Hive ads and Hive marketing. Proposal for ads on hive.blog or funding for hive marketing initiatives.

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(Edited)




Create Ad revenue and begin marketing efforts on behalf of Hive.






Proposal Type:


Marketing | Advertising | Hive advocacy







About me.




Just a quick overview. I am a three year member of the blockchain with what is hopefully a solid reputation from being involved with multiple different groups over that time. Consistently active and have constantly been involved with initiatives to build and grow our eco-system.

I currently work in a retail setting as a manager with a large multi national retailer. 18 years employment in consumer based jobs and 14 years management experience.

I currently hold a degree in business management and from January have enrolled in a new level 8 degree course entitled, "Blockchain for Business."

I see a huge future in blockchain based solutions and want to see hive at the forefront of powering these solutions. With that in mind, I feel we need to look at more business solutions for the chain and fulfilling it's huge potential.

I also have control of the hive-blockchain twitter account which is being used to promote and highlight what is being created on the chain.


Project Summary




We are reaching a crucial stage in the development of hive as both a blockchain and as a brand. From it's explosive start and wide ranging exposure in the crypto industry we have since faded from view. This to me is a terrible shame as we know how much work is going on from a development side but there is none from a marketing and advertising side.

This will be just as important to the future of our chain as it is a major factor in token price, attracting new users, attracting developers and attracting investors.

For us to bring all of these important factors into line we will need a business plan and external revenue to fund these ventures. While I do feel that the future will lie in the different groups and tribes using hive to build their amazing projects.

In my opinion, unless we move now to position ourselves as a valuable place to build we will not attract the developers or users that will be the backbone of this community and keep building amazing new things.

We have the technology, and through some great work from our core developers and @blocktrades this continues to improve. The next step for building will be to add more marketing and value adding teams to the chain. That is why this proposal will be made with two parts to it.



Part 1: We should be utalizing ad revenue from hive.blog and hive.io to buy hive and fund marketing efforts.




We have seen from some sectors of the hive blockchain how effective it is to add some discreet but valuable ad revenue to the system and use it to fund the project. The best example of this is the @leofinance tribe who have made incredible gains since adding ad revenue to the site. (As well as all of their other valuable work)

A lot of this revenue depends on having an attractive space for advertisers to place ads. Including features, such as:

  • Large user base.
  • Multiple sites
  • Variety of content
  • Worldwide appeal
  • High alexa ranking (Currently 24,851. Quite strong.)
  • Niche market (Can be a base for crypto advertising and crypto advertising companies.)

All of which we have already.



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Hive.io is ranked 136,612
Peakd.com is ranked 40,589
and for reference @leofinance was 817,604 90 days ago and has moved to 350,899. This is their latest ad revenue post and it is only increasing month on month. Leo ad report September2020

The total numbers for the month of September. We generated $555.53 USD in ad revenue last month which is about 3,472.04 HIVE at current prices.
The ad revenue is paid out in BTC. Each month we buy HIVE with the BTC and then purchase LEO from the LeoDex and burn it.

This is only a starting point and an idea of the power of external revenue. My idea is slightly different as I would like to receive the revenue generated from the ads and use it to drive even more users and traffic to the hive.blog site over time. Organically grow the revenue and keep using it to expand our reach and brand on a consistent basis.

While $550 might not seem like a huge amount it is still over 4000 Hive that could be bought from the market today and a starting point for further buys. I would like to grow this revenue to the point that we are buying $50,000 off the market on a monthly basis or over 400,000 at current prices. Imagine over 4,000,000 for 2021.

That is an amount that would get peoples attention.

We need to start somewhere and for a dev team as talented as we have for hive.blog I am sure it would be no great challenge to incorporate a few ads to generate the revenue.

There are multiple options out there to incorporate these ads and businesses set up to make it a smooth transition.

  1. Coinzilla
  2. Ad shares
  3. Bitmedia
  4. Cointraffic
  5. Ad Dragon


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All of which pay out in crypto and could be used for this initiative.



Part 2: Use the DAO fund marketing efforts.




I have brought up the ad revenue point on many occasions as have many other users since we saw hive created. For some reason there doesn't seem to be huge appetite to monetize our greatest asset and use it for growth.

With that being the case I have linked a proposal to this post to give an alternative way to generate funds for marketing and brand growth.

I would much rather see external revenue being used for this but at some stage we do need to start trying to bring more users in to the system. Unfortunately without this being used to create revenue it is a self defeating purpose as we will have more people selling and still not creating any buy pressure on the token to bring up the price.

If the proposal was funded from the DAO it would be used in the best interests of bringing in more users but looking long term it would be much better to create a long term sustainable budget for expanding our brand.



Project description




What I would ask for starters is to show if there is the support for more advertising and marketing efforts by supporting the proposal. (That means hit that support button.)

The idea being that,

  1. The dev team will see there is a community appetite for advertising and using it to market this space.

or

  1. The proposal gains enough support organically that some funding becomes available to start more marketing efforts.

The higher that we as a community vote this proposal the stronger the argument becomes for having a marketing budget and use it to bring more value into the system.

The long term vision would be to create enough revenue to have a full time position as an advertising and marketing representative for the hive eco-system with community support. Create enough funds to support others in their marketing efforts.

Create marketing and promotional tools for others to use in these endevours. Build a strong team of individuals with the purpose of expanding the hive brand and creating more awareness of what is being built on chain.



Short term plans:

  • Fund onboarding initiatives.
  • Create regular incentives for people to post to hive.blog and increase use.
  • Create a buy pressure on the hive token and increase it's price.
  • Build ad revenue over time to become self sustainable as a marketing fund.
  • Fund development competitions to expand development on hive.
  • Pay for advertising to reach new audiences.
  • Increase use of hive.blog.
  • increase active hive membership.
  • Work with interested indiviuals to build the eco-system.
  • Create partnerships with other hive apps and grow together.



Long term goals:

  • Work on marketing and partnerships as a full time job.
  • Create a hive marketing team.
  • Run content feeds into other web2 sites like twitter, facebook and reddit. (Increase traffic)
  • Create a marketing pack for people to receive and attend appropriate events.
  • Create a marketing budget to subsidize attendance at important events.
  • Create a resource to help users resolve issues and problem solve hive issues.
  • Liaise with other crypto based businesses and build the hive brand.
  • Create a regular buy pressure on the hive token to help increase the token price.
  • Become the foremost social and dapp centered blockchain for other projects to build on.
  • Build ad revenue to 100k per month.
  • Build our community to 1M active members.
  • Include a way to reward posts that drive the most traffic back to the site and incentivize good quality and lasting work.

There are lots of ways to do this with some funding but building a solid and active userbase will be the key in sustained growth. We need to start looking at a 5 year plan for hive and set targets for growth to match our ambitions. Obviously these will not be easy and will require long term planning and dedication to achieve. However at the moment we are doing very little and a start needs to be made at some point.

For example:

It would be great to see a $100 dollar competition every week for the various communities. Promotion for other projects, sometimes just for fun. Give back to the community and use it to grow as most people who try joining see no rewards/ engagement at the beginning and leave straight away. If we are going to incentivize a platform there needs to be a chance for new users to be seen and heard. Otherwise we will never leave the echo chamber.

$100 prize for best deep dive into $LEO, best review of @rabona, our latest app, best guide to buying bitcoin ect.... SEO focused articles to feed traffic back to the site. Market on other crypto based sites. Try to bring in users from other sites such as publishOx and flote.

All of these would have multiple uses as they would also market those projects to a wider audience while driving traffic to the site. They could be the basis for more partnerships for projects wanting to use our creators as a launch pad for more publicity. They could be away to create change in this world with enough people behind them.

Expand our reach and give people a reason to post here.
They will want to get involved.
They just need a push.
Just look at my most popular tweet all week. 4,600 impressions, 14 comments and 27 retweets for a 500HP delegation. What would it be for 500 HIVE? This is a tweet filled with links back to hive.blog and creates even more traffic for the site and increase potential earnings.

I guarantee with more efforts like this we would see plenty of people following the links back to hive.blog and joining the chain.



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All of this has a cumulative effect for our brand and token price as they feed into each other as we build.



Costs




Depending on the @blocktrades team being willing to insert the ad space into the existing sites or whether funds become available through the proposal system, this would vary slightly.

If ads were to be implemented there would be the initial start up cost of time/money from the development team. Deciding on which ad service to use as the most suitable for the platform.

There would be no cost to fund the proposal.

As a regular cost I would take 10% of funds available for payment and to cover personal expenses in running these initiatives. While this would be very little at the beginning, the plan would be to grow this revenue over time and earn 10% of the much higher value being brought to the system through the marketing efforts.

I would also like to source strong analytics for hive.blog to maximize these efforts and help make the process of advertising revenue even more effective and profitable.

If income could be brought to a significant level then it would allow me to work on the efforts full time as well as bring in more people to expand those efforts.

If the proposal was to get funded it would only be until ad revenue reaches a stage where the team becomes self sustainable in it's efforts and can move forward based on the work put in to building the project.



Progress reporting




As this process would involve community funds in one form or another it is important that there would be total transparency for everybody involved in the process.

I would want there to be no doubts that the funds were being used in the best possible manner for marketing the hive eco-system and reaching the goals stated above.

With this in mind there would need to be a full breakdown on a monthly basis that would include:

  • Advertising statistics.
  • Advertising revenue.
  • Breakdown of costs.
  • Use of funds.
  • Results of these initiatives.

This would be done in the same way as anybody working in a professional setting and who is using company funds for a project.

For this proposal I will be using the account,

@hive-blockchain

To keep any funds separate from my own and provide transparency of transactions. It also gives off a more professional appearance when interacting with other accounts for marketing purposes.



Principals




Principle on the proposal at the moment is just myself but part of putting this together is in the hope of bringing more people into the project for ideas and help to make it a success. As this is just stage 1, I felt it more important to put this together for the beginning and a team can be filled out moving forward.

This is obviously dependent on interest from the community itself and hopefully the dev teams operating at the other end of the spectrum.

All ideas and suggestions are welcome to see if the support is out there for this initiative. I already know of a lot of users who want to see something like this being put together but I would also like to know if this is supported by the wider community.

If there are ideas / suggestions to improve upon the idea.
If anybody is interested in getting involved.



Project Summary




In summary the main points of this proposal are.

  • To gauge interest in more marketing and advertising initiatives.
  • To push for ad revenue on hive.blog and any other relevant hive sites.
  • To oversee those funds for the marketing and promotion of hive as stated above.
  • In one form or another to use any funds received for furthering the expansion and brand of the hive eco-system.
  • To drive token price through expanding our userbase, brand, use case and partnerships.


With this in mind please vote for this proposal and show the community how important it is that we start to work on a plan for the next five years to grow our eco-system and showcase the best of what is on offer to a larger audience.

I think it is vital that we start this now and stop the slide of Hive before it becomes too late. Our community is and always has been our unique selling point as a chain so let's utilize that to the fullest extent and monetize what we spend so much time creating for the benefit of that community.

At $2 Hive i guarantee we would see a lot more activity around the space and a lot of old faces returning very fast.


Higher price = More users
More users = More ad revenue
More ad revenue = More investors
More Investors = Higher Price



It really is a win-win to incorporate ads into the site and use it to build.


You can support the proposal at:


I can be reached at any time for questions.
On Hive: @niallon11
On twitter: https://twitter.com/hive_blockchain
On discord: niallon11#6392

Thank you for your consideration. Let's grow hive together.



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51 comments
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You posted it twice my dude. I know there might be some bugs with the nodes

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There was an issue getting it attached to the proposal so I had to post again as a main post before it would work. The first one was done as part of the development community but wouldn't go through. Just ignore and have a read of this one. See what you think and throw some support behind it.

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(Edited)

yes please. My only disagreement, just burn everything. Don't complicate things.

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That's definitely an option and obviously the easiest one to manage. I'm just putting this together with the long term view of marketing the chain and expanding it's reach.

I'm willing to take on that role and get it started but if the community wants a buy and burn I can get behind that no problem. There is a lot less work involved and it is still adding to the token value.

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Yes, easy and effective. Also protects from fund mismanagement. X ad revenue generated, X amount hive burned. There's little room for personal benefit.

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Exactly. It's pity you've started the proposal as it is not going to get voted through.
I don't like the 10% stuff. I run @polish.hive twitter account and it's hard as hell to get to people. I don't see any marketing campaign behind this proposal.

And agree with @trumpman, it would be easier and cheaper to get a proposal to fund ad implementation, automation of ad revenue burning

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This is only the starting point to get support for the idea.

If the community supported a straight buy and burn from ad revenue that would still be beneficial to the system. I just feel that increasing the use of the site, increasing the revenue and increasing the activity on hive would be more beneficial in the long run. But that's just me. I want to build a plan for the next five years and keep growing the revenue month on month.

The first stage is getting enough support for the proposal to get in contact with the people running hive.blog and be able to say,

"Look, we have a lot of support to try this. Why can't we place some ads and start generating revenue. Every dollar earned from external sources will be of benefit to the eco-system and help to drive the price in the future. It will lead to more publicity and more activity. There is no reason not to have ads and it has the support of the community."

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People are talking about the ad thingy, but blocktrades doesn't want to add ads for some reason x)
Either does Peakd.

Which could 100% be used to make some promotions.

I am down for this if you can get the big players involved.

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People are talking about the ad thingy, but blocktrades doesn't want to add ads for some reason x)
Either does Peakd.

I've spoken to some witnesses who confirmed this as well. I don't know why as it's a proven method to earn funds. I would be willing to deal with all funds and initiatives once the ads were implemented and if it isn't working it's easy to put a stop to it. It's a no brainer in my mind to use every avenue available to grow the token price and eco-system.

As far as I know peakd are going to bring in something soon and there is a user who has been developing native ads to be used as well but this would be the quickest and easiest way to get going if @blocktrades were willing to get it set up. I know it's a busy time for the team but in my mind it needs to be done as soon as possible.

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I agree. Not sure why they don't put ads up like every other social media

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Overall, I think it's a good idea. Marketing, what's that? lol

This post got me looking at the HIVEUSD pair on bittrex. Average volume at these prices is about 1800 USD in trading per day. That's surprisingly low. A few hundred bucks a day might actually move the needle.

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Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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It really wouldn't take much to get it moving at these prices and this would only be a starting point. As we have seen with @financeleo, if you continue to build on the revenue it will continue to grow. Imagine putting a $5k buy onto bittrex and see if the needle jumps.

We have need marketing for a long time but we were never really ready to onboard users. With some of the developments brought out since the jump and a few on the way. We really need to get some started. People aren't just going to find hive by themselves.

We need to go out and get them. Lots of places to do it but a higher token price and marketing fund would be a big help.

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At its peak, steemit reached an Alexa ranking of 495 or something. Price itself is marketing

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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It's a self fulfilling cycle. If you get the price higher you will get more users and more investors. To get a higher price you need more users and investors.

The trick is to break the negative cycle of people leaving and selling and get the positive one started. Raise the price by a few cents and some people will come back people will start buying. They will all add to the ranking and value of the site in analytics.

This will raise the price further and add to the ad revenue and external interest in the token. It's all about getting into a positive place and like you said, when steem was pushing over $5 there were so many people posting to earn that the site shot up to top 500 in the world. It's just a matter of how we can get there.

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Hmm, this makes me think that hive should license the Splinterlands or soon-to-be LeoInfra tech of getting people onboard through other wallets and social platforms.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

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I think you should start with api issues first, but will support the proposal

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That's out of my wheelhouse but still very important. My focus is on the business and marketing end. /hopefully the right people can work to improve the api issues on their end.
Thanks for the support.

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I like the idea of ads but I feel they MUST be opt in users should be able to block it if they don’t want ads or at least they need to stake a certain amount to have the option to block that way there’s an incentive to stake

There are around 10 crypto based ad networks at the moment and I used about 6 other than adsense which I can vouch for as well as you can sell direct based on impressions so companies can come direct to you

It’s pretty simple with google ad manager DFP so what you could do is set up the containers and ad sizes and provide them to all site owners and app owners IOS and Android

Then what you run the containers across all these front ends gather the income and based on that burn the HIVE or the token with the income

You can even go as far as saying advertise on the HIVE network and sell a block space and say we get 6 million impressions across all front ends you can get pretty great deals with the revenue upfront and then use that to fund stuff

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All fair points. I can see where having opt in ads would be beneficial as long as there was an incentive to see them just like with brave. Maybe a staking level would work better as it is like a premium membership to hive.
If we could co-ordinate ads across all of the platforms if would give us huge bargaining power with the ad networks as it would capture a huge crypto demographic from one ad campaign.

I'll see if this proposal can carry any weight and then might come back to you for some advice if that's ok?

I know you have a lot of experience in this field and would be a great asset to get set up properly from the beginning. For now I will just see if we can put any pressure on the powers that be from the users to start utilizing our assets to further the community and it's growth.

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Count me im bro, I am supporting this proposal. If anything we can help, don't hesitate.

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Thanks @hiro-hive.
This will only get going with the help of the larger accounts. Ones who can give it enough momentum behind the proposal to put pressure on the witnesses for change.

The best help to get started is publicity and votes on the proposal for now.

If we can get this moving then further down the line I will put more solid plans in place for initiatives including some twitter ones which would be great to team up on.
Ones to really drive home all the great work that you are doing every week.

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This is a welcome initiative.

It is not enough to have a great product - the work of Hive devs is amazing, but only half the equation.

You also need to have marketing.

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Exactly. We already know how good the product is from being here but to grow we will need a clear business plan and a way to showcase what we have to other people.

Unfortunately we don't have that yet but with community support we could rectify the situation. Create a strong business plan based on ad revenue and growth. From there it is up to us to keep the community active and add value to the chain. That will earn more revenue and keep pushing the token price.

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Overall this can be refined but the overall ether to have some kind of buyback mechanism by introducing ads in the Hive Ecosystem is great 👍.

We are supporting this kind of initiative and think this should have been done a while ago.

What are the Hive whales 🐳 thinking 🤔?!

Upvoted 100% with our @hodlcommunity trail and Reblogged !

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Overall this can be refined but the overall idea to have some kind of buyback mechanism by introducing ads in the Hive Ecosystem is great 👍.

Absolutely. This is a starting point and a place for people to get behind the idea and to suggest improvements to it. I also feel that this should have been done a long time ago and have said as much many times. Unfortunately the people with the power to do it never paid any attention and the people wanting to see it didn't have the power.

Since nothing was going to happen i said it was time to try and put some pressure on those with the power and see if the support is there for a more business orientated idea and a chance to create a new revenue stream for hive. Somebody had to speak out and I decided just to go for it and try to get the ball rolling.

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Solid project, you have my support.

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Thanks @howo. That means a lot coming from you and all the good work you do on behalf of the chain. I appreciate it.

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You get a 100 percent up vote from me. And after a long read, and a worthwhile read, I see your vision. I may have breifly mentioned this sort of thing in posts in the past. I am 100 percent with you.
I don't have much spare time at the moment but anything I can do I will to help.

Man, this is what our Hive needs.

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Thank you.

This is a long term vision and probably an ambitious proposal but i feel that it is needed. We have to start somewhere and hopefully this can be the starting point.
I appreciate the offer for help and will gladly accept if this proposal takes off. Many hands make light work and everything helps in a project like this.

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Wow! I am blown away! This is an awesome proposal - so much potential. This is exactly what the Hive blockchain needs. :) I supported it & will definitely be watching.

Thanks so much for this! :)

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Thank you. I just feel like nobody is working in this direction and that it is a vital part of the future. Somebody has to get the conversation started so why not do it now.

We have to start somewhere.

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(Edited)

This is exactly what this blockchain needs. We need one voice that synthises the common will of the hive users and translates it into the outer world. We need a marketing concept that then can be used by all users. We need a strategy to build and onboard. We need somebody that tries to attract actively the developers and businesses and shows them the advantages of the blockchain.

We need ads and external money to support the currency. Without that we simply don't take advantage of the traffic. This is best way to build a sustainable business model.

I've voted for the proposal with all my accounts.

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Thank you. This is exactly how i see it as well. We need external money coming in to fund the system. The best way to do this is to monetize our greatest asset. Our users.
This will allow us to promote the chain further and attract more talent to the community as we build on a long term plan.
We need to start building for the future.

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In my experience, users have been very much against filling the whitespace of steem/hive with ads, and there's already money available for marketing and development purposes, they're just not being utilized.

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As it stands, there is over $4,000 per day available if someone were to put together a proposal for creating ads for Hive. I don't feel like we need to clutter the interface with ads to generate income we already have available.

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(Edited)

In my experience, users have been very much against filling the whitespace of steem/hive with ads,

I would say the opposite from my experience as people were crying out for them for long time and when they finally arrived on steem were a great success. In just a few short months the steemit team were able to generate enough revenue to stop to scheduled selling of the token at a rate of hundreds of thousands a month. Again on leofinance.io they are welcomed and have been a great success in generating revenue which is being used to buy/burn the token.

I would totally agree that an invasive amount of ads or popups would totally ruin any social media experience but done discreetly and in the best interests of the community would be welcomed and help to grow the platform.

As it stands, there is over $4,000 per day available if someone were to put together a proposal for creating ads for Hive.

There actually is one for a brave ad campaign, also my proposal is in two parts to use DAO funds from the pool for marketing if the hiveblocks team or community don't suppport ad revenue. However these are not sustainable in my opinion as they won't solve the core problem which is that there are lots of people selling hive but not many buying it.

In the long run what is being built on hive will solve this problem with more use cases and more business using the token. To get there however we need to keep a buy pressure on the token from the community which can only be helped by generating revenue from ad sales and by expanding the community to increase that revenue. We need to bring in more users and developers which can only be helped by marketing efforts. We need to go out and get them ourselves as if we don't we will continue to see the negative slide that has been going on since day 1.

I don't feel like we need to clutter the interface with ads to generate income we already have available.

DAO funds wouldn't actually be income, they are assets which by utilizing we are only increasing the selling pressure on hive. This would be fine if there was a buy pressure but there is very little at this moment in time. That's why it is so important to bring in external funding to fund these initiatives.

I appreciate your point of view and it's good to have this discussion either way and come to the best solution for the community.

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This is a respectable proposal, but as someone who has always been against seeing ads and the billboard that the internet has become. It doesn't sit right with me and I will explain why, in order to do this it would involve hitting users with cookies, trackers, pings, etc, these are all things I go to great lengths to avoid. How we will open Hive up like this to marketing and protect users' privacy?

What are the advertisers getting from users because it has to be about more than just clicks today it is all about the information grab. How do we make sure that the data that we are giving to these advertisers is worth the funds we are receiving to help Hive grow.

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