I’ve recently been watching videos about scams by Pleasant Green. And he points out that lots of sponsored links in Google are actually scams. For example, an elderly victim will search for “Amazon Alexa Customer Support” and the first link will actually be for a call centre in India that makes him buy gift cards and send his money overseas. One of the cool things about Presearch is that it isn’t overrun with such ads. I just wanted to put it out there that there should be a process of vetting advertisers when they represent brands to make sure that this doesn’t happen on Presearch. Here’s a YouTube video about this type of scam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eWPb4inMNQ&pp=ygUccGxlYXNhbnQgZ3JlZW4gcHJpbWUgdHYgc2NhbQ%3D%3D
I don’t like the idea of vetting unless it is community vetted. This centralized approach leads to corruption and discrimination and erodes free-speech.
Simple community comments like on x to allow you to fact check or call out scammers is the better approach.
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A keyword can be reported by users for different reasons, scam, the ad has nothing to do with the description or promotion, broken links, etc. Then in that case the team can verify it to know if the advertiser is violating any rules.
Advertising Feedback:
I think this is worth bringing back to the top for discussion.
Advertising is a necessary annoyance (on rare occasions helpful to users) in order to monetize the platform. I think everyone understands that, but ads should be as least intrusive/annoying as possible. The ultimate user experience is a clean, fast, ad-free quality search, where a user easily finds what they are looking for every time with minimal distractions.
The most annoying ads are ads that impede or distract from a streamlined user search experience, loathed ad categories like gambling/betting among a few others, lack of ad relevance, lack of ad quality control, and ads that are seen too frequently.
To reduce annoyances to users and make the platform better it is imperative that other mechanisms for revenue are developed and enhanced. Relying on 1-2 streams of revenue puts too much pressure to OVER-USE those mechanisms. Homepage takeovers while they may be an effective income stream also fall into the category of annoying, repetitive, and importantly from an income/revenue perspective this is a major bottleneck for throughput without the requisite users, searches, and views. All you are doing is attempting to squeeze the small amount of users’ attention for revenue. This would be fine if 30-50 million daily searches/views because they could be used more sparingly and campaigns would rotate more frequently maintaining a clean fast non-redundant user experience.
Other sources of revenue are a must, AI if done well could be a great source among others but this thread is about advertising. Something that could be done that would drastically open the opportunity for both non-rewarded staking and income/revenue is a revamp of keywords. This is so obvious, the current keywords due to recent changes have drastically lost its appeal and removed a USP at the same time. While I agree with the other comments above about professional advertisers and quality ads being important this needs to be balanced with ad decentralization. There are so many advertisers that google, bing, and others will not run because they simply don’t agree with them or would like to censor them. We need to balance quality and user experience with a healthy dose of decentralization, where anyone can participate in the Presearch advertising eco-system for getting views/attention. I think there are ways to do this effectively with keywords.
I laid out a proposal here - New keyword consumption model! - #9 by XRPRE
I think my proposal/ideas takes the great community comments above into consideration and ensures we protect free-speech and have at least one mechanism on the platform for decentralized advertising. I have a vision of how to drastically expand this concept in the future but we need to start with baby steps. To me the first baby step is to MAKE KEYWORDS GREAT AGAIN!
No I don’t mean free staking. Make this another revenue stream so you are not relying so heavily on home page takeovers and in a way that improves tokenomics. The amount of keyword phrases when you include all languages and/or provide option for specifying locations are infinite. There is way less bottlenecks here compared to homepage take overs and for users who have turned off backgrounds these users would still be included in the keyword views.
The short version is this:
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Keyword Staking should incur a 1x stake fee. All stakes on a keyword should be rotated for views in proportion to their staked amount (no more winner take all but rather winner take most). Views should be at the top spot and possibly also included at the bottom so they are viewed but should compete with consumptive keywords at the top. When no consumptive use this just allows for more views and more rotation of ads.
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Consumptive Keywords initially for ease of development and implementation should be based on a CPM and/or CCP bid model where the highest consumptive bid gets 100% of views on those keywords where they are the highest bid. These consumptive bids would compete for the same top spot as the staking, so as long as there are consumptive campaigns active, the stakes would get no views at the top and maybe minimal views at the bottom. The consumptive model would require a bid amount and a total campaign amount, the ad/link/description, and of course the keywords.
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Both Consumptive and Staking should allow for easy mass keyword additions both at initial setup and at any time thereafter to add more keyword variants to their stake or consumptive campaign. Both should also offer an automated max bid or max stake amount option. So that if desired when outbid their stake or bid would auto increase in increments up to their max bid or stake amount without having to manually manage this. On stake increases (either auto or manual) they would only be paying the difference of their initial stake fee up to their max stake not the whole fee (unless they are changing the ad which would incur a new full 1-time stake fee). On consumptive bids only the highest bid gets the views on each keyword. Their campaign funds are deducted for every view or click they get across all their keywords. Once a campaign is complete (campaign funds are used up) the next highest bid will become the new highest and their views will begin along with their campaign deductions into the treasury. In the future along with user growth and new markets may look to add a location option to stakes and consumptive keywords, giving the advertiser the option to bid or stake only on locations they choose vs world-wide. This would make for different markets over time allowing smaller markets to pay less and not have to compete for worldwide views that may not be applicable world-wide. Plus same keyword or phrase may be able to earn income simultaneously in a fair way while also providing more relevant information or ads to those geographic-specific users. Could be something relevant to elections, crisis, natural disasters, or specific product/service markets etc.
This model will quickly 10x the non-rewarded PRE locked and 10x the income from consumptive keywords (especially now that PRE and Fiat are options). I would only allow fiat for consumptive ads not staking until/unless you implement a mechanism to easily convert fiat into PRE demand on public exchanges, DEXs, AMMs (staking should always be in PRE only). When both PRE and Fiat consumptive ads are competing the price of PRE will be relevant. All PRE bids are converted to fiat equivalent prices based on the floating PRE prices. Anytime PRE bids are greater it will become the top bid and function accordingly, if out-bid the campaign pauses until it becomes the high bid again. This all requires an easy, simple, transparent user interface so that anyone with PRE or a CC can use it and know what they are getting.
Lastly, a user option on/around the ad itself to remove the ad seems advisable. A simple x to close it should suffice. If a user clicks the x a warning popup would appear asking are you sure you wish to discontinue seeing this ad? If they select yes a simple menu would be shown with checkboxes to click the prepared reasons why possibly the last checkbox is other with a write in if the user feels so inclined to elaborate. This ad would then be disallowed for that particular user either for a time period or forever if unchanged (I think there are pros and cons to both approaches). If the ad gets too many x’s then an automated email to the advertiser could be sent with a warning for potential consideration of removal. The advertiser (professional or amateur) gets immediate feedback from these users and can either brush it off or adjust the ad based on the user feedback. No ad should be removed without manual checks against the terms of service. Eventually, may even track user’s x’s to determine if the user is targeting ads or is not using valid reasons for removal in which the user could eventually lose those privileges. I think this last item could be added piecemeal or at a later date to prevent delay for implementation of the core keywords revamp.
This model if prioritized and implemented can MAKE KEYWORDS GREAT AGAIN. Bring back multiple USPs (fair decentralized advertising, an option for Presearch users to un-censor web content). When you can’t find it on google or bing searches you can stake or consumptively bid to put the right reference or website at the top result where it should have been in an altruistic way.