The Protocol for Smart URLs - MEDIA PROTOCOL

Today, online audiences and the content they consume are controlled by a small number of centralised content distribution platforms. MEDIA Protocol seeks to diversify this landscape by enabling the creation of new economic models for content consumption.

Content has never been more important than it is today. Whilst it is true that online advertising continues to be an essential pillar of the modern Internet, publishers and brands increasingly rely on exposure to audiences through content marketing to stay relevant. Solving the problems within content marketing, however, requires more than the disruption of inefficient intermediaries that dominate contemporary advertising and marketing.

A new developer protocol – MEDIA Protocol – is required to provide an accessible and scalable economic foundation for the relationship between creators, distributors, promoters and consumers. MEDIA Protocol acknowledges that the consumption of content by ordinary people is currently managed through proprietary algorithms and a small number of centralised platforms, and that the flow of data from these platforms to the parties who make content is limited. It also recognises that the experiences of ordinary audiences are worse as a result, because the brands and publishers who make content are either forced to rely on clickbait or expensive paid media campaigns to reach audiences.

To remedy this, MEDIA Protocol will create a new layer of direct economic incentives between key stakeholders within content ecosystem. MEDIA Protocol will provide developers, brands, publishers, influencers, content consumers, etc. the opportunity and incentive structure to interact in ways that are not permitted by centralised content distribution platforms. In this way, the protocol does more than reward attention: it fundamentally enables a new set of relationships between important parties that already want to interact with one another in more efficient and rewarding ways.