P2P ad serving.
I have been glued to Discovery Science’s Download: The true history of the internet series. As you can guess, it chronicles the various twists and tuns that led to the Web we have today.
Last night’s episode featured Napster and the rise of P2P computing. I thought this was relevant given the Webware post I read this morning about Blogupp, which is essentially a P2P advertising program for blog publishers.
Blogupp is a:
“…reciprocal advertising network for blogs. The concept is this: You submit your blog to the service, and it gets advertised to other BlogUpp users in proportion to the number of BlogUpp ad units you serve on your own site. And it’s free.”
Essentially it’s a barter network for advertising.
However, Blogupp is only for blogs and it’s in business to make money by selling 10% of the links to Google. But, it seems to me the P2P ad serving model could be taken a step further and centralised control (and centralised monetization) could be eliminated completely.
What would be needed would be some form of P2P client that could allow publishers to choose sites that they want to advertise on while also making their site available for other advertisers. Similar to the Bittorrent concept of limiting downloads based on uploads, the number of ads you can place would be tied to the number of ads you accept or perhaps some formula based upon number of ads and amount of referrals (although this would typically lead to the rich getting richer).
While a P2P option wouldn’t serve all advertisers and all advertising needs, it might be a far better solution for a wide range of smaller companies and services who are generating revenue by providing something of value rather than just monetizing traffic.
p.s. If this becomes a success – you read it here first.
