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Fun idea! I’ve worked in technical roles at agencies and DSPs (the tool brands use to buy programmatic ads), and currently work at a dsp. Here’s my two cents:

by soared 4y ago

Fun idea! I’ve worked in technical roles at agencies and DSPs (the tool brands use to buy programmatic ads), and currently work at a dsp. Here’s my two cents: Assuming it’s a good idea people will use, you’ll run into a couple issues: 1. To build this you have to break a lot of privacy rules. You’d need to tie and individual user to all of their individual impressions (ad slots they viewed) on every site/page. Because you’re billing them for the ad slots, you need to track and store their behavior, and be able to tie it to individual auctions. Privacy and technical difficulties everywhere. 2. Digital advertising is wildly complicated. You’d need to outbid every single other advertiser on every single impression. Because auction are first price now (rather than second price) it’s going to be ridiculously expensive to accomplish this. At work I have advertisers with some impressions where we bid $200+ cpm. ($0.20 per ad slot, so some page views would cost $1+). 3. This could actually work if you didn’t guarantee 100% coverage and just said like “reduce ads on pages by 33% while still paying pubs”. Then you build an audience segment of all your customers and just go to any dsp and bid on that segment until you reach the profit margin you want. Bill customers an average or just a monthly subscription to avoid tiring individual users to each of their impressions. (Although your creative will get denied/flagged because you must have accurate branding in the creative and it must clickthrough to that same brand’s site) 4. This will probably be impossible after 2024ish when cookies are gone. 5. Users you do this probably clear their cookies or use the global opt out, which would make your system not work.

pedalpete 4y ago
Good thoughts, but it is somewhat dependent on the implementation. There are other ways to implement than you describe. The solution doesn't need to be cookie based, as it can be a browser plugin, as it is tied to the user, and therefore, that gets around a bunch of the cookie issues. You're taking this from the "ad guy" perspective of this is how advertising works, but what about taking the publisher perspective of "how do I get paid for my content". They likely don't care if the money is coming from an advertiser or consumer. They may in fact prefer the consumer payment model. I don't think you can even begin with attempting to get 100% coverage. But if you can get adoption on a few larger, more visited sites, or within certain niches with certain individuals who particularly dislike advertising, it could spread from there. But...is this better than the direct subscription model for the publisher?

by soared 4y ago

pedalpete 4y ago

Good thoughts, but it is somewhat dependent on the implementation. There are other ways to implement than you describe. The solution doesn't need to be cookie based, as it can be a browser plugin, as it is tied to the user, and therefore, that gets around a bunch of the cookie issues. You're taking this from the "ad guy" perspective of this is how advertising works, but what about taking the publisher perspective of "how do I get paid for my content". They likely don't care if the money is coming from an advertiser or consumer. They may in fact prefer the consumer payment model. I don't think you can even begin with attempting to get 100% coverage. But if you can get adoption on a few larger, more visited sites, or within certain niches with certain individuals who particularly dislike advertising, it could spread from there. But...is this better than the direct subscription model for the publisher?