Viability of dApps... is there any hope?

Hi guys,

This post is mainly asking advice and wondering about how to approach my current situation.

I've scratched the surface of etheruem and was convinced that this is an amazing new innovation that I wanted to add to my personal iOS app with over 3600+ users. I have a basic business model that will both benefit users and 3rd party vendors on the app. Basically, I want to be paying users with my own ERC20 token while vendors will be purchasing "ad space" specific to my application with the only payment method being my ERC20 token.

I researched everything and was able to get a "proven" model up and running. Today, I was supposed to implement the beta version of this ERC20 token into my application.

Then, I ran into a big wall. I never thought about gas fees.

My use case involves auto-transferring ERC20 tokens to users just for using the app (get paid to view ads... looking at you Facebook). But each of these transactions that I was planning for my backend to initiate would cost me currently about $5.00 each with is absolutely ridiculous, considering the amount of user activity that would be in my app.

I was wondering if there was an alternative or different solution to this problem? Or am I really under the mercy of Ethereum developers?

I really want this to work and for my application to be a part of Ethereum, but I cannot justify paying $5.00 per user activity on my app (thousands of activities a day...).

Thank you for your advice!