We have all had the creepy experience of being stalked by an ad on the internet – you look up a sweater or a book, and it follows you around for days, even after you buy it online. Someone makes money from our data without our consent, and we are not compensated at all. As if that weren’t enough, they also annoy us. It is not only irritating, but also inefficient advertising.
Speaking of inefficient advertising on the internet, when was the last time you willingly clicked on a banner ad? Not to mention irrelevant ads you see here and there and the ads popping up on your screen out of the blue. They are annoying, to say the least.
The content of the advertisement counts in its way, of course.
But format does matter!
And here’s the thing about these ads: "Statistic show that as many as 97 percent of pop-up ads efforts go unrealized”1.
People are online, so are ads
Online advertising has its problems, but that doesn’t mean it is not the right channel to reach out to right audience.
It is.
Bill Gates stated the obvious years ago, saying “the future of advertising is the Internet,” and he couldn’t be more right.
However, it’s also right that broken state of the online advertising needs to be fixed –it needs to be fixed fast- and that there need to be less irritating and more effective ways of advertising to reach the online audience.
It’s doing nobody any good to keep going like this.
The users are so unhappy with ads they want to banish them altogether from the internet (and personal data collection is a whole new ball game).
The publishers are unhappy with the rates they get because of the fees charged by most advertising middlemen, not to mention the fact that bad ads lead to unhappy users and the rapid adoption of ad blockers.
Advertisers are unhappy with being villains of the internet, as well as the ineffectiveness of their ads at the end of the day.
A new way to advertise
Ads have never been this irritating for us though advertisers are suffering from some degree of inefficiency and ineffectiveness since the very beginning of advertising, just not this much, while one would expect it to improve in time, given the current state of technology.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”
─John Wanamaker (1838-1922)
As a proponent of advertising, if American merchant John Wanamaker lived in the internet era, he would certainly know which half is wasted. Especially now, after the launch of the Kind Ads System.
Kind ads: kind and smart
Launched by The Leadchain Foundation, Kind Ads is a decentralized advertising platform tokenized as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain that aims to bridge the gaps between advertisers, publishers, app providers and users. Providing the necessary tools and platform for advertisers, publishers, app providers and users to overcome the inefficiencies in the current market, Kind Ads is ready to attack the current problems of online advertising on all fronts.
Let’s start with Mr. Wanamaker’s problem:
- Which half: that’s the question!
On Kind Ads, there is a way of sorting the good from bad!
The blockchain based scoring system called the Kind Ads Score will rate and rank publishers and domain names via an algorithm on the Kind Ads Protocol. Based on historical campaign effectiveness and information provided by various oracles such as Google Analytics, the algorithm will determine the quality and reputation score of domains and publishers, enabling advertisers to distinguish the good from the bad. In fact, the Kind Ads Score will let advertisers know “which half of the money” will be wasted before they spend their money on them.
Advertisers using the Kind Ads Score can identify high quality publishers to work with and run campaigns targeted to their subscribers with confidence, and high quality publishers can earn more by providing direct access to their high quality subscriber baser. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
And that’s not all.
Connecting advertisers and publishers on a decentralized network, The Kind Ads Ecosystem not only allows publishers and advertisers to come together in a transparent way, but also helps them both save money by cutting out the middlemen.
Benjamin Disraeli, British statesman of the Conservative Party who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- Who needs a middleman?
Today’s technology allows businesses and consumers to interact more and more online rather than physically, as a result, many of the middlemen who stand between manufacturers and consumers are getting squeezed out. Why not advertising middlemen?
Advertisers are tired of rising ad costs, and publishers are tired of 30%+ fees charged by most advertising middlemen. Both advertisers and publishers will benefit from removing the middlemen from the equation –advertisers save money while publisher keep more of it.
The Kind Ads Ecosystem will not charge any fees on ad dollars spent.
Most advertisers are forced to rely on banner & display advertising rather than tapping into the effectiveness of publisher subscriber bases because they have no way of sorting the good from the bad. ─Kind Ads White Paper
Format does matter!
Why are most advertisers insisting on banner & display advertising while they perfectly know those formats are annoying for the users? Because they couldn’t rely on the effectiveness of publisher subscriber bases.
Now, having direct access to a high quality subscriber base, they can use various high converting formats provided by the Kind Ads’ app partners.
Instead of selling just display or video ads, Kind Ads is planning to serve user-friendly ads by focusing on push notifications, email, and chatbots – they understand the importance of format. As a result, we can browse the web without being bombarded by irrelevant ads.I am the master of my data!
Besides, perhaps most importantly -for us, at least- users can have the option to opt-in or out of the Kind Ads Ecosystem and track how their data is being used. That will give us full control over our own information.
We can even “sell” ourselves as a lead, making advertisers compete and bid directly for our attention.
Moreover, users who choose to receive marketing messages will be compensated with KIND tokens.The reward pool
The Kind Ads Ecosystem is powered by the KIND token. Advertisers will buy tokens to access publisher subscriber bases and to buy ads from publishers on the network while publishers, app providers and opted in users are compensated with KIND tokens.
Kind Ads has already raised $20 million in a private ICO round. There is likely to be a public ICO, but Kind Ads has not made an official announcement about it yet.
The KIND token has a unique function for each of the key participants in the Kind Ads Ecosystem.
Trying to do business without advertising is like winking at a pretty girl through a pair of green goggles. You may know what you are doing, but no one else does.
-Cyrus McCormick
We all need advertising. Advertisers need it to promote their products and services, and yes, we, users, also need it to help us choose between the products and services available.
But we expect advertisers and publishers at least not to annoy us with irrelevant and irritating ads. We want respect –and preferably token as a token of respect- from whoever commoditize our data. We expect them to be willing to compensate us for using our information.
Today, Google and Facebook -the two giants- dominate the digital advertising, so it is obvious that the world’s digital advertising market needs alternatives, and it finally has one!
"Kind Ads is going to make the internet kind again"
Kind Ads will disrupt the online advertising, no doubt about it. It will revolutionize the traditional ways of online advertising, enabling advertisers to identify high quality publishers and to interact directly with them in order to find more receptive audience. Publisher will get paid instantly, and without the middlemen fees, they will keep more of it. App providers coming up with high converting formats will get their share from the reward pool. And users will enjoy browsing the web (at least, part of it) without the irritating ads and be compensated for receiving marketing messages.
It is a win-win-win-win for everybody.
*This submission does not offer any sort of investment advice. It is written for the writing contest held by @OriginalWorks.
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