Seen by thousands of people? The readership/viewership here is majority spam. These folks are not interested in the posts at all. Very little influence is happening here.
These ads should be included within the true, "organically grown" blog posts, so they can see potentially thousands more views; and the trending page should be given back to the actual content producers who advertisers typically rely on to make some REAL money.
There are only a few top trending slots. If this behavior was revved up, these people would pay for visibility, and a few hours if not minutes later, their promotion would get bumped down by the next one who pays more, and that spirals out of control leading to the top spot being far too expensive for only minutes worth of exposure.
Only a small handful of people can buy STEEM and buy exposure under this current model. It does not create enough demand to make a worthwhile impact.
I've offered a solid suggestion/solution to this problem here and more information in the comments section.
More bits and pieces can be found powering through this comment thread.
Removing the paid programming style promoted posts away from the Trending tab and placing them in a separate section (I call it the MARKET) where advertisers pay more to jockey for position like they do now, then having bloggers select from these posts to include as ad banners in their posts would draw far more eyes to the promotions. The banners function as a vote for the post hosting the banner, and that blogger earns ad revenue that way, along with a percentage of the rewards from the promotion would go to all those hosting that ad once the promotion pays out, much like a curation reward.
There's far more potential in that approach. It creates demand for STEEM, it gives bloggers another way to earn on top of their post rewards, it gives promoters and passive investors a shot at a larger venue and the promotions within blogs get more eyes because depending on a few top trending slots is wasteful when there are literally thousands of posts being published per day.
Going off on another tangent now: Out of the 22 months I've been producing my blog here, I took a total of six months off. I've received nearly 70000 votes, thousands upon thousands of organic views (they took our view counter away, unfortunately), and I've made thousands of dollars that was once worth hundreds of thousands. I never paid a dime for any of this.
In this post above, he's talking about how people don't see potential here, saying it's just a test. They simply don't understand the business they're in and therefore don't see the potential.
People have paid for websites and blogged for 10 years. They go into debt and don't even get half of the attention I've been able to grab since starting up here, working a total of 16 months producing 584 posts. Nothing else out there compares to this place if you're taking a professional approach, providing a unique experience, and know the business you're in.
Now if we can incorporate the Market I mentioned, and give the actual content producers a place to shine instead of allowing advertisers to hijack their stage, this place, along with the other DAPPs that depend on content producers in order function, will thrive and give plenty of opportunities for all involved to make some real money.