I was intrigued by the economical part of it, not exactly the design, it's not really a unique concept, I've seen quite a few of them lately.
This will allow users to bypass agencies, newspapers, and other middlemen to gain ad space that's 90% cheaper.
Just how will those ads be 10% cheaper? Let's be realistic here, nobody is earning 10% only of what the advertisers pay, otherwise, this whole industry would have been dead a long time. 50% might be doable for extreme examples but 10%? Not
buying this, especially since you're offering a little too many freebies, not sure if you're not making this to be more attractive then it would be economically viable.
Also this:
It will not be atypical for a Bitfari economy participant to open up his/her wallet, perform 15 minutes of work and receive enough compensation to pay for a car.
Ads would be cheaper as you said they will cover the same amount of people with 10% of the cost but at the same time watching 15 minutes of ads would cover a car lease? Hmmm!
Next:
A store owner might close the store and keep operating his/her screen to save money for a future business. As is stated in Bitfari’s code, businesses will receive:
1 million free ad showings in screens of their city/market. This incentive will half every four years.
Again, you're showering participants with freebies, 1 million free views, good! What happens when you have 1000 businesses signing up, you need 1 billion ad views that need to be viewed and you're delivering those for free so who's going to be paying for the above user's car when that much free stuff gets has to view in the first time?
Now, I want to address one thing about auditors
What are you going to do when auditors get together for reasons that are politically or socially motivated, you have seen how people react when boycotting products or other more recent cases harassing businesses. If 51% of the auditors in an area don't like a billboard because they consider it let's say racist although it is not who is going to keep such a mob in check?
There are hundreds of those events happening around about different things the Robinhood scandal, Yelp and the restaurants asking for vaccination proof, and many more. Those ratings were bombed by people who have little in common, might be thousands of miles apart, and other than one or two of these activism moves that act like your average user, not a bot. Wouldn't then the whole network turn into a propaganda machine?
And being totally decentralized, you shouldn't be able to stop it, unless...you centralize it!
Good questions, let me take them one at a time:
1. The platform yields savings of 90%, not 10%. A billboard costs about $2500 dollars a month and 10 smart tvs covering the same area will run you about $250 per month. This varies acording to area and foot traffic but you can visualize the concept this way: no maintenance crew to install the billboard, no agency cut, no lightning, no printing costs, etc.
2. The car bounty example is one of the key selling points of the platform. Users install an app and they become customers as well as auditors. When they review an ad they enter a raffle with other customers in other areas who also review the same ad. An incentive is paid to all the customers (think network fees), a bounty is paid to one customer (think block reward), so in essence, the customers become miners and one of them will earn the block reward. Now, where will this money come from and how is it paid? Well, if a business, agency, or individual places an ad that spans say 1000 digital billboards (a small national campaign) the auditing costs for this would probably be around $25,000 while the whole campaign will probably run the advertiser about $250K. 1000 customers (or more, depending on the area) will review this ad and paid about 10 to 15 dollars in the form of faris, promos, etc. However, a very lucky customer will win the equivalent of a block reward which would probably be about $15,000. With that, you can not only buy a car but also make the down payment to a house. More importantly, this creates an economic dynamic where customers will visit malls, and shopping centers because there is an incentive to check out new offers. We will set up web pages to let people know of the upcoming bounties, offers, etc. So it's a self-reinforcing cycle where more screens and more ads bring more customers.
3. The million free views are part of an ad faucet that halves every week. Next week the bounty will be 500K free views. The number of views offered depends on the open space created by unaudited screens. Meaning the screens have been activated but not reviewed yet. This creates millions of hours in free advertising every year. Also, don't forget page views on mobile devices, those add up quickly.
4. And to answer your final question, auditors are chosen at random so coordination among them is very hard. The number of chosen auditors is correlated to the foot traffic of the area and the size of the campaign. So, bigger campaigns have a better chance of being shown. Now, if an ad can't get 51% of the approval of randomly chosen individuals then not showing the ad is a net win for the community. We want to make a system where communities vote to see the ads they want to see. Those ads get a better conversion, they get good feedback and they connect with the community. Heated ads, controversial ads, or politically motivated ads will not even see the streets because pre-auditors will filter them. Pre-auditors are people in their homes reviewing ads before they get shown in the streets.
Picture this: an agency books an incendiary ad that gets blocked. The entire budget of the ad was $30,000. About 3,000 will go to auditors, $1500 to pre and 1500 to street auditors. The ad is so incendiary that everyone votes it down. About $1500 dollars are paid to 100 auditors. The agency gets back $28,500. The agency could have lost the whole budget, enervated the community, and lost a lot of goodwill. Instead, they conducted the cheapest focus group of their history.
5. Additional points: The network will not turn into a propaganda machine because the incentive dynamic described deters propagandists from placing ads. Ads are also regulated by exhibitors. A church can block ads of a certain kind, for example. An immigrant business owner can choose to opt-out of ads about politics, for whatever reason. The platform gives society the opportunity to vent, the change to express themselves for less but also the medium to regulate advertising. For too long we have been seeing the ads the corporations and governments wanted us to see but now we have a say in the matter.