Advertising a Better Approach
We know advertising is a necessary evil — but can’t we do better?
With the release of our preview last week we’ve had the opportunity to show people what the feed in Channels will look like. This has lead to some great discussions around how Channels actually works.
Channels is a content network where publishers are paid directly by consumers for their content. And consumers are paid directly when they consume advertizing. So, like other content networks the money publishers make ultimately comes from the money spent by advertisers. But, unlike other networks, there is no middleman. No YouTube or Facebook taking their large piece of the pie. Channels splits the traditional advertising/content market into two separate markets.
The Attention Market where advertisers pay consumers for their attention and the Content Market where consumers pay publishers for their content. The Channels network facilitates the transactions within these separate markets but also, and most importantly, is optimized to keep these two distinct markets in equilibrium (Read about the secret sauce that makes this work here). This has a dramatic effect on the consumer’s experience.
The algorithm in Channels that determines when to offer the consumer ads optimizes the consumer’s experience not the network revenue. It will only offer up enough ads to offset how much the consumer is spending on content. Each consumer has a balance. If the consumer’s balance is low, then the network will offer them ads to consume so they can build it back up. But if their balance is high, then there is no need to offer them ads. Consumers will see the amount of ad content ebb and flow as they consume content but will only see as much as they need given their spending patterns.
This is in stark contrast to a traditional content provider who is focused on maximizing their own revenue. Their algorithms maximize ad revenue while staying just this side of really pissing the consumer off. Consume a lot or consume a little, it doesn’t matter — they’ll hit you with as many ads as they can get away with.
Later this year we’ll go live with Channels and put this to the test. Visit Channels.cc or follow us on Twitter to see how it goes.
