Blockchain for Digital Marketing

Digital Advertising’s Latest Experiment

Could the use of blockchain be the next big thing for the digital advertising world? It’s definitely an interesting and innovative concept in the world of digital technology, but will it play a part in upping the ante in the digital marketing game? To answer that question, let’s first take a look at what blockchain actually is and how it can be used in the world of digital advertising.

The purpose of blockchain is to allow digital information to be distributed, but not copied. Many people can contribute to, and write entries for, a blockchain document, making them a record of information and the community of users involved, in a particular blockchain, can control and amend how information is updated, meaning no single person controls the information.

A blockchain is essentially a continuously growing list of records, which are called blocks and these blocks are secured using cryptography. Blockchains can serve as distributed ledgers, recording communications and transactions between two parties in a permanent way. The data in any given block cannot be altered without the alteration of all other subsequent blocks.

So, what does all of this mean and how does it relate to digital advertising? Well, blockchain can be used on the internet to send out a sample of marketing tactics to see whether it was seen, who it was seen by, where the advertisement ran, conversion rates, and how much was spent along the chain. And that can add up to more lucrative and specialized marketing campaigns in the future.

Blockchain is comparable to the ways in which bitcoin us used, but it can actually have further reaching uses. However, when it comes to advertising, the theory about blockchain is that it can be used to track ad impressions in digital media. The theory here is that blockchain can work together with adchain and doesn’t have to depend on one party’s data. This means that adchain can embed a tracking in the xml of a creative asset and from that, give you real time stats of who is seeing the ad or if the standards set for viewability are being met.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation of how blockchain and adchain could work together to benefit the digital marketing community. Perhaps a buyer purchases an impression and that impression is encrypted into a block; then that block is broadcasted to every participant within that blockchain. Once the impression is verified by the publisher, it can then be added to the ledger and then the participants in the particular blockchain can see the impression event and also approve it. This can give greater insights into what is seen, when it is seen, and also give better insights at a transaction level.

One of the most interesting ways to potentially use blockchain is for ad-delivery verification, since this is sometimes a hard part of digital marketing to pinpoint, using blockchain for ad-delivery verification would help with the efficiency in gauging whether an ad is reaching its intended audience.

Keep in mind that blockchain is not the exact same thing at bitcoin since blockchain isn’t a type of currency that can be traded in the digital world. However, bitcoin is a digital currency that operates on a blockchain, which is how the two are related.

As with any new type of technology, there are pros and cons. Let’s look at the potential pros and cons of blockchain:

Pros:

• Anything of value can be transferred and saved in a safe manner without the threat of unlawful alteration
• Transactions through a blockchain can be verified by a vast, peer-to-peer global network
• Cryptocurrencies cannot be frozen in cases of an economic crisis
• Intermediaries like banks, lawyers, government entities, etc are not needed
• Transactions and data cannot be reversed

Cons:

• The anonymity of blockchain can open up the possibility for scammers
• The chains can still be hacked and manipulated
• The majority of governments, offices, and retailers don’t accept cryptocurrencies nor are they educated in the uses of blockchains for data and advertising purposes
• The transactions and data sent through blockchains are irreversible
• It’s a technology that still needs to be tried and tested

Whether or not blockchain develops into a viable way for digital advertising marketers to use to their advantage remains to be seen, but the prospect of a working and viable blockchain technology for the exchange of data and currency is definitely becoming a concept that could very well take off in the near future.