Abstract
Current adblocking technology shields users from irritating or distracting advertisements, but also interferes with a key revenue source for content creators and hosting services. The only incentive for internet users to see advertisements is the potential to gain information about a product or service they would enjoy, but carries a certainty of spending time and mental energy. Advertisers on the other hand are unable to make two important distinctions: whether an ad that was clicked on was useful or merely compelling, and whether an ad that was not clicked was irritating or merely uninteresting. Content creators and hosting services are stuck between these two groups, whose interests rarely align.
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A system in which viewers were compensated for rating advertisements would improve the situation for all three parties: Advertisers would gain valuable information about how their campaigns are received, hosting services would no longer lose advertising revenue to adblockers, and viewers would be compensated in line with the value of information they create while gaining direct influence over the sort of advertisements they will see in the future.
Proposed Technology
We envision a browser plug-in that allows users to select any link and record information about it in a central database. The initial choices are straightforward, allowing users to categorize an ad as 'helpful', to indicate the kind of product or pitch the user wants to see again; 'irritating' to indicate that an ad is overly distracting or manipulative; or 'blacklist', which functions like a traditional ad blocker for the domain the advertisement links to. A comments box allows users to provide more detailed information about the advertisement and their reaction to it.
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This information is offered for sale to advertisers and content hosting services. The users receive the majority of whatever the data they generated sold for, subject to their own privacy preferences.
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We believe such a project would have at minimum the following benefits:
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Supporting Content Creators
As a society we have entered a kind of Faustian pact. Innumerable services and media are supported primarily by advertisements that users would not otherwise engage with. The attention paid to advertisements is a limited and valuable commodity, which in aggregate pays for the valuable but unlimited product that is digital content. Because attention is limited, its owners are naturally reluctant to give it up. The Adrater project proposes an immediate modest compensation for the owners of attention coupled with the more valuable but remote compensation of directly shaping the sorts of ads they will see.
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A More Conscious Relationship
Advertising is mostly aimed at the unconscious mind, and its influence can be altered by observing it consciously. The same way one might drive out a catchy song by listening to it with full attention, one can minimize the unwanted effects of advertising by observing it critically. The ideal advertisement simply provides information to someone who will benefit from it. But because attention is a finite resource and there is insufficient incentive to pay any attention at all, advertising must work on the subconscious mind.
Linking observing advertising with rating it and being compensated for the feedback one gives would incentivise paying attention to advertising, and would signal to advertisers that ads targeted to this user should appeal to the conscious, rather than the unconscious, mind. Such ads would be most effective when they align with the user's long-term goals, which a user could indicate. Over time, this would help users by showing them information relevant to their goals that they would not otherwise have known existed.
Pinpointing Useful Advertising
Advertisers today sometimes say that they can analyze not just what customers say they want, but what they actually respond to. The belief that these two are interchangeable goes to the very heart of why customers and advertisers have such a dysfunctional relationship. Modern advertising is primarily concerned with driving clicks to a landing page. Converting the initial interest an ad generates into a satisfied customer is typically someone else's problem. It does seem that advertising has gotten more effective at generating interest, but it does so without much regard for whether the interest was actually due to the product being advertised. A clever ad for the wrong product can result in unsatisfied customers, which are often more costly than no customer at all.
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This is not the fault of advertisers. When an ad generates a click but not a purchase, it is currently difficult to determine why. A ratings system would provide missing information, giving positive feedback to advertisers that make informative, well-targeted ads. This would be useful to all parties, advertisers would learn about which part of their sales funnel needs work, hosting services would know which advertisers their viewers tend to like, and customers would begin seeing more informative, better-targeted ads.
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Discouraging the Worst Advertising
Just as an effective advertisement cannot be distinguished from a useful one, advertisers do not know why an ad has not been clicked. Most ads aresimply irrelevant to the viewer, but some are so poorly designed that they prevent a user from clicking through to a product that actually is relevant to their interests. Others are deliberately designed to be distracting, but a content host cannot easily distinguish an irritating ad from an unobtrusive one.
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The Adrater program would allow users to make this distinction by either warning an advertiser that their ads are poorly designed and should be rethought, or blocking a particular domain's advertising altogether. This would allow users to support their preferred hosting service without needing to tolerate bad ads. It would also allow them to give input on what sort of advertising they would prefer to see, which would be very useful for advertisers. Hosts meanwhile would not need to police their advertising vendors' offerings for abusive ads, and fewer of their viewers would feel the need to run a program that blocks all advertising.
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Advantages Over AB Testing and Focus Groups
Focus groups require all participants to be in the same place at the same time. It's no wonder they are hard to fill and expensive to run, too expensive for most advertising campaigns. A-B testing can fill this gap somewhat, but it lacks the level of detail described earlier. A lot of potential input is not being captured with current technology, but that need not be the case.
The adrater program would be very similar to an ongoing focus group on all advertising that its users come across. This would allow users to participate when it is convenient for them and only to the degree that they have an opinion to share. It also seems probable that some users will make consistently useful predictions about how ad campaigns will be received. Unlike with a regular focus group, users whose ratings are unusually useful will be accessible to advertisers at any point in the future, so long as the advertiser pays for non-anonymized data. This brings us to our next point.
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Knowing and Receiving Fair Value of Data
Data today is treated like any other resource: ownership is based on the ability to extract it. This system has been around since at least the bronze age and is showing signs of wear. It simply isn't built for a world with no frontiers or unfriendly neighbors. Nonetheless, it is the system everyone knows, so it's understandable that the major players simply extract all the data they can without compensating those generating it. It is also understandable that the people on whom this data is being gathered would feel like they are being exploited.​
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Futurists like Jarion Lanier and Kevin Kelly have put forward the idea that all data gathered on private citizens should be paid for, like a mining company might pay a royalty to local landowners. Though this idea is compelling, it will not spring into being fully formed. A good way to introduce it would be to build a system that compensates users for their help in mining a new 'vein'' of data, and letting the free market determine the value of it. The adrater program would be suitable for this kind of role. It would function as an independent entity that aggregates data from its users' rating of advertising and sells it for the highest possible price, paying users a fixed percentage of the revenue it generates. As the market would need to be created, this revenue would begin small, but users would know the value of their own data and have an incentive to maximise it. With time, new business models that maximise the value of data could be explored.
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Aligned Incentives
Today, advertisers want more attention-grabbing advertisements leading to reliably profitable products. Users want unobtrusive advertisements leading to money-saving or novel products. This is a zero-sum game, but it does not need to be. A bit of communication could help these two groups help each other. A small upfront incentive could lead to more and more positive engagement with advertisements. Tying this engagement to feedback on the advertisements would lead to more pleasant and useful advertising.
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Advertising is a gigantic industry, and its role is changing. It has the potential to be a huge source for good in our lives, giving us the tools and knowledge we need to make the changes we want. The first step is to get all parties talking to one another. We hope you'll join us in making that happen.