution. But we also know that the negative effects of ads will always be there and be preferred to paying, so your proposed solution seems like it is looking in the right place.

So you’re trying to reduce the negative effects of ads, I think there are many ways for you to go and many things to explore if the solution you’ve proposed is hitting a roadblock. The end goal is just to reduce the negative effects of ads, right? There could be many ways to go about that.

From both the human and publisher perspective, an ad is an ad impression. What I mean is reducing ad impressions, leaving just the top xx% of ads impressions. The numbers I presented are from my own web site, they could differ from other sites. So only showing 23% of all potential ad impressions would generate 90% of revenue.

Sure academia teaches people how to do bad things too. What they mean by ads being harmful to society is simply that there are recognised harmful effects. It doesn’t mean there is a consensus that the harmful effects on the viewer outweigh the need for ads. They’re just saying there are many bad effects and whether there are any good ones too that wouldn’t affect the fact there are bad effects. They’re simply saying these facts exist.

Well I would argue that the negative psychological effects of ads could be worse than the problems of climate change or tracking. From my own perspective, ads have done more harm to me than has climate change or tracking. I assume most people in the world have similar experiences to myself, where ads have somehow change their thinking and their perception on reality to where they can’t think straight and make poor life choices, big and small. And I assume for most people the negatives of ads are worse than climate change or tracking in their lives as well. When you experience something firsthand, and are aware of what is going on, you just know it to be true. I think that fact that society ignores these kind of problems is disturbing, but follows a trend where we do all kinds of dangerous and unhealthy things that we ignore but then put too much focus on small issues.

It would be impossible for sponsored media and ads to be healthy. The truth is healthy, unbiased and fully democratic and for me that is the goal, while sponsored content is biased. I actually believe information technology will take us in the direction of truth and democracy if we get it right.

I think what you propose, yes we should take steps to limit the hams of ads. Right now distribution is a mess, so if you can make it better and more humane then sign me up.

I don’t view it that way. I actually encourage my site visitors to use ad blockers and explain to them the dangers of ads. I think if all ads were blocked, we’d have a better internet. Personally, I think if all ads were blocked I might even make more money in the long run since my competition would whither off and I could still make money through an affiliate program. We would see a shift to volunteer internet, sponsorships and affiliate programs and overall the web would be better. I believe web browsers should forbid ads.

I am also sure that applications should not contain any ads. Again this would make mobile computing so much better. I believe the OS should forbid ads. There is no place for ads in programs, it’s just an insult to humanity. There are so many ways to monetise apps from freemium to affiliate programs that it just makes sense.

I wish people would open up their eyes and see how easy the solution is, we just need Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla to ban all ads in browsers and apps and suddenly we’d have a more humane ecosystem. Facebook and Google would be castrated, many other problems would be greatly reduced including the annoyance and deceit of the media.

The business opportunity is there, the selling point is humane tech which works for the user. It just means cutting the cord of the attention economy, surveillance, tracking and advertising altogether. Services if they want to compete in this new humane ecosystem will have to figure out how to exist without surveillance, tracking and advertising. There will be companies which refuse that, and that will be the biggest resistance, but if there are enough people in this new ecosystem then new humane services will emerge to take their place.

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We haven’t launched yet, we’ve just been in pilot mode. We’ve encountered countless roadblocks, and every single roadblock has made the technology and full scope that much better.

That is partially why I am interested in your point of view, I want to see what roadblock perhaps I’ve yet to account for.

Yes, I want to create positive effects from “ads” while redirecting the wealth of the attention economy back to the shareholders of the attention, us.

I think when money moves, people tend to listen. Becoming aware that our attention has a measurable value is becoming aware that it is no longer “advertising”, there is simply a marketplace for “request for attention” to any subject, content, etc. The medium is the message - that is still true, if not more, than ever.

So yes, I believe the broader problem you’re touching on, which I prefer just to call “propaganda”, will tend to become more refined, verifiable, and open when the product turns the tables on the predator and becomes the manager instead.

Ultimately, it is up to the individual to engage in critical thinking and to question what they are presented, but I think giving users the tools and the environment to make the distinctions become clearer is the necessary first step.

If you’re talking about only 23% of your audience actually seeing the ad (either by avoiding ad blockers or some viewability tracker by the advertiser) is what generates the revenue, that means that the remaining 77% of your audience had to have an avail for an ad (even if they blocked it) for you to be running revenue on the other 23%, or the viewability tracker only paid for 23% of your ad viewing audience because there was the payable measurement on some sort of specific engagement.

I don’t know which models you run on your site, pure CPM, CPC, CPV if video, or rev share with the affiliate or content syndicator, but ironically what you are describing are actually some of the arguments for using data tracking in the advertising industry as the selling point, spend more money on reaching the most likely engaged and interested audience. :slightly_frowning_face:

I understand that is a very serious issue for you, I would love it if there was a technology that could somehow remove the harmful psychological effects of commercial, institutional, social, or political propaganda - but that is a distinct problem from climate change as well as the problems that have solely initiated from specific third-party ad networks in digital advertising environment. I only have a solution to get the ball rolling in just one of those categories. :smiley:

Red Bull makes genuinely compelling content that is sincerely interesting to specific demographics, and all they do is slap their logo on the content. Some of their best content requires little distribution costs, and it is shared virally.

What is unhealthy about that? I want to understand your perspective there.

Do I misunderstand you that you are suggesting that a coffee company sponsoring a podcast, and the podcaster makes his audience aware of this brand of coffee exists (because everyone needs attention to function especially companies) is psychologically unhealthy at face value?

I thought you would never ask :joy: If you want, PM me your site, we only have a few products ready at this stage (phase 1) and always looking for an interesting strategic or testing partner, and if I see where we can be of assistance now, I’ll propose something and if it makes sense to you that would be great. We actually view ourselves as a publisher tool to empower pubs.

I still don’t know what type of publisher you are, but what I mean is, genuine publishers specifically quality news organizations have only two ways of making money, subscriptions or ads. Subscriptions don’t cut the mustard. Professional, premium and most important responsibly published content need to make revenue, or it won’t exist anymore.

If any publisher is running an advertising-based revenue model, that means it is in exchange for viewers attention on ads. I get that you don’t mind your audience blocking ads, but that is because currently, you know that it is not a fair exchange, but in principle, if an audience figures out a way to “hack” advertising out of media that requires it, that is inherently unfair to the creators if those creators are professionals.

Affiliate is just another form of advertising/marketing. Why is that less harmful? Help me understand your perspective here?

I agree, and I think we’ve been using different interpretations of “advertising” after reading this. Sponsorships, non-profit awareness, affiliate, etc all the same umbrella, all require awareness building, attention from my point of view. Any media that requires attention and can pay for it or trade for it is what I reference in this discussion as “advertising”.

The internet should operate under fair exchange rules for everyone, and it should be seamless and ubiquitous.

well, we could just get rid of the internet all together :slight_smile:

I’m glad I have you at least partially on board. There is a pathway to get close to something that you describe. Zero roadblocks with publishers, zero roadblocks with users, zero roadblocks with brands. only roadblocks are the usual start up roadblocks, which are usually bankers :joy:

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  1. How do you plan on getting advertisers and ads?
  2. Is this just for USA web surfers?
  3. Why would anyone install an app to visit websites?
  4. Do people really have the problem of “the websites I’m using for free are just not paying me”?
  5. Would it make sense for all revenue to go to publishers?
  6. Aren’t you trying to solve too many problems at once?
  7. Aren’t you in a near-impossible situation where you need to build 3 different customers groups simultaniously: readers, publishers and advertisers
  8. Wouldn’t it be much easier if you only needed to be getting publishers on board?
  9. What if you only solved one problem, removing tracking from ads, making ads just based on context and user IP location?

I’m of the opinion that we have far too much media. We could have less. You mention “responsibly” published content, but even the most respected news sites in the world are publishing sensationalist headlines, fake news and running “popular” stories instead of what is actually important. The result is news is fiction. The cause in part is money-motivation.

I would think with less money-motivation in media, quality could actually go up.

My sits is in the reference category. The reason why 23% of impressions make 90% of revenue is users have different geographies, different behavioral targeting, view different content and there are different ad locations (“placements”). The same would be true of every site.

Well the kinds of ads you describe are among the “healthiest” ads possible. But healthy is the wrong word to use here since ads in general aren’t healthy for the viewer. That’s why I use the terms higher quality and more appropriate.

Red Bull is sugar water (sugar is like a drug, water is just water) mixed with caffeine (another drug). Sugary beverages are considered so harmful that multiple governments have actual laws specifically taxing them and also limiting where they can be sold and advertised.

About 180,000 people die every year due to consuming sugary beverages. Their consumption increases the chance of early death bt 31%. One reason people drink them is because of ads.

Ads > Drink sugary drinks > Bad health > Death

Is there any question that this is literally blood money?

Why would you ever think of Red Bull ads as being healthy?

There is a genuine need as a publsher to make more revenue. I’ve had 14 million visits last year, but have received only US 40,000 from display ads.

Another concern I have for your model is that maybe you want to run hi-revenue interstitial video. You know there has been a lot of negative things about video ads in non-video content, and interstitial landing page ads are considered so “disturbing” that they’re penalised by Google search.

I think better solutions are now:

  1. Limiting to one ad per view maximum
  2. Limiting size of ads to some small percentage of screen size
  3. No tracking, targeting etc whatsoever
  4. High quality ads
  5. Ads that visually match content, such as so-called “native” ads. No stupid ads in rectangles. Instead ads with backgrounds that match the page background (transparent backgrounds). Different shapes!
  6. All ads 100% responsive-sized. Seriously! No standard ad sizes whatsoever.
  7. No blank spaces if ads are blocked / empty
  8. No iframes
  9. Ads load at same time as page
  10. Ads should be tiny in size (bytes), ie one image or just some text with a link
  11. No JavaScript in ads! Seriously.
  12. Ads load directly from publisher server, or from a trusted place with no tracking
  13. All ads and ad link targets verified by a human before published
  14. All impressions recorded in an open public database, including who is paying for the ad (the final payer), the ad content, the page URL, the user location and time

So yes some wild ideas here. Insane! But could it be possible, if the publisher’s own analytics system (running JavaScript on the front end) was tracking viewability of ads? And there was some way to verify that the analytics are real?

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GREAT questions, Love it

Oh that’s the demand side of the business. It’s just adding a media sales team, we’ve already scoped which markets to begin.

Nope, anywhere a user is located they will be shown a ‘SNIP’ (name for the native content page)

I dont know! Thank goodness nothing in our business plan or platform requires that :slight_smile:

No, I think people have the problem that they feel robbed by advertising networks and are not aware of the full value of their attention on the marketplace.

Sure, if the publishers sells their own ads and serves their own ads

Not enough! :slight_smile:
Many of the solutions emerged organically, we follow a design principle so usually, once one or two problems find a solution, that same solution solves other problems sometimes unintentionally. The platform just solves the problems that it does, that’s all.

The hard part is always the “supply and demand” problem, chicken or egg, which comes first.

We partner with the publisher (who has the audience and are the supply source). In our business plan proper, that means we come to that publisher with $$ in hand, as long as money is in hand, publisher adoption is usually predictable.

We give the publishers the tools for their new broadcast channel via integration.

Some publishers have their own media sales teams, then we are out of the way. Other pubs we do the media sales for.

That’s, however, phase 1, our current technology. That’s already piloted and tested.

Phase 2 is the decentralization of our main server, and that’s when users download our app, not to view ads, but so they can become a broadcast node (ideally partnering with the publishers, so if you, for example, have a loyal audience, they would probably become your support network and share the revenue with them instead of third party. We do have an adoption plan and business strategy for that, it’s actually a lot easier than you might think.

of course :slight_smile:

But we are creating an ecosystem, comprised of pubs, brands, and users. It would be great if all publishers sold their own media, but they don’t.

We do offer that as part of our phase 1 technology.

Sensationalism and clickbait is an ad model, and since the prices of CPM’s get lower and lower to the pubs while the third parties make more and more, publishers create more and more sensationalized headlines, so the ecosystem itself is toxic as is and it feeds on itself.

As for media in general, sure I can see that viewpoint, but that’s outside of the scope of this platform, and we can choose which publishers sign on to it and we can block others.

I’m not going to comment on the product side, just the “ads”. Lets say its a coconut water company so we can separate the issue from the product.

Red Bull as a creator of media, creates interesting content and uses that to market itself. Users “enjoy” the content. As a form of marketing or advertising, that is more appealing and less annoying than display, its also similar to classic advertising in early radio and television, brands sponsor genuine content.

  1. Its up to the publisher what kind of ad products of ours they want to run.
  2. Its up to the publisher “when” they want their channel to show to the user (first click, second click, etc)
  3. Google penalizes only when an interstitial “pop up” or overlay is on the first landing page from visit from google search, not anywhere else. We don’t advise publishers do that anyway, and while we could serve as an overlay, thats not our core tech, which is an actual url page on the pub’s site, intergrated with their CMS
  4. SNIPs, while they can accomodate third party content syndicators or interstitial video, the focus is more on social video platforms, like a YouTube or Facebook video, or articles, and there is never any autoplay anyway.

As a pub, our tech allows you to control that

Yeah, unfortunately, that doesn’t work with premium advertisers, the performance on those ads is horrible, and that’s where you bump into the viewability problem.

A snip page is a full screen content HTML 5 page native to the publisher for five seconds, viewer can opt in or opt out, high CPM is made for pub, no more ads are necessary on other pages, voila. Viewer exchanges pure, un distracted five seconds of their attention and never have to worry about viewing any more ads on the site.

donzo

You can approve which ads you want to run, or sell your own since we give you a premium channel

Our technology is not an “ad unit”, it is an HTML 5 content page that, in principle, a brand can place images, an article, or video, and it would look as if they created it on your site. Your audience sees the page for five seconds, (remember, this is content driven, so we do encourage the brands to work with content, not ad units).

So yes of course, the ad as a content page would match the theme or vertical of whatever page or section your audience is visiting, and you control that.

We aint called “native smart” fer nuthin; :smiley_cat:

Yes, responsive size it is a full content page that is scrollable.

of course, and we are not a display network, if no ad is running, your channel does not run, simple.

Could not agree more, but some pubs need them and we can offer the creation of an iframe within the SNIP environment, but I don’t recommend it.

Donzo. Our page loads just as fast as any publisher page, except without the drag of third party ad networks loading ads and cookies.

Again, small ads that users cant see, or train their eye to look away, don’t work for anyone. They are horrible at performance, pay you less and less money, and most users can care less.

We only present a shell of an HTML5 Content page that is served, in principle, between all pages or wherever a pub wants to place them.

When publishers can present for brands five seconds of full screen attentionf from user, without any other content distractions, that is a premium product that can scale.

All display ads suck, small ads dont work.

What do you mean “in ads”, do you mean you integrate the ad network via a javascript tag placed on your site?

Currently, ads are served through our centralized server, with real time analytics and publisher sees what we can see. NO TRACKING, and that is also controlled at publisher level.

That human being is called “the publisher” and you approve which content pages you want, or dont.

The publisher has access to the data base, who is paying for the ad is listed in the ad (sponsored content regulation), but no advertiser will want their full media strategy and ad buy in the public domain, it would be foolish for them too for it would insure their competition would learn it. However, if you as a publisher want to do that, and the brand agrees, we have tools that could allow you to share that with your users, if you wanted.

Yes, exactly, YOU can track it, you have access to the same set of tools and dashboard that we do. Real time anlaytics. you can even change the page on the fly without placing a new code or run a new campaign.

Viewability on the ads is guaranteed by our system.

You deserve some sort of a prize, thanks for sticking this out with me!

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I think discussions should be discussions, not startup pitches. This shouldn’t be a debate where one side is trying to prove some point, rather this is a place where people should try to seek knowledge, truth, compassion. I feel like I am not providing anything useful to you if no matter what I say you’ll find some argument in favor of your startup.

If you want to have a startup, you should look for reasons it could fail. When you deflect and destract from your startup’s potential weaknesses, you are doing yourself a disservice.

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:slightly_frowning_face:

I think you’ve been very helpful, but I think you’re misinterpreting my intentions here, but I thank you for your participation in this discussion, especially your critical questions which I believe are important for any developer to address.

True, I have a startup, for five years, and have piloted and coded for many of the issues you raised, and I raised it specifically to OP’s thread. While OP’s post was an abstract idea, I was eager to share a working MVP and get feedback, and perhaps generate a little enthusiasm.

Consider; Perhaps many more will come here with their technologies or startups, inspired by solutions, to this forum. Perhaps some come here to not just to seek, but to share. As a developer who has a genuine concern as well as years and years of hard effort and direct involvement spent on this problem, I can tell you it does feel more like a punch in the gut when that is regarded as an irrelevant sales pitch instead of a critical discussion, which is what I assumed we were having.

Thanks for your time regardless.

Best
RV

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If you want to have a startup, you should look for reasons it could fail. I think that when you deflect and destract from your startup’s potential weaknesses, you’re doing youself a disservice.

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Startup brings great fortune.

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Ha ha, sorry for being so crude because I was getting frustrated.

There are many humane tech startup proposals in this Community. By my judgement yours is the best I’ve seen so far when rated for effectiveness. Most are just creating apps. While your proposal is effective because it tackles a problems of a major tech product, advertising, by creating a more humane replacement.

The reason I’ve been critical and trying to get you to change your mind is that I think it needs pivots to work. I didn’t want to be obnoxious and say that especiallly since you’ve been working on it for years and know it better. So I was hoping that by giving you ideas you would see things differently yourself. But it seems you’ve countered my ideas, defended your model rather than adapted it, so I became frustrated.

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I found this post in another thread and thought it might be relevant too. I also consider essentially all advertising as being bad (not evil) so I believe that any humane tech that takes money from advertising (“brain surgery”) should at least say, yes we know it’s bad but what we’re striving for is something that is less bad than what we have now.