Monetization Strategies for the Web of Data

Inspired by the World Wide Web, the Web of Data is a network of interlinked data fragments. One of the main advantages of the Web of Data is that all of its content is processable by machines. However, this also has its drawbacks when it comes to monetization of the content: advertisements and donations—two important financial motors in the World Wide Web—do not translate into the Web of Data as they rely on exposing the user to advertisement/call for donations. The remedy this situation, we propose two different monetization strategies for the Web of Data. The first strategy involves a marketplace where users can buy data in an integrated way. The second strategy allows third parties to promote certain data. In return, the sponsors pay money whenever a user follows a link contained in the sponsored data. We identified two different kind of data—commercial and sponsored data—which can benefit from the two respective monetization strategies. With our work, we propose solutions to the problem of financing the creation and maintenance of content in the Web of Data