How is blockchain technology transforming the advt and media industry: Aditya Naik

Authored by Aditya Naik, Co-Founder & CBO, Koinex

An MSc. Physics & BE Electrical and Electronics graduate from BITS – Pilani, Aditya has been instrumental in starting his own business in the SEO space called Db4D. Prior to co-founding Koinex, he has worked with companies like Bizongo, Daily Ninja, Student UniPack (UK), and PiRhoAlpha Research. His expertise in market research, technology, finance, the digital currency has helped in creating India’s largest digital asset exchange platform – Koinex.  

 

Blockchain technology at the outset found a reference in conversations around cryptocurrency, Bitcoins in particular, and people used to see it only as the underlying technology for virtual currencies. But soon the transformational power that blockchain technology itself possesses became evident and today the world is gung-ho about the possible disruption that blockchain will bring across industries. There are lot of sectors which will be most benefited by Blockchain and the advertising and media industry is without a doubt one which will witness a revolutionary change, like the change that the internet got, if not more.

Today companies are investing huge budgets in building software and smart tools to quantify the impact of their campaigns and marketing activities. Auto-bot engagements and artificial methods to enhance traffic often lead to brands being muffed by inflated numbers and reach. The advertising and media sector has been wanting to combat such fraud and lack of transparency for a long time, and blockchain is essentially the solution. Why so? Here is why:

  •       Builds trust and transparency: Blockchain works on a distributed ledger format wherein the data entered cannot be tampered. So we can use this ledger format to know the exact number of audience who engaged with our campaign and track its efficiency. We can even go a step further and use ‘smart contracts’ to weed out auto-bot engagements and ensure the right audience is being targeted. In fact, we can monitor these parameters in real time and make changes to the campaign to improve its effectiveness, rather than running the campaign erroneously and yielding poor or fabricated outcomes. This sort of accurate monitoring and a quality check will also help agencies/clients get healthy ROI on their spends.
  •       Better targeting: Based on the data and the stats, consumer engagement due to an ad campaign or media outreach is very hard to track. There is no guarantee to know if the right audience was only partially engaged or if you missed any relevant consumer section. But with blockchain, we can track real-time information about the consumers, their content consumption pattern and level of engagement with the brand. This is priceless information for the brand it will save unnecessary ad-spends and also allow them to be less intrusive and more timely with their consumer-engagement. Imagine a scenario, where brands can accurately track who is using their brand and advertise only to them!
  •       More access, fewer barriers: Traditionally, the advertising and media industry have middlemen who lengthen the business chain and often lead to unwanted operational costs on the company. Using the blockchain network we can eliminate these middlemen and brands will be closer to their consumers. This will allow them to better monitor the consumer experience and improve consumer satisfaction. One example here is the Brave Browser, wherein the viewer gets paid with BAT tokens for his time and engagement on the browser. The brand tracks the consumer involvement on the browser and incentivizes them accordingly. No media agency or intermittent person involved here, only the content creator, the content consumer, and the platform, period.
  •       Data Management: Data management is a powerful tool with marketers and how well they use it to read, analyze and target their audience, determines the success and failure of the brand. Analysis of the data is paramount but at the same time data piracy and theft is another major concern companies face. Many blockchain companies are working towards creating tools to track, monitor and draw accurate consumption patterns across all available screens, among various consumer groups. An interesting example of database management is BitClave. They incentivize consumers when they add their data to their blockchain database. Companies will now, need to search through the BitClave decentralized search engine and then compensate to engage with them.

So, while blockchain technology is helping companies’ world over, to bring transparency, accountability and moreover have better targeting of their audience, there are many other facets of this industry which can be overhauled with blockchain. So, the future of digital advertising looks bright, the only caveat being that companies need to find trusted and efficient blockchain startups to help them build scalable and robust products.

Views expressed in the article do not reflect those of the publisher.

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