Harsh Agrawal / 4 Mins Read
Updated: March 3, 2025
Are you ready for the big change? What are your thoughts on using blockchain to empower advertisers? How can blockchain in digital advertising change the equation? Check out the these points.
Here's the news for those of you who were thinking that cryptocurrency has reached its downfall.
Investors are backing new blockchain-based startups every other day.
From $18 million invested in Russian blockchain-for-cargo-tracking platform QUASA to UNICEF wanting to fund early-stage blockchain startups, the hype is definitely not going to die a premature death!
In the coming years, technology will solve more problems in various niches, including digital advertising.
But online advertising has a bad rap when it comes to transparency. The main issue is online ad fraud, which can lead to a budget loss of $10.9 billion by 2021!
Want more cues? Well, in July 2017, The WSJ carried a news that said P&G was axing $100MM from its digital ad budget. And why was that? Because they didn’t deliver the results.
That said, how can blockchain in advertising change this equation? The answer lies in the pointers ahead:
Alongside blockchain, we’ve also witnessed the phenomenal rise of chatbots, which view and engage with ads instead of potential customers.
This is what raises concerns for digital ad agencies and businesses, as they are cheated by not getting the ads displayed to their targeted audience. The problem becomes severe because businesses or unscrupulous people with a budget can easily rent a network of hundreds and thousands of bots for a limited period! Moreover, the bots are amazing when it comes to donning the guise of a human, and hence, faking a mouse movement, viewability, and interaction can be easily carried out by them with ease.
Blockchain will help protect consumer data with secure technology so that demographic information will not be sold without authorization. Consumers will have the choice to own and sell crucial data to only authorized companies.
It can also prevent ad fraud by identifying individuals and providing authentication. Here is a detailed take on how blockchain is redefining identity management.
Blockchain can effectively eliminate the guesswork required to start a campaign. It can also effectively weed out bot clicks and other security issues that can lead to a campaign’s downfall. This will assure advertisers and stakeholders that people are interacting with the campaign data and that they are putting their monies in the right place.
According to the Bot Baseline Report, economic losses due to bot fraud were estimated to reach $6.5 billion globally in 2017. Although the number is a 10% decline from the previous estimate of $7.2 billion, solving ad fraud largely remains a tall order. The major findings from the same report included the following points:
The report's takeaways include demanding transparency for sourced traffic, which can be achieved with the intervention of blockchain. It should be able to curb the problem related to buying “clicks.”
Fraudsters are also adept at creating bots that mimic human behavior and create different versions of various legitimate sites, hence eating into the ad revenues that are generated on the websites.
Recently, Buzzfeed reported that a Christian publisher was running the identical ad fraud scheme as Newsweek media group’. It was running the code enabling it to earn revenue from ads which would otherwise not meet the industry standards.
Steps have been taken in this direction, such as the ads.txt project launched by IAB Tech Lab, which makes it easier for buyers and sellers to declare who is authorized to sell ad inventory. The biggies, Google and Facebook, along with about 20 other firms, have implemented the ads.txt initiative already. But it still has a long way to go.
But then, where does blockchain fit in?
The answer may lie in an approach proposed by a startup called MetaX for using blockchain to counter advertising fraud.
When blockchain is used, the order will be somewhat restored. It will bring greater transparency, with all the transactions and audit trials made available to the public and verified with the common consensus. Blockchain's security will also let advertisers store sensitive data securely, making it less susceptible to hacking.
MetaX is already developing blockchain solutions for digital advertising. Together with the Data and Marketing Association, it has developed adChain, which is known as “the industry’s first blockchain-based solution designed to fight fraud.”
The solution has an adChain Registry, a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain that stores the domain names attributed as non-fraudulent by the ADT holders. The holders access a token-weighted voting mechanism via a user interface.
Their vote will help determine whether a publisher domain is fraudulent. The only drawback is that blockchain needs to keep up with the rate of transactions when it comes to real-time bidding.
Ad blockers are one of the major pain points for companies. But as they continue to wreak havoc on firms' revenue sources, Salon has proposed a solution that could lead to a win-win situation. It will soon provide its readers, who use ad blockers on their browsers, with a different pop-up window.
Instead of simply asking them to whitelist their site, it will ask for their permission to use excess computing power to mine Monero, a cryptocurrency. It will ask for permission twice instead of going ahead straightaway.
According to Salon Media Group CEO Jordan Hoffner, “This is not a farce, we were intent on being the first media company to make this part of our monetization strategy.”
From the aforementioned points, it’s obvious that blockchain and advertising are set to go hand in hand. More biggies will adopt the technology and amplify their digital advertising game, even if it is unexplored territory for them.
Are you ready for the significant change? What are your thoughts on using blockchain to empower advertisers? Which turning points are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!
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Harsh Agrawal is passionate about Blogging and Blockchain technology. His belief is, Blockchain technology can bring much needed social change. He shares his learning on CoinSutra (A crypto community), whose mission is to help Individuals master Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency economics.
