steem as attention token and relationship to advertising

Summary: Steem should allow content producers multiple paths to capture value from content, including advertising, pay-per-view, opt-out-of-ads, renting, etc. Getting paid for useful feedback and comments applies to all of these modalities.

The Steem platform rewards content creators for producing valuable content in a way that is simple and natural for the consumer and doesn't require the consumer to make explicit value calculations. The content creators, through their rewards also have an ownership relationship in the platform, which is great, both morally and for network effects.

Currently Steemit makes a clear choice about how to pay for content, and that is via a consumption fee, albeit 'free' for the consumer at the moment. I pay a creator when I up-vote their content.

I think that Steemit could be more flexible in how it allows creators to capture value from content. By doing so, the Steem platform can expand and serve a broader market.

I see two situations that Steem could handle better:

Firstly sometimes content is extremely valuable to a few people but is not popular. Upvotes will not handle this case. Thus creators need to be able to charge a fee for consumption in Steem.

Secondly, some content takes consumers to a place where they are very valuable to a business, for example a DIY deck building article takes a consumer to "How much does that tool cost at Home Depot". That position is very valuable. The creator might want to sell an ad there. Affiliate linking is one way but integrating advertising content is another. These bring up the same interaction choices as occur within the Brave browser/BAT system. Should you give the consumer the option to get paid to watch an ad? Should you force them to pay to opt out of ads? I would like to see Steem offer choices for content creators to handle these cases. Also if Steem can handle this problem well on Steem, then it could be a cross browser competitor of BAT.

Integrating more modalities for content, including advertising, would increase the demand for Steem, thereby increasing the value of Steem, and increasing the honeypot that would attract content creators.

Particular views on the Steem blockchain could filter out advertiser content or not allow certain features so the current interface could continue, even as you add additional features to capture the value of content.