Appreciate the nice words @cardboard :-)

Some small part of the revenue could even go to steem inc.

The challenge with allowing ads from end-users is the potential for abuse. Even with all the anti fraud and scanning measures we end up having ads from different categories. Imagine ending showing ads related to Tobaco to younger audience or violate the geographical locations. This can get very tricky.

One of the funniest and toughest scenario that I have found myself is "defining nakedness". We manage ads for a news paper owned by a certain religious group. The news paper often quite popular and unless they are reporting matters close to their religion, they are very good. They have strict policy against tobaco, liquor and also no dating advertisements. Occasionally an advertisement pops up which may be for something like a matrimonial site. Some takes a screen shot and shares with the management. Someone from our end gets a call. Once the representative from our end "declined" that the particular ad contains no nudity or nakedness. This got escalated and we found ourselves in the business of defining "nakedness" and "level of nakedness" allowed in the religious context - We finally had to apologize, give them discounts and steer away.

Apart from the uncertainty like this, allowing ads from the users also will have challenges like the one which Myspace faced - extreme customization was allowed resulting in challenges.

But the idea of giving back to the "authors" as an ongoing revenue is something that has immense potential. With the current RTB servers it is possible thogh the return will be low as the payouts are something like max 10 USD per 1000 impressions.

A solution like what is being offered by BAT (basic attention token) can be explored. I think @themarkymark had some ideas around BAT. I am interested in hearing thoughts from anyone who has ideas about BAT + STEEM :-)