Blockchain technology disrupts advertising services industry

Blockchain transforms not only sectors such as security, health, and finance but also many basic tenets of marketing. However, not much discussion goes around as to how blockchain would upend the role of advertising. Nevertheless, advertising industry will be one among the first that blockchain technology would disrupt. It digitizes touch points, makes digital payments, creates meaningful value, builds trust, and decentralizes advertising concepts. Marketers who recognize this will have a lucrative opportunity in front of them and an edge over others. Hence for salespeople and marketers, it is worth spending some time to understand the changes happening in this arena.

Digitizes touch points

The stimulating effect of blockchain in the advertising world is that it makes everything unique. It makes this possible with its capability to digitalize any asset by coding every customer transaction data and laws into it. That way there is verifiable proof of each transaction identity, and that transaction can be a product. Therefore, customer attention at every touch point would become a prized commodity, without any intermediaries.

Makes digital micropayments

In the future, the advertising industry would pay people a small fraction of a cent for their attention. Such micropayments can only work with a digitally native currency. Tracking these types of payments is precisely one of the strengths of blockchains.

Creates meaningful value

Identifying and differentiating every product means the ability to add significant benefit. For example, Babyghost, the fashion label, gives their customers the capability to use unique identifiers for their products that provided them with extra information on it. These blockchain identifiers tell a sales story in an innovative way about how they make the item and where it came from, appealing the customers on an emotional level. Another company is Goodwill that takes one person’s unwanted clothes and sells them to another using blockchain platform.

Builds great trust

Blockchain technology makes it extremely difficult to manipulate the data and rip the system off. And what blockchain can do regarding privacy is to make groups of data anonymous, thereby turning all brand data into something like a census. Essentially, this gives detailed information about the network, but not which person is in love with which brand. This added layer of privacy would allay customers’ fears but would not affect the brand and their data. This enticement could be used to enhance the trust in the advertising industry. Such direct fraud-free connections with the customer will become much more trustworthy and simpler, nurturing a long-term relationship. As blockchain technology matures, it is possible to build greater trust that the advertising investments are where they are intended to go.

Decentralizes advertising concepts

One of the traditional advertising concepts is the idea that the ad reaches a consumer. After that happens, and if the message is good enough, the customer acts. And marketers take it for granted that customer attention and act comes without any cost. But this paradigm is already changing in the blockchain world through decentralization, and it is becoming a trend. For example, Shape Shift as come up with a solution on how to decentralize loyalty points by allowing for the free exchange of coupons, eliminating any lasting ties to brands. Those coupons and loyalty points probably would have sat there unused, but the new market creates value for both seller and buyer. By decentralizing networks, blockchain offers a better way of verifying the advertising system. It is precisely what the ad-blocking software called Brave does, which runs in millions of devices worldwide.

Blockchain technology browser

Brave that looks like another web browser offers a glimpse of the future of decentralised advertising industry that uses blockchain technology. Built by the co-founder of Firefox and Mozilla and the creator of JavaScript, it is faster, blocks ads and prevents cookies.  Moreover, using Brave it becomes possible for site visitors to make micropayments to a publisher for their content via cryptocurrency. The next iteration is a function that gives advertisers the capability to pay for the attention-based effort by an individual. Consider the entire revenue stream model of Facebook and Google that places ads in front of people. Now with the blockchain technology browser, the payment will go to the end-users, instead of the ad dollars going to Google and Facebook.

Industry faces disruption

It is not proper to say that blockchain will change every industry, but it will affect sales due to the innovation within the advertising industry. The initial traction from the first generation solutions is being experimented by early adopters in the advertising supply chain as they begin to implement the earliest concepts that reduce costs, eliminate fraud, improve reporting accuracy, and minimize recording time. These initial advanced wave of blockchain-based technologies and protocols seek to change how digital advertising is purchased, measured, delivered, and valued. Future-proofing businesses against this can protect companies against disruption. Also, traditional advertising agencies will have to reduce their prices in response to this competitive threat drastically.

Advertising industry pioneers

One of the early contenders is Ad Chain, which offers a protocol for buying and selling advertising space. Shareholders in the network use its native token and get incentivized for keeping it clean from low-value or fraudulent publishers. In return, they benefit by getting more ad value and campaign auditing through cryptographically secure tracking. Ad Shares is a decentralized market for programmatic advertising giving publishers and advertisers the ability to trade without the need for centralized exchanges.

Future of advertising

The blockchain is different and radical, and possibly foreshadows the arena where marketers of the future would live. It is going to change advertising by bringing simple solutions where expensive ones existed. Already, the number of investors and companies based on blockchain are growing exponentially. If advertisers used blockchain, then they can eliminate costly consultants. The bad news is that in the future customer attention and retention will come with a price. Because, in marketing, value comes not only from money. It also comes from products exchanged, opinions given and attention paid to customers. But the good news is that there will be much higher trust. That comes from knowing that the advertising and outreach efforts are going where companies intend it to go.

• This is the first post in a series of 13 blog posts about blockchain technology and its impact on sales and marketing. The SMEI community would like you to share your thoughts on this revolutionary technology. More pertinently whether you think blockchain is definitely the future where sales and marketing professionals should focus their efforts on or whether it is just a passing fad. 
• Coming up next is how Bitcoin can address the cash flow problems that many marketing agencies face. One of the challenges every business face is cash flow, and marketing agencies are not immune to it. Bitcoin is the solution. It has some financial benefits and less tangible advantages. The company who accepts the payment can either use a third-party to convert the Bitcoins into cash or withdraw it in the form of Bitcoins. Getting started is super easy. There are plenty of companies help businesses that want to get Bitcoin set up as a payment option.

Stay tuned on www.smei.org