They've certainly left the door open to this but I think there's a bit of conflict in that. They say they're not interested but might do it.
From the Steem whitepaper pg 43, "Replacing Advertising with Blockchain-Based Content Rewards":
Advertising represents a double-edged sword: With ads, a creator can make money most easily. Without ads, monetization is difficult but the content is richer.
And this is from an article where @ned is quoted (though it may be from an out of date press release?) published on 31st Jan this year, only a few weeks ago:
Steemit users are rewarded by the Steem Blockchain itself, as it tallies posts by their votes and then rewards the best poster and voters accordingly. As a result, Steemit can be an ad-free, decentralized social media platform where anyone can get rewarded by posting or finding good content.
However in the privacy policy they make clear they can do all sorts:
We may partner with third-party advertisers, ad networks, and analytics providers to deliver advertising and content targeted to your interests [emphasis mine] and to better understand your use of the Services. These third parties may collect information sent by your computer, browser, or mobile device in response to a request for content, such as unique identifiers, your IP address, or other information about your computer or device.
I know it's off topic for this article but I want to state that I strongly believe this should be resisted. If that's where we're heading I'll be sorely disappointed.
The whitepaper is a bit out of date. I'm not sure if that is still the platform's position.
You are against adds that would pay all SP holders? What other revenue model would be able to support billions of dollars worth of new capital flowing into the platform?
I'm against invasions of privacy, harvesting personally identifiable information and tracking. This puts me in the position of opposing internet advertising as it currently stands because the ad networks employ some of the most advanced and invasive tracking methodologies yet invented.
The lack of it is the only reason I gave Steemit a chance to begin with. While the uncompromisingness of my position is not all that common, most people are against tracking, but choose to ignore it in order to access services.
I don't see how it would be practically possible for Steemit.com to incorporate advertising without involving these ad network but if they found a way I wouldn't oppose that. However it's clear that they would go with tracking. That's what "content targeted to your interests" is a euphemism for.
Edit: I forgot to ask, then is ned's quote out of date too?
(Nesting)
I don't know.
Anything along those lines is in the distant future at this point, so I'd say it is up in the air.
I know the Steemit devs and community are very concerned about privacy, so I wouldn't expect anything invasive that wasn't voluntary.
I hope so. I'd love to see them abandon CDNs (they are tracking proxies) and the use of Google analytics and custom search, but that's another story for another day!