 Hi, my name is Brianna Marbury and I'm the Executive Director of the Interledger Foundation. Today, we're going to talk about alternatives to online advertising, specifically web monetization. Before we jump into the details, let's talk about where the world is in regards to the creative economy. As I speak to you today, the online creative space is growing exponentially and since the pandemic, even more people have moved to both creating and consuming a greater amount of content online. Here are a few statistics from the policy circle that show just how the digital economy is growing. With more creators from developing countries joining the ecosystem, the digital creative economy makes up six percent of the world's GDP. With a large portion of the growth due to 15 to 29 year olds, think Instagram and TikTok. However, the way these creators are getting paid for their work and subsequently, the information consumers have to give up in order to consume content is less than ideal. Now, we've all experienced going online to search for something and then like magic, there's that same something you search for showing up as an ad on the next platform or website you visit for the next month. And you're like, I really didn't have any intention of buying those socks with my dog's face on there. I just wanted to look at what it would look like online. But now you have to suffer through seeing these socks on every site and platform you go to because they're trying to entice you to buy them. But studies show that people are tired of invasive ads, which is the reason why one out of every four people use some form of an ad blocker now. Then there's the paywalls. I was just trying to read an article on a site that shall remain nameless and hit the whole message of, you've reached your article limit for the month. Frustrated, I rolled my eyes and exited off the site. In fact, that's what most people do as a conversion rate for paywalls is very low, ranging from two to five percent, depending on what study you're referencing. That's it. I guess something is better than nothing. And if you have a lot of traffic on your site, you may not be doing so bad, but two to five percent. The pandemic helped to boost these numbers a bit. But what's going to happen once people are able to move around freely and stop spending so much time indoors and consuming content that way? I'm not a betting person, but I'm willing to bet that increase in conversion rates that we saw because of the pandemic will go back down as people realize they don't need that subscription to underwater basket weaving after all. Here's a relatable example, at least for me that is. Say for instance, you're a blogger who painstakingly takes your time and effort to create a beautiful site about making cupcakes. Since I love to bake and experiment with your recipes, I thoroughly enjoy your website. However, in efforts to mitigate your costs, you start allowing ads on your site, which have been annoying your audience, mainly me. And as we talked before, lots of people are implementing ad blockers. Since that's not exactly producing the revenue you were hoping for, you decide to go a step further and implement a paywall to encourage people to subscribe to your site. And again, the conversion rate is very small. So when I run into this, while I don't mind supporting you and your ability to continue making creative and innovative recipes, I draw the line at paywalls and decide to say, forget it and find another person that's making recipes that I like. If this way of monetizing work online is so bothersome to a large portion of people, why is this still the pervasive model that persists today? As you can see here, these are just some of the downsides of the web's current business model. And you may think, aside from your monthly internet bill, surfing the web is supposed to be free, right? Well, no. Actually, when the internet was created, it was always intended for payments to be a native part of the infrastructure. It was just a functionality that wasn't utilized until now. And the way the business model of the web is currently, you're paying with your data and your privacy. And your data and your privacy is big business. 70% of advertising dollars go to three of the largest platforms because they're able to collect a ridiculous amount of data on you, which they then sell to organizations who get insight into your spending habits. So they can know exactly how to target you and what you're likely to buy. Meanwhile, the majority of creators are not earning a meaningful wage for their creative works. But we won't go deeper into that today. What we will talk about is a solution. What if there was a way for creators to get paid without having to implement ads, paywalls, respect their users' privacy, and create a seamless user experience for consumers? Well, there is. One way to start to break down this big behemoth of a machine that has been dominating the online payment space for almost 20 years is through web monetization. Web monetization is a proposed W3C standard that's built on the Interleger protocol, which is an open source payments network, meaning anyone has access to the code and can build on it. One of the coolest features of the protocol, in my opinion, is that it has the ability to move very small packets of currency across the web, which can be as small as a fraction of a set. These small packets, known as micropayments, are able to be continuously streamed from one person or entity's account to another. And it's all done seamlessly behind the scenes, so there's no interruption in user experience. Instead of running into paywalls and clicking off of pop-ups to actually get to the content you're trying to view, you get direct access. Easy and simple, right? To see how this works in the real world, let's go back to the example of where you're a cupcake blogger. If your site was web monetized instead of having ads in a paywall, I would be able to seamlessly peruse all the cupcakes, recipes my heart desires, while still supporting you in your efforts to spread joy by way of sugary goodness. And every second I spend on your site, you're getting micropayments streamed to your account. And the more traffic there is to the site, which you have traffic because I've told all of my friends about your recipes, the micropayments get streamed to you. It's a win-win for everybody. With the revenue you earn, you have the ability and means to experiment with new and fun flavors like ube, which by the way, I just made not too long ago, and if you haven't tried it yet, you should try it. It's delicious. I can support you, which I absolutely want to do, and maintain my privacy at the same time, which is something that's important to me. One thing I'd like to point out is that this isn't an all-or-nothing deal. We're all about choice here, and if you still want to maintain ads and paywalls on your site, you're absolutely free to do so. You can just add web monetization as an additional revenue option, and while you don't have to, you can include special perks for web monetized users such as an extra special recipe every week. Do whatever is best for you and your business. Now you may be saying, this sounds great, and I want to get in on this, but how? Well, there are a couple of ways. One, you can sign up with coil at coil.com. Right now, they're the sole web monetization provider, but we're looking forward to more in the future. This is just a snippet of their site. Cool, right? And signing up is so easy, especially for a user. It takes five minutes. It's $5 a month at the moment, and after you sign up, you can download the Puma browser onto your phone or install the coil plugin. Then just enjoy your seamless browsing experience from there, simple and sweet. If you're a creator, you sign up for free, create a digital wallet, and when a paying member of coil visits your site, you get streamed micro payments to your wallet. Adding web monetization to your site is fairly easy too, and there are instructions on coil site when you sign up that tell you exactly how to do it. The ecosystem is growing day by day, and here are the browsers you can use with coil for your seamless experience. The Puma browser is currently the only one with web monetization built in natively, so you can sleep at night rest assured that your information isn't being collected and sold to the highest bidder. The other browsers listed here have a coil extension that you can add on. As I said, this community is growing, and here's just an example of some of the sites using web monetization. If you're a photographer and use imager, well, that site is web monetized now. Cinnamon is a web monetized video platform similar to YouTube, but with each video you post, you can get micro payments streamed when viewers consume your material. If you have a website you're hosting, you should join us in this movement. We'd love to have you as a part of the community. Speaking of community and expanding the ecosystem, here at the Interledger Foundation, we are the home of the Grant for the Web program, which is a collaboration between the Mozilla Foundation, Creative Commons, and Coil. It's a $100 million fund to get the word out about web monetization, and we're all about promoting inclusivity and innovation. We want to talk to the creators, the developers, you, anyone who's interested in helping to contribute to the open web. So be on the lookout for our open call for proposals, and we're always all ears if you have an amazing idea as well that you just want to share with us. And if you're like, but we want more ways to get involved, we got you. Join the web monetization community. Join us at the Interledger Foundation as a member, and stay up to date on what we're up to, and join our Slack channel when we talk about all things web monetization and interledger. Well, that's all from me, and thank you so much for your time.