{"id":13973,"date":"2019-02-05T22:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T22:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/?p=13973"},"modified":"2019-02-05T22:04:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T22:04:43","slug":"how-blockchain-will-replace-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/how-blockchain-will-replace-advertising\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop the Adness: How Blockchain Will Replace Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his final column<\/a>, New York Times<\/em>tech columnist Farhad Manjoo stated, \u201cThe Internet ad business lies at the heart of just about every terrible thing online.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ads interrupt your experience, slow down your computer, and crash your browser. Ads install spyware, in the form of tracking code called \u201ccookies\u201d (itself a deceptive term, because cookies are delicious). These companies track your every move, which is how ads follow you around the Internet.<\/p>\n

Foreign governments buy Facebook ads to influence voters. When your favorite celebrity tweets about a product, it\u2019s probably an ad. Many websites will give you more coverage if you buy their ads. We don\u2019t trust the media, in part, because we don\u2019t know what\u2019s editorial and what\u2019s advertorial.<\/p>\n

All these problems come down to ads.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t supposed to be this way.The original architects of the World Wide Web thought that micropayments\u2014payments less than a dollar\u2014would be how the web was monetized.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re probably familiar with the \u201c404 error,\u201d when a page is not found on the Internet. The \u201c402 error\u201d was the error you\u2019d get when a payment was required. The 402 predated the 404.<\/em>Have you ever seen a 402 error? No, because we didn\u2019t get micropayments. We got ads.<\/p>\n

Plenty of micropayment systems have been tried and failed, because of what bitcoin pioneer Nick Szabo<\/a> calls \u201cmental transaction costs.\u201d If it costs 25 cents to continue reading a New York Times <\/em>article, you have to mentally compare it to other articles, other websites, what you could buy with\u2026forget it, I\u2019ll just check BuzzFeed instead<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The more we have to think about paying for something, the less likely we are to pay for it. That\u2019s why Amazon invented 1-Click. Doesn\u2019t get any lower-friction than that. Until Bezos invents the 1-Thought, which is an Internet-connected hat that will buy cheesecake as soon as you desire it.<\/p>\n

Today, subscriptions work better than micropayments, because they eliminate that mental friction. One price: all you can eat. New York Times<\/em>: all you can read. HBO: all you can watch.<\/p>\n

But blockchain can make micropayments work, by making them invisible. I will explain this simply, using fairy tales.<\/p>\n


\n\"Masspike<\/center>Take the Massachusetts Turnpike. This is the main highway leading in and out of Boston, and it\u2019s a toll road. Back in the day, you had toll booths, which snarled up traffic and made everyone resentful. You\u2019re already commuting in rush hour traffic, and now you\u2019ve got to pay to use the road<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The toll booth collectors had the worst job in the world, dealing with grumpy commuters every day, so they got grumpy as well. In fairy tales, you know the troll who guards the bridge and says, \u201cTHREE GOLD COINS.\u201d Why is he always grumpy? Because he has to deal with all the commuters!<\/p>\n


\n\"Green<\/center>Then a few years ago, they tore down the toll booths. Gone. Now you have this little device in your car\u2014a transponder\u2014that automatically charges your account. I\u2019m not talking about an automated toll booth. There is no booth.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if they removed the troll, and replaced him with a robot with a radar. You don\u2019t even know that it\u2019s happening. You\u2019ve got this online account that you load up with 50 bucks, and it just draws down against that account. Zero friction. It\u2019s invisible. It\u2019s incredible.<\/p>\n

That is brilliant engineering. And that is what blockchain-based micropayments can look like.<\/p>\n


\n\"Cars<\/center>Let\u2019s imagine a project called ContentChain, that lets you buy a token called ContentCoin. You load up your ContentCoin account with $50, and as you browse the Web, it seamlessly pulls ContentCoin from the sites you visit most, paying it back to the publisher.<\/p>\n

This is similar to the Basic Attention Token<\/a>, with one critical difference: the BAT still relies on ads. Advertising is a failed business model.<\/p>\n

To make these ideas work, we need an open-source blockchain that\u2019s easy for publishers to use, and easy for users to install as a browser extension. Most importantly, we\u2019ve got to have great content. This is how Netflix, Amazon, and HBO have built great networks without advertising: by producing content that people are willing to buy.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what we\u2019re working on every week: great content that you\u2019ll be willing to buy. Fortunately, our investor newsletter is still free:\u00a0sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his final column, New York Timestech columnist Farhad Manjoo stated, \u201cThe Internet ad business lies at the heart of just about every terrible thing online.\u201d Ads interrupt your experience, slow down your computer, and crash your browser. Ads install spyware, in the form of tracking code called \u201ccookies\u201d (itself a deceptive term, because cookies… Read More…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[459],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13973"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13983,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13973\/revisions\/13983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}