Growing The Pie Together
January 2025
The People's Internet Experiment, better known as Pie, is exactly that: an experiment to see what can happen if we put people in control of their internet experiences.
We created this company to build tools for real people that want to help the internet thrive.
We've started by building an ad blocker that over a million people have discovered in just our first few months since launch.
What makes our approach to ad blocking different is that we are creating tools and incentives to help creators and publishers earn more money, not less. Great content takes time and money to create and we want more of it.
If everyone used existing ad blockers, the economic model for a free and open internet would collapse, and with a billion users blocking ads we can all see the strains of this for publishers and creators trying to find new ways to get by.
But the internet without an ad blocker has become unenjoyable, hostile or even dangerous to you as a user: your data is auctioned off to the highest bidder, you are bombarded with ads screaming for your attention and malware is always lurking.
There is a better way: Give people full control of their personal browsing experience and encourage them to participate in effective advertising to support the open internet.
For some people this will mean no ads, and that is ok. But we believe most people will enjoy supporting their favorite creators and publishers, especially when they can earn rewards along the way.
At Pie we are building tools to make these choices as easy as possible.
Pie is a different type of company with a new business model so people rightfully have questions on how we plan to make money.
We want to give anyone control over their internet experience so we do not plan to charge people for most of our products. But people (correctly) understand that typically if you aren't paying for the product then you are the product, so this will continue to create confusion.
We want to be as clear as possible about how we do and don't make money, and how we think about it. Feedback is always welcome at product@pie.org
- Swap out ads and replace them with our own. We are not in the business of taking revenue from publishers.
- Take affiliate commissions from publishers or creators. Our ad blocker actually does the opposite: it helps ensure creator and publisher affiliate links work as expected. Most ad blockers just block affiliate tracking and payments which directly hurts creators.
- If a store offers cash back incentives to a user we pass 100% of the commission we collect directly to the user as rewards.
- If publishers offer a user an incentive to allow ads on their site we pass 100% to our users as rewards. While we test this feature we are funding the rewards on many sites ourselves.
- We only make money building new experiences that don't exist and that people want. We try to align the incentives of users with advertisers, publishers, and creators around these new options.
- The best current example of this is an optional feature we call “Instant Rewards” where people can earn rewards for engaging with entirely new advertising experiences added to their Pie browsing experience. We think of it as a way for advertisers to directly reach and reward people for their attention instead of wasting their time or yelling the loudest.
- We're a new company and will try a lot of new things like Instant Rewards and keep the ones people like. As a company we will make money when we build new things that people get value from, not by exploiting others.
- Our share of the value created may vary based on what we build in the future, but for something like Instant Rewards, our plan is to split revenue with users while creating new value for advertisers reaching engaged users more efficiently than is available through other ad channels.
Building a company that simultaneously impacts so many different constituencies on the internet is going to be a huge challenge. Balancing the desires and needs of end users, publishers, content creators, advertisers, affiliate networks, retailers, etc is extremely complex and will involve tradeoffs that could favor one group over another.
Given this we've decided we need to be as public about our plans, goals, thought process, and intentions as we can. And solicit feedback from everyone. As a startup, this adds risk because it means anyone could copy our roadmap or try to use what we say against us.
But there is also a huge advantage to building as a community. In fact it is the only way this can work. If you have ideas or would like to get involved please let us know. We are a small team today with much to do.
In the spirit of transparency, we will be following this note in the coming weeks with more updates and details about our product strategy and upcoming roadmap.
Stay tuned!
Ryan & the Pie Team
We are on a mission to rebuild the internet with people in control.
This starts with rebooting the economic engine that powers the internet.
Today the largest tech companies make over $100 billion dollars every year auctioning off your attention to the highest bidder. You pay for this in more ways than you think — an internet littered with aggressive ads, your data sold to spy on you for ad targeting, and inflated product prices due to excessive advertising costs.
Now imagine an internet where you aren't just a product to be harvested, but a valued creator and owner. Where the tech companies you use every day are aligned with your best interest and reward you for your contributions. That's the vision behind The People's Internet Experiment (pie.org).
We started by creating a free adblocker that gives you control of your internet experience. We added the option to enable Rewards for Ads. Now you can get paid a fair share to opt into ads you approve.
To make your shopping experience better, we built the fastest automatic application of coupons at thousands of your favorite stores. Then we added a cash back program that the adblocker doesn't break, so you actually get your rewards.
This is just the start. I've assembled a team of some of the most creative people that built Honey to invent new ways to share more of the advertising pie with you.
I hope you'll join us and let us know what you think!
Founder, Pie
Working at Pie
FAQs
- Support lists for creators (coming very soon).
- For example, on Youtube we encourage users to allow ads from their favorite channels. We make it easy for a user to decide to support individual creators or to support all of the channels they subscribe to. With one click of a link creators can encourage viewers to support them.
- We help protect affiliate links.
- Unlike most ad blockers that simply break affiliate link tracking, Pie protects creator affiliate links to help creators earn more money.
- Creators can earn money partnering with Pie.
- We pay creators who help spread the word about our creator-friendly approach to ad blocking. We do this both through sponsorships and with smaller creators using their tracking links. If you'd like to partner with us, email sponsorships@pie.org.
- Opt in to support creators and publishers
- Pie users opt in to see the ads you show them to support great content. Your ads will show in a favorable context with content from publishers that consumers love.
- New ad formats to reward attention and engagement
- Pie lets advertisers directly reach people interested in their products and reward them for paying attention.
- More cost effective than most other channels
- When users want ads, they work better. An ad no one wants wastes everyone's time and energy. An ad people want feels like content and reduces the cost for advertisers.
- In a privacy respecting way
- We give people full control over their advertising experience. For some people this means no ads. For others this means they'd love to hear from brands they care about. Instead of carpet bombing the internet with cookies, we have tools for advertisers to reach users who would like to be reached without all of the unwanted surveillance.
- Put users in control of their ad experience.
- Users choose to use ad blockers for a variety of reasons. Starving their favorite websites of revenue to create content is not on that list. Our ad blocker is designed to encourage users to allow ads from sites they regularly visit while protecting them from potentially malicious ad experiences when they click on random links on the internet.
- Reward users who opt in to better publisher monetization
- We have optional tools for publishers to give users a share of incremental advertising revenue when they allow ads on their website. We pass 100% of this revenue to the user as an incentive to opt in to ads. We call this Fair Ads as it aligns the interests of publishers, users, and advertisers. Are you a publisher who wants to be in our pielot (pun intended) program? Email us at publishers@pie.org.
- Use Pie Rewards points to unlock premium content (future)
- Pie users earn rewards points as they browse and shop on the internet. Today they can only use them to cash out. Soon they will have a fully funded wallet attached to their browser and can easily make very low cost micro payments - even automatically. Have ideas on what you'd like to offer? We are looking for early partners for this program so let us know.
- We only make money building new experiences that don't exist and that people want. We try to align the incentives of users with advertisers, publishers, and creators around these new options.
- The best current example of this is an optional feature we call “Instant Rewards” where people can earn rewards for engaging with entirely new advertising experiences added to their Pie browsing experience. We think of it as a way for advertisers to directly reach and reward people for their attention instead of wasting their time or yelling the loudest.
- We're a new company and will try a lot of new things like Instant Rewards and keep the ones people like. As a company we will make money when we build new things that people get value from, not by exploiting others.
- Our share of the value created may vary based on what we build in the future, but for something like Instant Rewards, our plan is to split revenue with users while creating new value for advertisers reaching engaged users more efficiently than is available through other ad channels.
- Employee-only codes (including ones used by their customer service team only)
- Military discount codes
- Student discount codes
- Codes that are not functional and should have already been expired/removed**