Adverts are everywhere, even if you don’t realize it. Nowadays having adblock isn’t enough to stop advertisers from squeezing their subliminal, misleading messages into your mind. Any online content that discusses a product or service could be bought and paid for without you knowing. 

Content creators are entitled to earn a living. Doing brand deals and promotional content is perhaps the best way to survive as a present day content creator. Sadly, not every creator feels the need to vet their advertising partners.

Cryptocurrency is particularly bad in this regard, with so many influencers acting as financial advisors by promoting projects. Youtube, Twitter, Telegram, Reddit – they are all full of disingenuous paid content that is designed to mislead and get you to buy something – which could put you at risk. 

How many crypto investors have promoted projects they don’t really believe in? 

Content platforms are becoming inundated with promotional content that could mislead viewers and cause them financial risk.

Platforms are struggling with crypto

We’ve all seen the struggles of media giants such as Twitter, Youtube, Google and Facebook with cryptocurrency advertising. Or most recently, YouTube has clapped back at cryptocurrency content as they have realized that it could be misleading investors. 

Blanket rules aren’t good for anyone. Misleading and predatory cryptocurrency content has been removed, sure, but legitimate creators have also lost all their hard work due to the recent YouTube policy update that bans any advertising about cryptocurrency-related content, including initial coin offerings (ICOs), wallets, and trading advice.

It’s hard not to see both sides though, since YouTube need to police their platform and keep their viewers safe. It’s their responsibility. Let’s not forget that these platforms need advertisers to stay afloat – they need to bring money in too, not just the creators. 

Advertising is changing 

A few years ago adverts were easy enough to avoid. Downloading a simple adblock application usually did the trick. But as adblock became more common, creators earned less from their content and the influx of brand deals began. 

Nowadays, if you don’t have adblock on you’re exposed to highly targeted advertising that could be trying to exploit you. There are plenty of possible scenarios, such as: 

• A clothing brand that has high prices and low quality
• An illegitimate financial service that steals your money
• A misleading advert that steals your details

You can escape adverts but you can’t escape content too. Frankly, you shouldn’t have to. Legitimate creators should be able to earn a living and platforms should be confident in the advertisers on their platforms.

A blockchain solution

Now what if I told you that there is a blockchain based solution that can provide platforms with a new form of revenue generation. One that removes the need for traditional advertising as we know it.

WOM Protocol is a solution that enables creators to earn money by creating content that promotes products in a genuine way. Platforms take a percentage cut too so they can continue to function. This means that traditional targeted advertisement isn’t needed and misleading influencer marketing isn’t possible. 

With WOM a platform would be able to cut out the predatory promotion from advertisers while letting the good stuff shine through. 

With the implementation of WOM, user behaviour doesn’t change at all. Instead, it enables content creators to be rewarded for what they are already doing. The aim is for the content on the platform to remain the same, with the added bonus of content being vetted for authenticity and being adequately rewarded. 

This means that platforms can take away ads and continue to earn revenue with zero compromises. User behaviour stays the same and the platform remains authentic, with the added bonus of eradicating illegitimate influencers. 

How does it work?

WOM uses blockchain and token-economics to power a system that finds product recommendations, evaluates how genuine they are, assesses their impact and then rewards creators accordingly. 

The WOM platform creates trust between users and product promoters. Users will know for sure that the product promotion they are seeing is genuine because it’s been assessed and verified by a group of humans, known henceforth as authenticators. 

Authenticators are network contributors that work together to vet every single product promotion, also known as word-of-mouth content. Authenticators are driven to reach the correct decision because if they are wrong they will be penalized. Correct authenticators are financially rewarded based on the performance of the content they authenticate.  

It’s not just authenticators that keep the content in check, creators are also responsible for the legitimacy of their content. Content creators must stake WOM tokens to list their content for authentication. Upon evaluation, if the content is below a threshold the creator will lose their stake. Of course, if the content passes authentication, creators will then start to rack up rewards based on the content performance. 

All in all, WOM could be great for online platforms. It provides an alternative revenue source that eliminates the need for traditional advertising. Instead, users would be exposed to product promotions that have been proven to be genuine. All promotions will have been submitted by creators and authenticated – passing two levels of financial incentives designed to only let the real content shine through. 

If you’re interested in learning more about WOM and how the authentication works, click here. 

Alex Aves
The Daily Chain

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*Disclaimer – WOM Protocol are our Media Partners and therefore this content is sponsored by them. The fees paid by this project are used to pay for The Daily Chain salaries, dev work, hosting services, travel expenses etc.. that are required to make this company a success and continue to provide the community with great content on a daily basis.