Are ad platforms broken for early-stage startups?
Been thinking a lot about how ads work for early-stage startups.
Most platforms today are built around bidding:
\- pay per click
\- pay per impression
\- compete with whoever has the bigger budget
Which works… but also makes it really hard for smaller teams to even get noticed.
So we tried structuring it differently.
Instead of charging per click or impression, we made it a fixed model and placed ads directly inside the feed as native posts — same format, same tone, just marked as “sponsored”.
No banners, no aggressive CTAs.
What we’ve been seeing so far is interesting:
\- people don’t immediately skip them
\- some actually engage with them like normal content
\- and clicks feel more intentional than accidental
It feels less like “running ads” and more like putting your product into a conversation.
Still early, but the shift in user behavior is noticeable enough to keep pushing this direction.
Opening this up to a few startups right now to see how it performs across different products.
Curious what others think — does the current ad model actually work for early-stage teams, or does it just favor whoever can spend more?
BTW, ours is a niche social media app, where users create their own, original, impactful punchlines, monologues, dialogues, quotes, one-liners and taglines.