Bootstrapping

A few posts ago I wrote that ads on Gemini “could never happen”.

Gemini vs Ads

Not because of the technical barriers—although as I outlined, those are formidable—but for some “non-technical reasons” that I didn’t go into at the time.

Let’s do it.

Four Pillars

I’m repeating myself here, but it bears repeating: the online ad ecosystem is complicated. Every time money changes hands there are four players involved:

The user, who sees and reacts to the ad.

The content provider, who arranged for the ad to show alongside their content and hopes to get paid as a result.

The ad infra provider, who facilitates the transaction and likewise hopes to get paid as a result.

And, finally, the advertiser—usually, someone trying to cause a positive effect on their business by the effect of the ad on the user.

For ads to happen on Gemini, all four of these would have to exist simultaneously. If any one is missing—no ads.

So what we have is a bootstrapping problem: how to go from there being nothing, to there being something.

Geminauts

This one, you are familiar with! Geminiauts, the current crowd, will react strongly against any kind of advertising or tracking.

But more than that: there simply aren’t enough of them.

To support ads, there would have to be far more Geminauts and they would have to be very different to today. In fact: if that should happen, Gemini will be lost to us before any ads arrive.

Capsule Owners

Likewise, the current crop of capsule owners—Gemini’s content providers—are all or mostly dead set against the idea of advertising.

Again, there would have to be a dramatic change in the scope and usage of Gemini owners for a substantial number of capsule owners to want to show ads. It wouldn’t be the Gemini we recognize.

But even if they want to show ads, they can’t, because there aren’t any to show.

Ad Infra Providers

Software is expensive! Ad infra providers are businesses, and have to justify time and money invested.

Right now, there’s no opportunity: no suitable users to advertise to, no suitable capsules to host on. There is absolutely no business case to make here.

The post I linked to last time considered the possibility of ad-supporting browsers built for Gemini. I said it could never happen. The reason is simple: building desktop software is a huge investment. There’s a reason why most software these days is web services—they are vastly cheaper to build, launch and maintain than installed software. There is simply no business case for launching an installed desktop or mobile app with the aim of creating an ad-supported Gemini.

This isn’t the end of it, though. As businesses, ad infra providers have customers—and compete for their attention, interest and money. It’s not just that an ad infra company would have to invest technically to build infra for Gemini. No, much more than that: they would have to put their reputation on the line.

An ad infra company would have to say to its customers: here is a thing called Gemini. Here is what it does, here is why it exists, here are the people who use it. This is why we think it is critical to your business.

It’s impossible.

Advertisers

Finally, think of the advertisers.

Their ads represent their product or brand to the world; an advertising campaign that goes wrong can severely damage a company.

So, they are extremely conservative. They want accurate projections, they want data, they want proven and provable results.

An advertiser given the opportunity to try a new type of ad in a new medium used exclusively by people who hate ads and with content provided by people who hate ads, and where the entire ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the size of any of the circles they usually move in—no.

It’s impossible.

Frozen In Time

I don’t see any possible way for “progress” to happen here. Gemini is stuck where it is, ad free and unfettered, exactly as designed. Huzzah! May it live a thousand years.

And with that, I think, I’m done with the topic, and can resume following my own advice: to not post about Gemini too often.

Afterword: Ads Lite

There are three variants on the standard online ad worth mentioning for completeness.

Affiliate Links

I mentioned click-through ads in my last post.

One particular form of click-through ad is well known: the affiliate link. A capsule could review some product, then give links to buy it with tracking embedded that causes some money to flow to the capsule owner.

In theory this solves the “Geminauts hate ads” problem as Geminauts might not realize it’s an ad. And, it solves the “ad infra provider” problem because no new infra is needed—as long as the links point to the web.

But, it doesn’t address capsule owners being against ads—and even if some capsule owner does really want to serve ads, they should know—or will quickly find out—that some Geminaut is likely to notice the affiliate link and that there will be a backlash anyway.

In all, I think affiliate links are useful to Gemini. The bootstrapping problem is much smaller, so they should serve as an early warning system. As long as there are no affiliate links, we don’t need to worry at all about the far more complex types of online advertising arriving.

Scams

What about the dark counterpart to advertising? Where there is no product for sale, or brand to improve; no ad infra provider, no advertiser as such: the scam?

A capsule owner could, for example, offer to sell some seemingly-valuable piece of second hand hardware—then take the money and run, before surfacing again with a new domain and identity.

There is no particular barrier to entry here. As much as we want Gemini to be better than the web, it’s not immune to outright criminal activity. For me this is the biggest—not big, I think, but biggest—threat for Gemini on the horizon. Stay safe, folks.

Spam

On the other hand, spam seems to be reasonably well taken care of by the hands-on approach of capsule maintenance and link curation. Fingers crossed.

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