Blockchain Tracker: Blockchain’s Role In Digital Advertising

Although it’s still in its infancy stage of being used outside of the financial arena, blockchain technology is slowly showing signs of impacting other industries.

On the tip of everyone’s tongue in the digital advertising arena is blockchain technology. Just as recent as this January, ethereum-based blockchain technology company adChain partnered up with decentralized application studio ConsenSys with the goal of specifically developing a blockchain solution for the online advertising industry.

ConsenSys’ Founder, Joseph Lubin, commented in the joint press release about how blockchain technology adds value to digital advertising: “There is tremendous value and disruption potential of this technology beyond FinTech. The development of smart contract-based applications in digital advertising is an ideal use case for blockchain. Supply chains and value chains are ideal use cases for Ethereum, as it enables many cooperating and competing participants to work fluidly together on a shared platform that they can all trust to realize an efficient and fraud-resistant n-sided marketplace. We’ve been iterating on the adChain blockchain implementation for a year and believe adChain will significantly change the way advertisers and publishers operate their supply chains to exchange ad impressions.”

Developed through the Swiss non-profit organization, The Ethereum Foundation, ethereum is a blockchain platform that’s defined as “a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.”

As such, it should come as no surprise that the digital advertising realm is beginning to use blockchain to help prevent fraudulent advertising. The first example of the technology’s use in digital advertising comes from Los Angeles-based startup company MetaX. It seeks to fight ad fraud via its new adChain protocol, which enables its own supply chain to adapt in a scalable, trustworthy and secure manner via blockchain.

MetaX’s Co-Founder and CEO, Ken Brook, understands how quickly the digital advertising arena is growing and thus believes standard industry procedures just won’t cut it. “Blockchain has a number of exciting implications for digital advertising. Fraud prevention is a natural first application given the transparency and security blockchain brings, and because fraud is such a major issue for the advertising sector,” he said.

Another avenue blockchain technology is being used for in digital advertising is ad-delivery verification. While trust in advertising isn’t at its highest point, some are touting that blockchain has the ability to be used to see if advertisements are being delivered and whether or not they’re going to the correct place. Blockchain also allows advertisers to track who opened the ad, where it was opened and what possible conversion rates are from the promotional push.

Through all of this, blockchain ultimately helps out two parties, which include the digital advertising industry, with its budgeting, and streamlining its services and consumers with transparency into ad practices. By removing any third-party interference, access to information on how advertising works internally and the paths it takes to reach consumers will allow the public to likely have more control over incoming targeted messages.