Web3’s takeover of legacy industries is continuing apace, with the advertising business the latest vertical to be tackled. Leading the fight is Everworld, which has unveiled its platform for incentivizing users to engage with targeted ads by providing token rewards for participation.
The launch of Everyworld, developed by Everyrealm, follows a $60M raise that attracted heavyweight VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Coinbase Ventures. The size of the raise demonstrates that blockchain venture capital firms see the value of web3 solutions that can gain a slice of a $650 billion industry through providing a fairer deal for consumers and advertisers alike.
The Quest for Greater Advertising Accuracy
As William Wrigley Jr. famously commented, “I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.” A century on from that immortal line advertisers are still no closer to solving this problem, despite the rise of the internet and the ability to track user behavior. While analytics can provide greater insights into how many impressions are served, they’ve scarcely made a dent in the problem of inaccurate targeting.
In an ideal world, advertisers would serve content only to users with a genuine interest in their product. Despite huge improvements in targeting tools, however, the accuracy still needs significant refinement if this vision is to be realized. Everyrealm’s solution is to tackle the problem from the opposite angle: focusing on the demand rather than supply.
Incentivizing users to watch content that’s relevant to their interests achieves several desirable outcomes. For one thing, it allows brands to reduce ad spend and improve targeting. And for another, it allows consumers to capture some of that value through earning rewards for engaging with content.
Incentivization Through Tokenization
There are many technologies and use cases that come bundled with web3 but the most ubiquitous is tokenization. When optimally engineered, a native token can align incentives between participants within an ecosystem such as a dapp, staking protocol, or platform. In the case of Everyworld, that incentive comes in the form of the $EVERY token.
While watching ads is one way to earn tokens, it’s by no means the only way that Everyworld users can reap the rewards. There’s also a social and environmental component to the platform. Users can upload drawings in competitions, for example, with the best entries seeing a reward split between the winner and a specific environmental conservation organization.
The incorporation of gamified elements into the Everyworld platform is no surprise given that its creator Everyrealm specializes in social gaming. By turning a practice that typically disengages consumers – watching adverts – into one with economic incentives built in, viewing videos becomes more akin to video gaming. Particularly so given that the videos in question are served on Discord, the gamer-centric social platform.
With the average person watching the equivalent of 41 days of adverts a year without receiving a cent for their time, the case for Everyworld’s incentivized solution is a compelling one. Its focus now turns to onboarding enough users to capture a share of the advertising market and upend an industry that is ripe for disruption.