HEADLINE: "AT&T purchased first Ad Space on STEEM. SteemUSD demand increases +10,000% " (Pt.1)

HEADLINE: "AT&T purchased Ad on STEEM. SteemUSD demand increases +10,000% " (Pt.1)

Hello Steemians.

That is a Bold headline... right?

In my opinion, It's just a matter of time until this Headline becomes reality for all Steem shareholders!

Before advancing further I should perhaps state upfront, this post won't be a quick read

So I kindly ask that every Steem holder please set aside just a few minutes and read through this Part 1 of 2.
I'm not by any means the best Steem writer in the bunch, so here's hoping I don't make you suffer... much :)

**POST READ TIME: ** 10+ minutes. Maybe less if you're the Flash!

EDIT: I've hastily accelerated this post in lieu of the Hot Topics being posted on Steem today.
These posts are in lock-step to the subject material I was going to get into, so these tie-in quite nicely!

*About being called a "ponzi" *
Here... https://steemit.com/steemit/@blakemiles84/the-great-steemit-debate-tone-vays-vs-blakemiles84

and our accelerated user growth

Here... https://steemit.com/steem/@steemrollin/steemit-surpasses-reddit-in-user-engagement-closing-in-on-top-10-000-in-us-traffic-ranking

Thank you and props go out to @blakemiles84 and @steemrollin for these awesome posts!

The Idea!

I had this idea a couple of weeks ago which literally sent chills up my spine.
It just could've been the A/c being too cold?
Or, having this clairvoyant vision that had sent these chills?
Who knows?
But, either way; I know for a fact it was proceeded by a moment of
"Awww Snap! This shit's about to get real! I must get this into the open!" lol

Majority of us here on Steem know that we've kicked in the door to the elite Social Media world!
We will very likely continue wreaking MAJOR havoc for any competitors in the foreseeable future and at the same time, continue to firmly cement ourselves within this Social Media niche.

That being said, technologically and structurally speaking, we must maintain our first mover advantage and have a large enough gap to position ourselves well ahead of any viable competition...
like the beloved Facebook for example...

I should've made this Gif larger, sorry! If you can't read it... It's Mark Zuckerburg racing to get into the Server room, after learning of Steem, and trying to change the Facebook code to start paying out it's users before they all start leaving him, umm... I mean Facebook.

Being a step ahead includes the plausible fact that we must start to allow Advertising on our platform!
It's a MUST.

Advertising on Steem isn't a new subject.
It's been brought up many times before but, to my knowledge this subject hasn't been thoroughly discussed in-depth with any meaningful outcome.
If we were to start accepting advertising onto the Steem network, then I'd like to state how I envision the best case scenario and structure to handling this whole process.

From money entering into the Steem system... all the way to community pay-outs.

Maintaining a degree of Decentralization.

Over Unity, Perpetual Motion Machine and what they call Steem

We've all read those posts made inside and outside of STEEM that essentially elude to or state that, for lack of better terms, that Steem operates as a "one sided" business... a Ponzi, and there's no "legitimate" money that's coming into it and thus, it justifies in their minds that it must truly be a ponzi scheme.

So I don't agree with this "ponzi" crap argument! I actually understand the Steem economics.
Obviously... I'm here!

But... at the same time, one can argue that STEEM does pay OUT tremendous amounts of money to it's curators and voters with no "actual" income a.k.a money coming into the system...and their technically not wrong.
The only "actual" income or money coming in, is from people who are paying for Steem tokens on the exchanges, like @Bittrex, Poloniex and OpenLedger.

So, in a nut shell... for the most part... its thoughts and ideas IN, money OUT?
"How is that a sustainable business plan?" some have argued, right?

Well... as I see it and as the current model exists, its ONLY sustainable IF long term user growth rates stay on par as to what we're experiencing today.
And I mean for a VERY long time... having very little to NO hiccups along the way!!
It's this very reason alone we don't hear any real complaining about the value!
We're having tremendous growth!

But there's the one undeniable truth that we must face, there is only so many people on this Earth who can, or will join Steem!
At some point this growth trend must plateau and start to slow. No if's, and's or but's!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the "income" equation is the reliance on Investors and speculators.
Currently they're speculating on our massive Growth and Popularity and a cool new "project" and low coin supply.

Do they know it's an inflationary token system behind the scenes?

Any investor worth a shit will say
"Um, yea. I know that. But I'm all in as long as the user base keeps increasing the way it is and out paces the token inflation. Once that flips the other way, I'm dumping. The only saving grace for you guys is betting on the fact that users start converting majority of their earnings of Steem into Steem Power."

Being a so called investor myself, I have to realistically and honestly rationalize the situation at hand and ask myself...
"Why should I spend my hard earned money on an inflationary coin, which has no other incentives other than a cool Social Site on the block chain and a user base, that at some point, will stagnate or decline? Thus, coin inflation will outpace user/market demand AND add to the fact, that there are users "Powering Down" today who'll saturate the market even MORE starting now and on through the next two years!"

YIKES! NOT A GOOD SITUATION FOR STEEM!

*Yes, I'm generalizing the situation... but I'm not too far off either.

Sure, one could argue bringing fresh ideas and changes to the UI and/or frequent updates and activity will create more demand in way but, any of those changes are superficial. They are only quick fixes, hype and to some extent encompass a pump-n-dump type atmosphere.

Surely, you and I don't want to see Steem start heading off in that superficial direction, do we?

And YES, I called you Shirley!!

Increasing the value of STEEM In-Lieu of New Users?

One simple answer... allow Ad's on Steem while creating very steep Advertising demand!
Yes, that's right!
You read it... that ugly; no good; makes you cringe; bad, bad word... Advertising.

LOL, right about now you're probably visualizing bunch of shitty Banner Ads, Pop-Ups and other CRAP that you so despise while surfing the web.
You especially don't want to see it on the beloved Steemit pages and I COULDN'T agree more!!

It's this reason alone that I particularly spent hours mulling over how best to have both worlds.

What IS the best scenario and what trade off's are we willing to compromise, to start accepting HUGE... and I mean HUGE amounts of money from potential Advertisers and at the same time, not get assaulted with obtrusive Ad's that are plastered all over Steem?

Another question that'll naturally manifest itself also is... WHO will control the Ad's and WHO will get paid from those Ads?

Is it the Steemit.com website being controlled by @Dan and @Ned ?

Or, is it controlled and paid via the Steem Block Chain?

Hmmmm.... interesting question isn't it!!!

And I'll get into that, I promise.

In the meantime... let's go over some general numbers and start getting an overall perspective to what's going on within Steem! Shall we?

STEEM's User Growth Rate

Since STEEM's inception (as of 3/24/2016) we've seen nearly 19,522 New Account Creations.

This number was taken on 7/22/2016 from the awesome site https://steemle.com/charts.php
PS - a BIG thank you @jabbasteem for making this site!!

EDIT: Please refer to the article mentioned earlier for updated numbers. You can see I've been working on this post for some time now, Haha.
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemrollin/steemit-surpasses-reddit-in-user-engagement-closing-in-on-top-10-000-in-us-traffic-ranking

That 19,522 number is naturally inflated and I believe we MUST assume users are running multiple Steem accounts (bots, dual personality's, etc).
So let's cut away 30% from that total of 19,522.
This brings our New/Unique Accounts theoretically down to 13,665, a much more realistic figure.

From STEEM's opening date of 3/24 through today's date of 7/22, this happens to be exactly 120 days.
With the above being stated, let's do some very rough calculations...

Avg. New Users/Month = 3,416
Avg. New Users/Day = 113
Avg. New Users/Hour = 4.74
Avg. Monthly Growth Rate = 9.81%**

**Again, I must mention that these are VERY skewed figures due to the fact that before the payout of 7/4/16, there was only 4,704 accounts created.
From July 4th thru 7/22 it jumped from 4,704 to 14,818 total accounts; a 31.7% increase.

So with a 9.81% average monthly increase, we can conservatively estimate in 12 Months from now, that we should expect roughly a growth totaling 44,000+ actual accounts/members in our Steem community.

Admittedly, I actually expect these "Actual New User" numbers to reach closer into the 65K+ range.
Hopefully I'm wrong and its becomes more, as this will validate my reasoning even more for this post!

So How Much are You Worth? Yes, You!

If I'm a potential advertiser contemplating whether or not to place an Ad on the Steem network, then what are the main metrics I'd be looking at to determine what a "fair" price is that I'm willing to pay?

Obviously, there isn't a single definitive answer to this question, as every company who currently advertises in the real world requires a completely different set of demographics, objectives and ROI they'll take into consideration, compared to another!
My father and I, who owns his own Advertising Agency, had this conversation as I was explaining to him the structure of Steem and since this was his first time hearing of Steem, we got into a heated discussion. LOL
That's a whole other story in of itself but, he did bring up some valid arguments and from that discussion arose these points...

Number of users
Length of "visual" time, or duration
Shelf Life of the Ad
Click Through Rate
What are Steem's Demographics

Answering #1 is easy!
We just went over those numbers along with the post of @steemrollin

Answering #2 through #5 will have to wait later as I get deeper into other points that we'll go over in Part 2 of this post.
This post is getting relatively lengthy and it's just going to be to damn long to keep going!!
But I promise, in Part 2 these ideas will converge and will start making sense to everything that I've been laying out here today.

What awaits in "Part 2, the sequel..."

Answering the How and Why of questions #2 and #3 and how it will work in our favor based on the "structure" that I'd like to propose to the Steem community.
Detailing a proposed Advertising "structure" and how it'll benefit EVERYONE if done properly, accompanied by some pretty gifs :)
How Advertisers can submit, get peer reviewed and approved; while keeping their Property/Intellectual Rights of their Ad's cloaked in "secrecy". Hint- Hello Witnesses
How the "Advertisers Auction" in this proposed scheme could dramatically increase the demand on Steem USD market. Just like the post "Headline"
And much more!

Thanks for your time thus far!!

If you like this post... well... you know what to do and please follow to catch up on Part 2!