The digital advertising market continues to add billions of dollars every year. Digital advertising is susceptible to fraud, uncertainty, and inaccuracies. A study by WPP’s GroupM says ad fraud could cost businesses $16.4 billion in 2017. The $16.4 billion represents 20% of the total market, a very significant number. It is very important to advertisers to find a solution to the growing ad fraud problem. It has been stated by many in the industry that they are seeking a solution.
One Forrester analyst estimated that publishers removing middlemen could increase their CPM from $1 to $5. Blockchain may do even better. It could eventually shake up the market so much that companies can pay their targeted audience directly to view their ads—skipping the ad buy process altogether. Using “micro-currencies,” companies will vie for actual audience “attention”—not just imprints. And they’ll be able to prove they’ve gotten that attention before the currency is exchanged. The Brave browser, for instance, uses its “Basic Attention Token” (BAT) to allow advertisers to pay based on “mental effort” by the person viewing the ad. That means smarter spending—and connecting—with potential customers.
While advertisers paying for our eyeballs on their products this could (and perhaps even should) be the future, Tammy Leigh Kahn, COO of ClearCoin, believes that first we must bring more transparency to the whole process.
“The distributed ledger (the blockchain), Kahn says, “ can create a tamper-proof record of where ad quality is high and where it is low. In a world of bot farms, this metric is key, but it has historically been an unmeasurable black box.”
The proof-of-history ledger, or the blockchain, seems to be the much-needed layer to combat ad fraud and inaccuracies. ClearCoin’s global advertising platform connects advertisers and publishers and tracks all transactions in a proof-of-history ledger. The ClearCoin (CLR) token is built on the Ethereum network, while ClearCoin’s inventory tracking blockchain is built on Hyperledger. Since opening up their token sale in December, ClearCoin has already had over $4 million in sales and their presence on telegram (link: https://t.me/ClearCoin) is growing rapidly. So, it certainly seems they are onto something.
Whether these opportunities for blockchain blow up is still to be seen, but it is interesting to see how this space is developing. After all, there are tech giants (think Google and Facebook) who stand to lose if they don’t adapt to this new paradigm of transparency. Still, if we believe—and I do—that digital transformation is all about customer experience, then blockchain’s entrance into the marketing-scape will not be short-lived. It will mean fewer unwieldy pop-ups when browsing and closer connections with the companies we want to support. And, it will empower customers themselves to choose which marketers they wish to hear from, and will empower brands to actually reach real people.
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