Apple killed advertising – can Bitcoin save it?
In this posting from the LinkedIn's Agency Influencer Program, MediaCom's Alex Kirk presents an innovative solution to help online publishers make money
Like digital advertising doesn’t have enough trouble.
The most valuable company in the world just declared open season on the internet’s economic model – but another economic disruptor, Bitcoin, may hold the key to its defence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGWOz-5VHGs
Apple recently announced that the imminent new versions of its Safari browser on both mobile and desktop would incorporate technology that would effectively prevent an advert from “following you around” the internet.
The advertising world has freaked out – as should be obvious when the gatekeeper to 15% of all internet users decides that your business can’t do business through its business, emotions will run high.
They’re not wrong either – this is not a move that will hurt Facebook or Google (ie the two largest advertising businesses in the world), but one that will hammer away further at a wider journalism industry already struggling to pay its bills and its staff.
To me, Apple’s move strikes at a fairly empty problem – if you’re the sort of person who vocally complains about being retargeted by a shoe ad, then my guess is you’re the sort of person who yells at clouds and squirrels and children in your yard.
Of course, everyone hates advertising, but deep down everyone realises that it pays for the stuff you’re reading, too.
Out of deep-left field though, comes a potentially brilliant idea that would eliminate the need for banner advertising at all.
Although it’s not a new idea (one of the earlier pieces on it that I can find dates from 2013), it’s a fairly simple one involving using a reader’s CPU to briefly mine for Bitcoin, thereby creating some value for the publisher – essentially a micropayment – without the need for any physical payment, logins, or credit card details.
I got turned onto this only yesterday (thanks Nic!), but since then there’s been a report that The Pirate Bay is trying it out in the wild, and at some scale.
The only complaint so far is that it chews up some CPU speed, but – as with complaints about retargeting – the sort of person who complains about CPU speed frankly deserves everything they get.
The massive irony here is that just about everyone in advertising doesn’t really like banner ads – and loves quality content publishers.
If there’s a way to reduce the suckiness of the former and help out the latter, that sounds like a bit of a win to me.
Alex Kirk is head of systems and automation at MediaCom
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Obviously a lot of logistics to work through but this could be one hell of a brilliant idea
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Good thought. There are immense problems though. Firstly, bitcoin mining doesn’t provide rewards quite like that – by solving an immense mathematical problem you only have a chance at a bitcoin reward. You can mine with a cpu for 1000 hours and get nothing. So you need to pool cpu power, which is feasable, but potentially leaves you open to serious unscrupulous hacking. Wait for your shoe company to stuggle if their ads end up paying for hitmen and arms dealers to make a quid. Hence pirate bay…people who navigate the dark web are alive to such risks, your Average Joe probably just wants to look at, say, the footy results rather than fund armed gangs and the child trafficking trade. Nice idea in theory, but as for advertisers, caveat emptor
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By searching for the name of a female film director, I ended up on a site selling bras for women who’d had a mastectomy. Even though I left it at once, I have since been presented with ads for mastectomy bras whenever I’m not using an ad blocker. Likewise, my wife is bombarded with ads for would-be brides from Asia. So I can see some potential in Apple’s cookie blocker. I can also see why the author of this article takes it as a given that everyone hates advertising.
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