Buying Advertising and Promotion discussion

Advertising on Steemit

 
There are people who think that buying bidbot votes are akin to traditional advertising on other sites but, this is not quite true. You see, if an advert is bought say, in the newspaper for 100 dollars, what is bought is the space, formatting, typesetting etc. Sure, that space might get some eyes on it, a phone call or two or perhaps a million dollar sale but, the 100 dollars paid does not see a direct return. What gets the potential return is the potential eyes that say, "I might buy that". There are no guarantees and if the advert is deemed a terrible waste of space or inappropriate, the newspaper might not even approve it.

The other thing that 100 dollars does not do is take any value from any other advertisers in that newspaper. External value is delivered to the newspaper and they provide a space to present the advertisement. Two competitors for that space might win or lose it or, the adverts might compete with each other but, the newspaper does not get involved in that at all. They just provide the space, they have no horse in that race. If there is a backlash against an advert, it is directed at the advertiser.

However, once the Newspaper endorses a particular view and gives it preferential treatment and incentive to advertise, it opens itself up to the responsibility of the advert also. The backlash is directed at the Newspaper for endorsing it as well as the advertiser. That means that if an advert is deemed inappropriate, the newspaper must also take responsibility as it has approved the advertisement. This means that newspapers generally play conservatively with their approvals as they become partly liable to public black flags. That is bad for business and will reduce eyes and therefore advertisers willing to pay. Remember, the advertisers are paying for eyes only.

So, what the newspaper also does is pay for journalists and buys stories from syndicates to attract buyers of the newspaper and therefore, the eyes that are needed to see the advert that they were just paid 100 dollars to display. Paying journalists is very expensive hence the degradation in journalistic integrity but, they still pay for content providers to produce content to attract the eyes to the promoted content they have sold. See how it works? They sell space and pay for content. Some portion of that 100 dollars pays other content producers, not the advertiser directly as to pay the advertiser directly destroys their business model.

However still, regardless of content, there is absolutely no guarantee that the advert will see any return for the advertiser at all. Zero. Also, other than the initial advertising cost, the newspaper gets zero added return from the advert. If the advert gets a million dollar sale, the newspaper gets none of it. What it may get however is a repeat customer who believes the sale was because of the advert in their paper and they hope for another big sale.

So, at least from a few perspectives, Advertising is quite different from what is happening at Steemit. If people want to call it advertising and promotion why not make it more like advertising?

What if:

• The advertiser pays the 100 (whatever) to the bots for the eyes.
• The bots votes and provide the exact 100 in value and lose the VP
• The post then appears in the trending pages with a zero payout and the value it got from the bot goes to Hive account@null
• The bidbot keeps the liquid 100 to do with as it pleases.
• There is more left in the pool to upvote the promoted post because the bot voted precisely
• There is more left to upvote other content too
• The community decides the real value of posts and with more in the pool, votes are worth more
• The bidbot can vote again but it loses the additional VP but, it has no obligation to unless it wants to

Wouldn't this satisfy the advertising/promotion stance?

• The bidbot earns well and only loses the VP it spends and the curation amount just like the newspaper loses the space to sell.
• The advertisers get the eyes and publicity they desire at the price they are willing to pay, page 1 or 7 or at the back in the classifieds.
• The pool has more in it for all stake holders to vote and choose meaning they can decide post values again plus more for curation also
• This would mean no real need for flagging promoted posts just for being promoted as they will be subject to the market model to derive their value, just like every other post.

Isn't this Win/win? This would be an actual business model where buyers of the vote would want to have some assurance that the space bought will get eyes keeping the developers developing and the incentive to get valuable eyes on the platform. Bidbots could also help the providers develop the content for those eyes if they want, maybe for a fee but, just like with real advertising, there are no guarantees on return. This model should empower voters with more value and incentivize content producers to produce content that actually attracts voter eyes and makes people want to buy it.

There would also be no need for well subscribed and established users to use bots to get into trending, quality of promoted content would go up because it is subject to market pressures and, voters will have more to play with for both voting and curation return. On top of this, the SBD from the advertisers would be sent to Hive account@null and burned as the promotion tab was designed originally which should help bring back the peg. Wouldn't this be a compromise that satisfies the demands of all users? Unless of course, it isn't about promotion and eyes on for the users at all.

It is after 4am here at the moment so I think there may be some holes and missed points and some potential big tweaks but, if the bidbots are a promotional tool, perhaps they should be run as such. This way more users are having more of their expectations met at a more realistic level and one that is tenable at many levels.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]