To start off, this proposal is in light of the major issue facing the Steemit ecosystem.

Upvote Services

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Of late, there has been massive displeasure in and around the issue of Upvote Services for a litany of reasons. I posted a complete breakdown of the problems with Upvote Services here : Growing Unhappiness with Upvote Bots on Steemit

In that post, I lay out the main issues with Upvote Services, how it is upsetting the Steemit ecosystem and most importantly, the issue to why we are facing the problem. I diagnosed the issue to be the poor implementation of the ‘Promoted’ function to be the inherent problem.

This proposal is my solution to the problem.

This is a proposal for a new system to be implemented in place of the current ‘Promotion’ system.

Issues with the current ‘Promoted’ system :

It is not visited by most users

From my personal experience for one, I often even forget that the ‘Promoted’ tab exists. Understanding the psychology of most, I am certain the number of users who visit the ‘Promoted’ tab is dismal.

The content within the ‘Promoted’ tab is not catered to anyone, and is completely random based on whomever may be promoting their posts at the time. Even if the premise of why Steemians should visit and actively engage in ‘Promoted’ is sound, the truth of the matter is, it is counterintuitive to human nature to do something just because it would be “good for the platform” instead of focusing on only what is of interest to them.

Poor Return-of-Investment for Publishers

The ‘Promoted’ page may work well for bigger users who populate the first 5-10 listings, though even that is dubious as to whether it is a really profitable endeavor to do so.

The main issue however, is that, the way the ‘Promoted’ tab is structured, disallows smaller users from ever seeing any benefit from utilizing it. For the majority of the Steemit community, paying to have their post in ‘Promoted’ is far from a sensible investment.

As such, for the majority of minnows on Steemit, Upvote Services provide a way more sensible investment to gain more reach for their posts. Which therein causes the issue.

The Promotion Platform is Fundamental to Any Social Media Platform

Internet giants like Google and Facebook have made billions on the backs of their promotion platforms. Not is it only the fundamental means of monetization for any Social Media Company, it also serves the community’s interest to have an appropriate means of paying to effectively get in front of their desired audience on scale.

This is completely absent on Steemit.

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Solution : New and Improved Promotion Platform

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Adaptation of Proven Systems Perfected by Google and Facebook

There is no need to re-invent the wheel, Google and Facebook have spent years and probably millions in optimizing their promotional platforms, of which can be easily adapted from and implemented.

Promoted Posts To Be Injected In-between Regular Posts As Opposed To Separate Tab

Expecting / waiting upon users to turn up in ‘Promoted’ tab is never going to happen. It is simply counterintuitive to human nature. Instead, ads should be populated within users feeds.

Delivered in between every 10-15 posts

As a user scrolls through their feed and/or specific tags, ads can be dynamically be injected every 10-15 posts while being highlighted as a promoted post for transparency.

With this change, there will be a significant increase in viewership of promoted posts as it is served seamlessly alongside regular content. This allows a larger volume of promotions to happen, thus, not only increasing the overall revenue generated, but also, a far more viable platform for all Steemians to utilize.

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CPM (1000 Views) Price Auction Model

As opposed to the current model, where the highest bidder gets majority of the views in the ‘Promoted’ tab, which effectively drowns out a smaller user who may only have / want to have a small promotional budget, the current system makes it completely unviable for them to do so in any effective manner.

A CPM Price Auction model, similar to that of Google Adwords, would allow a user to bid at a specific price, for every 1000 ad deliveries. The higher the bid price, the more rapid the delivery, the lower the bid price, the slower the delivery.

For users with a bigger budget, who would like to have their post promoted at a more rapid rate, they may choose to bid at a higher price so as to have their post promoted as often as possible

For minnows, this system is more inclusionary, allowing minnows to still be able to have their posts be promoted at a rate which may be slower but, at a rate that makes sense for them.

As in the case of Google Adwords, the Bid Price should not be indicative of the actual rate you will be paying, rather, as a guideline as to how much you are willing to pay. The actual rate of which a user will be charged, will be largely dependant of the competition of the defined targeting and “Click-Through Rate” individual posts receive, of which will be determined by the system in place.

Daily and Total Campaign Budget

Promoters will set a “Total Campaign Budget” of which will be paid upfront and have the option to part the funds across the number of days through a “Daily Budget” function

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Promotion Platform To Have A Focus on High Relevance Delivery

As the Social Media Giants have long determined, the means of an effective ad delivery system, so as to minimize “Ad Fatigue” and general disdain for advertisements by users, is to have a focus on ensuring that the ads displayed to each user should be as targeted and of utmost relevance to each individual user.

In my opinion, with a proper implementation and delivery of high relevance promoted posts, users may not only be comfortable with promoted posts injected into their feeds, it may very well be a favoured choice for content consumers, especially with the current state of Steemit’s feed.

Incentivize Relevant Ad Delivery through lower costs with high Click-Through Rate

Evident in both Google Adwords and Facebook Ads, ads which maintain a high percentage of Click-Through Rate through laser focused targeting, are rewarded with discounted advertising rates. In so doing, incentivizing promoters to ensure that the ads being shown to the specific demographic to be as relevant as possible.

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Targetting

Targeting based on Tags

The most obvious, being able to target ads to be delivered within specific tags of relevance. This should not have any restrictions upon the number of tags a promotion may target as a topic may be of relevance to a wider audience than just 5 tags.

Targeting based on Authors

The ability to target users who follow a specific author, has engaged and/or upvoted an author multiple times.

Promoted posts to be injected into user’s :

• “People I Follow” feed
• As a suggestion in a “You May Also Like:” manner at the side/end of posts made by authors in question, such as Busy.org has done.

Targeting based on Posts

As a means of utmost laser-focused targeting, promoted posts may choose to target existing posts which are of high relevance to the topic they have covered in their post they are promoting. Users may choose to do prior independent research as to the most relevant posts in existence of which they choose to target, which is of high relevance to the topic they are creating.

Targeting as such will have promotions delivered to users:

• “People I Follow” feed, who have engaged with the specific posts either by upvoting or commenting.
• As a suggestion in a “You May Also Like:” manner at the side/end of posts made by authors in question, such as Busy.org has done.

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Example of how I would use this system :

Post to Promote : Inflation is Theft

Tag Targeting : Money | Politics | Anarchism | Anarchy | Economy | Freedom

Author Targeting: @DollarVigilante | @Joshisgurdson | @Adamkokesh

**Post Targeting: **
Money & Banking as Theft
The Story of Money
Money & Banking as Theft
The New World Order, Currency Reset, Dollar Collapse and Crypto
Anarcho-Capitalist Countries & Cryptocurrencies... A Whole New World!

CPM Bid Price:
Suggested Bid Price - 2.5 SBD / CPM for maximum delivery,
My Bid Price - 2.2 SBD

Total Budget: 35 SBD
Daily Budget : 5 SBD

End Result :

Post	Impressions	Bid Price / (CPM)	CTR	Price / (CPM)	Total
Inflation is Theft	23,335	2.2 SBD	14.8%	1.5 SBD	35 SBD

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What Revenue from Implemented Promoted Platform Be Used For?

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Burned

As per the current state of affairs, the SBD used can be sent to @null and be burned, which reduces the load of inflation on the Steem token.

My opinion on the matter being that there are more effective uses to the accrued revenue. As stated itself in the Steemit whitepaper :

Steemit Whitepaper Page 26:

It is often said that a coin with an inflationary model is not sustainable, but we know from countless real-world examples that the quantity of money does not have a direct and immediate impact on its value, though it certainly plays a role.

From August 2008 through January 2009 the U.S. money supply grew from $871B to $1,737B, a rate of 15 over 100% per year and then continued to grow at about 20% per year for the next 6 years.

All told the money supply in the U.S. has grown by 4.59x over less than 7 years. During that same time, the value of the dollar relative to goods and services has fallen less than 10% according to the government's price index.This real-world example demonstrates that supply is only one component of price.

By the same logic working in reverse, burning the accrued revenue from the promotion platform would have about a 10% efficacy. The reinvestment of revenue would prove much more impactful than burning of revenue.

Recirculated into Rewards Pool

As a means of further incentivization for authorship and curation, said revenue may be utilized as means increasing rewards paid out to both authors and curators for the further growth of Steemit.

If such action would be taken,I would suggest that a larger portion of this pool of revenue be divided to curation as opposed to authorship as this system is in place and profitable, working alongside curation. Curation is still the fundamental human process of how the value of every post is derived. The increased value of curation will lead to the increased value of the Steemit ecosystem.

Steemit Whitepaper Page 29 :

The more connections a network has the more valuable the information becomes. It is the relative and intentional connectedness of information that gives it value.

A social network can maximize the value extracted from a set of content by maximizing the quantity and quality of connections. Curating content is expensive and time consuming while being near impossible for computers to perform in the absence of links.

The current setback facing Steemit is the lack in overall curation efforts. As much as there are amazing ongoing curation efforts, there is still tons of great content getting lost in the tsunami of posts, especially as Steemit continues to grow.

Further monetary incentivization of curation will aid the overall growth of Steemit in onboarding and retaining talents to continuously bring value to the platform.

Used to Fund Steemit’s Development

However it may come out to be, additional funds allocated towards hiring more developers, expanding upon marketing efforts and further establishment of Steemit is agreeable by me.
My suggestion, would be to have revenues fund Steemit development projects in conjunction @JerryBanfield’s Steem Budget Proposal.

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Conclusion

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A systemic issue has arisen and is wreaking havoc on the very foundation of what Steemit was created to do.The current state of Steemit, if left unattended to, is going to see a net loss of users over time, and unless the issue at hand is dealt with, may absolutely stifle the growth of the Steemit as a whole.

The defining factor to the value of a post is completely irrelevant to the quality of the post itself as anyone may simply pay to have their content perceived as of value both by the sorting algorithm and by other users.

The sorting algorithm at present, is an utter mess with good content being drowned out. If I were to create a stunning post, which organically produced $50 worth of upvotes, pushing my content into ‘Hot’, I would still find my post completely irrelevant as it sits alongside posts that were just thrown together and paid to have a spot alongside my content.

Given that my post were not surrounded by synthetically constructed value, it may have very well gotten even more traction and earned even more, instead it is left for dead most of the time.

Both authors and consumers are affected by this situation. Quality authors do not get the recognition they deserve, and users are left to sort through a mess of supposed ‘quality’ posts which aren’t of any significant value at all.

Upvote Services are not to blame.

The rise of Upvote Services are a symptom of the lack of means for an author to effectively have their content propagated to the right audience. It should not be left to curators to propagate content that deserves the light of day. The author who actually wrote the post, knows above anybody in the world, which consumers would enjoy their post.

They are simply a reaction to a massive demand in the market, it is a sad after-effect that these services are negatively impacting Steemit as a whole, and was never the intent of any Upvote Service Provider.

Upvote Services are a symptom of the community requiring a proper promotional platform.
Users have proven that they are willing to invest in ensuring that their hard work gets seen.

In true free market fashion, a better system should then be implemented to solve the issue. This system would alleviate the need for Upvote Services for the majority of the time. In so doing, also alleviate the massive problem created by Upvote Service upending the sorting algorithm and reducing reward pool abuse.

With this new “Promotion Platform” will bring Steemit positive benefit in multiple areas :

Providing Authors a Proper Platform For Growth

By providing a better solution than the existing system, sincere authors who are currently utilizing upvote bots, inevitably move to the better option and stop utilizing Upvote Services, while having the opportunity to optimize their reach with laser targeting while also not having to have their honest need for more views be an unnecessary tax on the reward pool.

The new platform will only cater to sincere authors who genuinely create quality content as, just because you have a higher reach, does not guarantee a return, only that your content gets seen more often by the right people who then decide if your content deserves their upvote.

Resolving Sorting Algorithm Abuse

With a proper promotion platform, it will become much clearer to the community, users who are blatantly abusing the sorting algorithm and the community can punish such abuse independently by flagging of content that are clear abuses. It is much harder to identify blatant abuse of the system when everybody uses Upvote Services.

Improved Content Consumer Experience

With sincere authors not having to synthetically inflate their earnings just to have their content seen, and with authors who are trying to game the system being much more visible to be punished, the end result will be properly sorted content in content consumers feeds, where the **defining factor of value, is much more based in reality and sorted accordingly.

Resolving Reward Pool Abuse

There are many authors who utilize Upvote Services that hate the fact that the use of the cost of the service they are using is being taken out the rewards pool. This is absolutely unnecessary, however, currently, the fact is that is absolutely needed if your content is to be seen. Seeing as how everybody uses Upvote Services, all users are strangled into doing so too, just to be on level playing field. The solution being that nobody uses Upvote Services and as such, bring the playing field back to where it needs to be.

Provide Massive Revenue for Further Growth of Steemit

The tax on the rewards pool with the utilization of Upvote Service will be, not only stopped, it can and will be turned into an extremely profitable means of generating revenue of which could be channeled to the overall growth of Steemit.

I believe every Steemian would be supportive of a Promotion platform, which allows them to have their content be seen by the exact users who would want to see it, all while, rather than taxing the rewards pool, have their funds lead to further improvement of the platform.

With the end result being, a leveled playing field beneficial for the entire Steemit ecosystem.

I believe a system as proposed, will not only be extremely beneficial to the Steemit ecosystem as a whole, it would not be an overly complicated implementation.

Many of the fundamental workings of this proposal are far from unique or radical by any stretch of the imagination, all of it has been tested, proven, optimized and most of all, wildly profitable for social media companies as is.

As I finish writing this proposal, imagining how this system could alleviate a major issue facing the Steemit ecosystem all while providing a massive opportunity for growth of minnows and Steemit as a whole, I am anxious, with a yearning hope that this proposal may actually be considered.

God Speed Brethren.