In my previous life I was working as a laboratory head in a big pharma company in Switzerland. My lab´s task was to identify antibodies for medical and diagnostic purposes.
Antibodies are produced by our immune system and vital for us in protecting our organisms against microorganisms, viruses and toxins. The key feature of an antibody is it´s ability to recognize and bind to molecular substructures, termed epitopes, with high specificity. Current technologies allow us to design and engineer antibodies in the lab that bind exclusively to epitopes that we want them to bind to, e.g. to those that abundantly occur on certain tumors but rarely on healthy tissues.
A magic bullet
It was around 2010 during my second year in the company, when a new technology created quite some buzz in the field. So-called antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs) were the talk in town. Spearheaded by the US companies Immunogen and Seattle Genetics this approach held promise to revolutionize cancer treatment and thus got full attention of big pharma.
ADCs are antibodies tethered to a highly potent cytotoxin. The antibody is supposed to home specifically to a tumor where - upon internalization - the cytotoxic payload gets released and starts killing the tumor cells. Any tissue in the human body that is not recognized by the antibody would be spared from the cytotoxic effect allowing to use otherwise lethal concentrations of the toxin.
After short time ADCs were described as the long sought magic bullets, a concept conceived by nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich in 1900.
On the mission
So we got our marching order from our directors and for the following four years my team and I were put on the mission to identify antibodies with the required properties to be used as an ADC (in fact, we had no clue what these properties were so we had to start with rather academic assumptions). Substantial resources were allocated to develop proprietary technologies to bring up the world´s most advanced ADC pipeline.
That was at least the plan.
Six years later
The problem with magic though is that it rarely happens. Today, 6 years and over 20 ADCs later only two of them are actually marketed. And guess what, it's the same two ADCs that started the hype in 2010 (Adcetris® and Kadcyla®).
Too many factors turned out to be critical for clinical efficacy and tolerability and most of these factors are insufficiently understood. Still, there may be a future for next-generation ADCs but as of now the field was not able to catch up with the high expectations.
Another magic bullet
The reason why I´m coming up with this topic is because of the analogy that I see to another supposed magic bullet. One that is fired at you, me and billions of others, hundred times per day. What that may be? Simply replace the antibody with a web crawling algorithm and the cytotoxic payload with an advertizement and you have it: targeted advertizing! The magic bullet sold by advertizing networks and their sole raison d´etre.
The promise that advertizing networks are making to marketeers is that they would deliver their ads to only those sites and only those eye balls where effectiveness is maximal. Similar to an ADC that is supposed to deliver it´s potent cargo only to a narrow subset of cells and nowhere else. To deliver on this promise, ad networks are analyzing and selling third party content and websurver behavior. Actually they are selling the free Internet plus it´s users. That´s a problem for which no solution has yet been found - until recently.
No targeted advertizing whitout the targets
I don´t want to judge whether targeted advertizing holds it´s promise in terms of effectiveness and ROI but one thing seems obvious: the more websurfers detract themselves from being targeted, the less profitable the underlying business models will become. And this is exactly what happens. Meanwhile more than 200 Million websurfers use adblockers and thus have taken themselves out of the equation of content monetization. And their number is increasing day by day:
The pain is now with the content creators. Billions of USD have not been earned due to the rise of adblockers. Millions of browser instances became magic bullet proof so to say. A threat for the free Internet and it´s diversity. But rescue is in sight!
Steemit can save the economics of the free Internet
Steemit is the first content monetization network of its kind that doesn´t require ads. It´s a realm beyond the reach of the ad network´s tentacles. Here, ad networks are kept out of the value creation process and such the annoyance and surveillance tethered to their business models.
The threat of adblockers to the profitability of millions of websites will prove to be major driver for the growth of Steemit, I believe. We see more and more bloggers joining the community as they realize that steemit may help them to escape the dilemma that they are currently trapped in. And they bring in their communities who get added value too: ad-free content and the possibility to earn money through voting, engaging and curating. And the best thing, all of this doesn´t require any magic to work - it only needs some steem;-)
Ideally we will soon get to the point where content creators realize that their rewards are even higher when they choose to publish in Steemit first, rather than recycling the work that they have already published elsewhere. This would be something that we as the community could accelerate by favoring primary publications when it comes to voting.
Would you agree that adblockers are an accelerant for the success of steem? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. What´s the perspective of the bloggers amongst you? How are you dealing with the adblock threat outside there in the Internet? Was it indeed one of the reasons for you to check-in here?
And before I forget, if you have any questions around antibodies, ADCs or lab life let me know, I´ll be more than happy to share my knowledge:-)
Lots of steem to all of you!
References
- Data for chart preparation taken from The 2015 Ad Blocking Report
- Source of images: Adobe Stock, File no. 66802238; Adobe Stock, File no. 95163249