Engagement Token EGT ICO: Publishers & Creators Rewards?

Engagement Token aims to reward publishers and creators through a token that rewards engagement. Find out how it works today in our review.

What Is Engagement Token?

Engagement Token, or EGT, is a digital token for an “engagement platform”. The digital token is specifically designed for a platform called SolidOpinion. That platform already has 4.4 million users, 200 million monthly views, and 100,000 monthly transactions across client websites like the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and others.

SolidOpinion has also raised $7.7 million in funding from venture capital sources and publishers.

A pre-sale for EGT tokens is underway throughout February and March 2018. The main ICO, meanwhile, is scheduled for April 1 to 15, 2018.

How Engagement Token Publishers & Creators Rewards Works

Engagement Token aims to be a digital currency for an established engagement platform. As mentioned by the Engagement Token whitepaper, that platform has already achieved huge milestones.

The platform has 4.4 million users, for example, and 18 million monthly engagements. 100,000 transactions are processed over the platform every month, and client websites include top tier newspapers like the LA Times and Chicago Tribune.

How does a digital currency like Engagement Token enhance the value of this platform? EGT will reward interaction with publisher content. The value of your engagement is set by the site owner through the reward of tokens. Users can earn Engagement Tokens with their comments, content, and other online activities. Then, they can spend those tokens to advertise, upvote comments, or sell to third parties.

Publishers on the platform can set rewards specific to their userbase. Advertisers, meanwhile, can get full visibility into their audience and site activity to place relevant contextual product information in a pay-per-article model.

What Problems Does Engagement Token Seek To Solve?

Engagement Token seeks to solve major problems with the world of online publishing – particularly the problems we see in today’s news and content sites.

Content creators are forced to clutter their websites with more and more advertisements in order to compete with larger online publishers. This creates an unpleasant user experience, but it also hurts the publisher’s brand and bottom line. News publishers are forced to display annoying pop-ups, for example, that makes a reputable news agency look like a spammy online blog.

Some of the specific identified problems in the Engagement Token whitepaper include:

• The largest ad networks – like Google and Facebook – compete with news publishers for user engagement, creating a conflict of interest
• Today, user-generated content rules the web, including major websites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit. However, this user-generated content is often sourced from major media outlets and their work. Most of the user engagement is occurring on user-generated platforms, while news publishers struggle to maintain user engagement.
• Users are going “ad blind” and ignoring advertisements online. Some install ad blockers, for example. Others just ignore advertisements. So even when a news publisher attracts a user to its website, it struggles to draw value from that visitor.
• Shrinking publisher revenues are being seen across the world. Fewer than 10% of readers in English speaking countries paid for online content in 2016, according to a source cited in the Engagement Token whitepaper. At the same time, online ad revenue is hitting record highs.
• Malvertisements are endemic across the internet, including malicious ads that lure users in.
• Centralized advertising systems have too much power and control over the industry, and can even choose whether a news agency succeeds or fails.
• Increased bounce rates and lower engagement can be seen across the news publishing world. Users aren’t engaging with these platforms like they used to, and this is leading to shrinking revenues for news publishing platforms.

How To Use Engagement Token

Engagement Token aims to solve the problems listed above by allowing publishers to qualify and quantify all user engagements.

For example, publishers can decide how much it’s worth for a visitor to view a page, leave a comment, upvote a post, or share an article.

Each page on the platform can be fitted with its own Engagement Tokens, or EGT. Users can earn these tokens according to the specifications outlined by the publishers. Advertisers can purchase the tokens and place their ads as promoted comments or headlines in the premium space just below the article that most closely aligns with the advertisers’ target group.

EGTs are ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Engagement Token Benefits

Engagement Token aims to provide the following benefits:

Support Content Creators:

Engagement Token aims to bring user engagement back to the original source of content – the content creators – instead of aggregation platforms like Facebook and Reddit.

Reclaiming Publisher Revenues:

Publishers can sell their inventory directly to advertisers with no middlemen required.

Targeted Advertising:

Engagement Token has an advertiser portal called PPA Central that allows marketers to place advertising specifically targeted to an audience based on a pay per article model.

Decentralized Advertising:

Engagement Token uses blockchain to create a decentralized advertising platform.

No Room For Malvertisements:

Malvertisements, or malicious advertisements, go through a filter process. All products on the platform – including promoted comments and promoted headlines – go through the same filtration process as ads, which prevents malvertisements from taking over the platform.

Gamification And Reward Systems:

Engagement Token will create a gamification system, encouraging users to spend more time on the website and thereby increasing user engagement. Engagement Token’s whitepaper cites Reddit as one website that has a strong gamification system in place.

Who’s Behind Engagement Token?

Engagement Token is being developed by SolidOpinion, an Irvine, California-based company. That company is led by CEO and founder Constantine Goltsev, as well as Chris Kameir (VP of Corporate Development), Lena Knysh (VP of Sales), and Alexander Prokopyev (Chief Software Architect).

SolidOpinion was founded in 2013.

To launch Engagement Token and the EGT token sale, SolidOpinion formed an organization called EGT International Corp. That’s the corporation that is officially conducting the EGT token sale.

Engagement Token EGT ICO Details

The Engagement Token ICO will take place from April 1 to 15, 2018. The company will create a total of 1 billion EGT, with 400 million EGT available through the token sale.

A total of 200 million EGT will be sold to SolidOpinion. 150 million tokens will go to advisors and early backers. 250 million EGT will remain with EGT International Corp as a reserve fund.

A private, invite-only pre-sale is scheduled for January 15 to February 28, 2018.

A whitelist pre-sale, meanwhile, is scheduled for March 1 to March 31, 2018.

Engagement Token Conclusion

Engagement Token aims to help content creators – including news agencies and other original content creators – foster more user engagement. In today’s online ecosystem, these websites are consistently losing engagement to aggregation websites like Reddit or Facebook.

SolidOpinion, an existing publishing platform, aims to solve that problem by launching Engagement Token. Publishers can set rewards in Engagement Tokens. Then, users can earn Engagement Tokens by commenting, viewing articles, and completing other user engagement activities.

To learn more about EGT and how it works, visit online today at EngagementToken.com.