Concept for Decentralized Advertising in the Fediverse

This is a summary of a longer proposal. View the full document on GitHub for complete details.

Summary

This proposal outlines extensions to the ActivityStreams vocabulary to support a decentralized advertising framework in the Fediverse using ActivityPub. The goal is to create a sustainable revenue model for the Fediverse by treating ads as specialized ActivityPub activities and user preferences as specialized activities or custom fields in a user's ActivityPub profile.

History

The Fediverse, a decentralized network of social media platforms, has faced significant challenges in terms of growth and sustainability due to a lack of viable monetization options. This proposal aims to address this need by introducing a decentralized advertising framework built on the ActivityPub protocol.

Requirements

The proposed extensions to the ActivityStreams vocabulary include the following new types of activities, objects, and properties:

An ad:Ad activity type for representing advertisements.
An AdPreferences activity type for representing user preferences for advertisements.
Additional properties for these new activity types, such as targetDemographics, budget, and monetization for the ad:Ad activity, and frequency, format, categories, interests, keywords, and exclusions for the AdPreferences activity.

Example

Here are examples of how these new activity types and properties could be used in JSON-LD format:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    {
      "ad": "https://example.com/schema/Ad"
    }
  ],
  "id": "unique_ad_id",
  "type": "ad:Ad",
  "actor": "advertiser_account_uri",
  "content": "Discover our new eco-friendly smartwatch.",
  "targetDemographics": ["18-35", "Tech enthusiasts"],
  "budget": 1000,
  "monetization": {
    "platform": "platform_payment_pointer",
    "creator": "creator_payment_pointer"
  }
}

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "type": "AdPreferences",
  "actor": "https://example.com/users/john_doe",
  "timestamp": "2022-01-01T00:00:00Z",
  "preferences": {
    "frequency": "Low",
    "format": ["Image", "Text"],
    "categories": ["Tech", "Fashion"]
  },
  "interests": ["Open Source", "Sustainability"],
  "keywords": ["Python", "Zero Waste"],
  "exclusions": ["Alcohol", "Gambling"]
}

About the New Properties

The new properties added to the ad:Ad and AdPreferences activities represent the following: