Let’s Raise the Price 
of Human Attention

For Good.

Right now, cheap web traffic is only used for shady advertising. Here we quantify the damage this does to society and propose that instead, governments can buy that same traffic. They can advertise the same social causes they’re already promoting via less effective ad channels - and this will drive the shady advertisers out of the market.

A total win-win!

Ads like these generate over

70 billion visits a month.

Maybe we ignore them. But we can do better. We can turn all this traffic into a force for good.

While governments worldwide spend billions to promote social causes such as public health and road safety, their exact audience is stuck with ads about gambling and weight loss supplements. Why?

What is Cheap Traffic and Why Does it Matter?

1
Website owners worldwide have visitors they want to profit from. They sign up for traffic monetization platforms.
2
The platforms (ad networks) sell web traffic to digital advertisers. The less interest from advertisers, the lower the price of the traffic is.
3
Quality advertisers don’t usually work with ad networks that sell non-targeted traffic.
4
Cheap non-targeted traffic ends up sold for the purposes of low-quality or malicious advertising
5
Web traffic stays cheap, predatory advertising remains profitable. The cycle repeats.

Predatory Advertisers 
Depend on Cheap Traffic to Survive

Malware
Deceptive 
Gambling Ads
Shady Finance & Cryptocurrency trading platforms
Non-regulated health products
Borderline-legal scams (ie Win an iPhone)
Advertisers from these industries are thriving online thanks to easily available traffic, sold for as little as $0.001 per visit. Governments are slowly recognizing the harm: rising online gambling activity, malware spam and malicious advertising.
Some of the attempted solutions include regulation and support for those recovering from online fraud or gambling addiction.
But why not also take away these industries’ most valuable resource? Their visibility.

How cheap is traffic in your country?

For every fraction of a cent, there’s a potential scam shown to someone in your country. The price of traffic is the only safeguard to stop malicious ads from flooding the market.
Raise the price

Governments are Among the Biggest Advertisers in Every Country.

But They’re All Missing One of the Largest Traffic Sources.

Cheap traffic can serve anyone with a universal message and any budget size. For minimal costs, It can attract as much attention as possible to important universal topics: public health, safe driving, violence prevention, recycling, and climate change.

The US government spent over 312,640,000 USD on digital marketing and advertising in 2022 alone. That’s more than Coca Cola’s overall US advertising budget for the previous year.

Source: usaspending.gov

With cheap traffic, governments can be heard better, and prevent real social damage from predatory advertising.

The more quality advertisers bid on traffic, the higher its price becomes until eventually, low-quality advertisers are pushed out of the market.

Governments buying their own country’s cheap traffic to protect its citizens is the same as a central bank buying its own currency to keep it stable. Attention is a socially important currency and trading it is okay, but only under appropriate regulations. If an appropriate regulation is impossible, the regulator should enter the market.

Someone please tell them.

The Internet is Like a Second Home and Zero click is a Cheap Key for Anyone to Enter

Zero click traffic is one of the cheapest for advertisers to buy. Without you clicking on anything, these ads lead you from a website you’re trying to visit, to anywhere else on the web.

suffix

Attention is a socially important currency.
Don’t let it go to waste.

Take action