Your comment has reminded me of the attention economy that Steemit taps into:
Without centralization and gatekeepers to control what we consume, all the advertising on Steemit is essentially p2p.
What is our attention worth? Advertisers are going to learn its true market value, and pay it directly to the community. They’ll also need to produce some fairly compelling content if they wish to succeed.
It’ll be interesting to see how commercial interests tackle this new paradigm.
I really believe brands should be enabled on Steemit. But, with their own channels to allow for optin by the user. Tools shall be provider to those brands to support integration with their own systems and in return for that these brands can pay a fiat fee. This will give a commercial model that can be sustaining, either for STINC, or a new company setup by whomever that likes to do.
One idea is to have paid private messaging. Pre-approved users (friends and family) would be able to contact you for free; but an unsolicited message, presumably from an advertiser, would require them to directly pay you a fee.
Each user would set their own fee on their mailbox, dependent on how much they value their time vs potential to earn $$.
This is an idea from the attention economy ethos. I'm not sure if it would be a fit for Steemit. But it's an interesting idea, I hope to see someone try.
Interesting concept indeed. This would radically change the way brand managers need to operate. Would indeed be very interesting to see how such implementing will play out. Wondering how the users will view an implementation like that. I can imagine many users may give access for free when they get something in return, maybe a chance to win something. Personally I would want to see 'advertising' not in my face, but somewhere in a separate channel and if I want to engage with a brand, I go to that channel. Think of it like I blog on Steemit and go to FB to engage with brands. And when integrated with Steemit, I go to 'Brand channel' but their push messages are not in my home channel, even when I follow them.