I have always said Steem is in a unique position to revolutionize online advertising. However, going back to the traditional ways of advertising is not the change I have in mind.

I support Steemit Inc going the advertising route to improve their financial state and become more sustainable. For this reason, most of us would absolutely agree with you and in supporting their ads. However, the truth remains that traditional ways of advertising are not the future. They are intrusive in their nature and are forced content. While it is working out as a great short term solution, it is not changing how advertising is done. I do still believe Steem is in a unique position to change advertising. Make it more welcome, interesting, and beneficial for ad consumers.

Ned had the idea and has said this a while back:

He says the following at 1:09 minutes into the video:

For the first time you can bootstrap a currency now with Steem around people's attention. So people are paying their attention to the website, to steemit.com or to another website based on Steem. And then those people can say to people who want their attention: advertisers or people who want to promote posts - "You can only get your content into my feed if you pay me".

First, fixing Promoted feature would a good start. How often people even visit promoted? Instead of burning the funds spent on promoted content, there can be a different kind of distribution of those funds. For example, 1/3 goes to the app/front-end that is promoting, 1/3 added to the curation pool, and 1/3 burned. This will in return increase the interest of users to consume the ad content, engage with the advertiser, bring revenue for the apps, and at the same time create a flow of burning SBD.

Moreover, users can opt-in for this kind of promoted content to be pushed to their feed. Users will be happy to have ad content on their feed, instead of being forced to have it on their feed and looking for alternative solutions to escape them.

Of course, front-ends can come up with more creative ways of monetizing ads and rewarding their users too. However, blockchain based solution can create a more unified advertising system for all apps to use and Steem can increase its value by pioneering a change in online advertising.