Things Work, Until They Don't
http://decknetwork.net/
Feedback i generally heard was that it didn't work well for advertisers and didn't work well for publishers. Noble idea, but noble + effective is harder.
The big issue with paying premium rates to reach influencers in web dev is many of the influencers are likely less influenced by advertising.
And if the ad units are self contained you are not really buying the influence, but simply being adjacent to the conversation.
Their model would have probably worked better if the ads also came with reviews of the advertiser's products in addition to the ad units on the pages, that way the advertiser was left with something after the ad period was over & the ad offering would be more differentiated. They wouldn't have to force any of the publishers into doing the reviews, but they could let the advertisers request a review & then say 1 or 2 or 3 of the dozen or so pubs in their network could have done a review.
It kind of reminds me of this quote (https://twitter.com/naval/status/848575365190569984):
"Wonder if Twitter has the highest average IQ, and therefore the lowest ad revenue of the major social networks." - Naval Ravikant
In terms of the stated idea of IQ being inversely correlated with ad revenue ... of course Twitter also has other issues, but it is hard for just about anyone to have a higher online ad blindness than a professional web developer.
Agree with the ad blindness point, but an inverse relationship between IQ and ad revenue is hokum.
To give one example, last 30 days data show average CPMs on Books & Literature categories to be 66% higher than People and society.