Some of the latest fields, like digital advertising which is exposed to a lot of fraudulent activities, have greatly benefited with the Blockchain strengthening their security. Later we will see in detail how many digital advertising endeavors have benefited from Blockchain security settings.

Blockchain is not just about Bitcoin

Basically, the term blockchain was coined to refer to blocks of encrypted data used for a chain of transactions. The first successful commercial instance of such encrypted data used for transactions is Bitcoin for which the Blockchain technology was born. From then on, this technology has continued to gain popularity and now the role of Blockchain is no longer limited to the Bitcoin. It is being used for a multitude of purposes across industries to secure digital transaction and exchange of data. Almost suddenly for some, Blockchain has been adopted by media and advertising as well.

What is Blockchain?

The blockchain is the technology behind digital currency or crypto currency like Bitcoin. It basically refers to blocks of encrypted data, which in a chain of transactions, allow optimum security measures to prevent alteration, tampering and removal of data. How does it achieve this? Well, it works as an open database that adds every subsequent exchange or transaction data while always preventing any change or tampering to the data. On the one hand, it is completely open and accessible to all, on the other hand, it is absolutely tamper proof.

Blockchain for fraud control in digital advertising

Suddenly Blockchain has become the single most important technology formed and digital advertising agencies to prevent all kinds of fraudulent transactions. To understand how such murky activities eat away a large portion of the revenue we need to have a look at some recent statistics. For example, in the wee days of 2016, a leading fraud control solution provider in the digital advertising industry named WhiteOps exposed the Methbot, the biggest fraudulent network in the industry which cost online advertisers around the globe more than a billion dollar in one year.

Industry experts suggest that the fraud represented by this finding of Methbot can be described just as the tip of an iceberg, as the real gravity of the situation is much bigger than this. In digital advertising, there is a whole array of activities that are exposed to fraud including various discrepancies incorrect counting, suffering view ability, etc. To address all these long paining loopholes and to bring transparency to the extremely competitive digital media and advertising, Blockchain came as the ultimate promise for a robust fraud control mechanism.

Financial services and banks are reasonably the first en-masse adopters of Blockchain technology. For mobile banking to grow big and boost access to banking in a never before the way the security threats associated with mobility needs to be addressed, and Blockchain seems irreplaceable for this. In some booming developing economies like India and China where the huge population and corresponding massive scale of the transaction need more transparency and fraud control, the role of Blockchain in many industries seems irreplaceable in the time to come. The Indian app developers can really find Blockchain as the next technology on the horizon that they need to brush up with.

How is Blockchain used in media and advertising?

As of now, the Blockchain technology has been used in digital media and advertising in a whole array of ways. Let us have a look at few of them.

Monetization

Offering instant remuneration and rewards to the media contributors with optimum transparency is always a serious consideration, and in that respect, Blockchain based content distribution platforms can really Blockchain based content distribution platforms add transparency and efficiency to the process. For example, Decent, a content distribution system which uses Blockchain, now allows distributing contents and getting paid in almost real time thanks to its new rewarding mechanism.add

Targeted TV Ads

New and advanced content sharing mechanism is in the pipeline, which allows publishers, marketers and programmers to share their media advertising contents across the channels, unlike earlier times when they needed to pool this wide variety of data in just one place. Such transparency in digital advertising will help digital media brands like Hulu and Netflix to target the advertising purchases in spite of not getting the actual content in hand.

Fraud Control

As of now controlling fraudulent activities with transparent sharing of data in real time is the ingest advantage of Blockchain technology for digital media and advertising. Already we have such open protocol for ad viewing in place that ensures viewing over the web as soon as a creative ad is unleashed and follows every piece by gathering detailed information about the viewer and actions taken after viewing. Such robust and transparent protocol based on Blockchain can deliver real time actionable data about every creative piece and prevent scopes of any non-transparency concerning ad viewing.

Whitelisting Ads

Brands spending money on ad publishers often have a hard time when it is important to know about the credibility of a publisher. To address this, recently one company came up with a Blockchain based ad registry which offers people incentives for evaluating the publishers, rating and whitelisting them. With such listing, brands can decide which publisher to depend upon for their campaign.

Ad Buying

Now for the first time, an open ad buying network based on Blockchain is going to be made available buying and selling ad inventories. This new ad marketplace launched as New York Interactive Advertising Exchange which has partnered Nasdaq will be a reality soon this year.New York Interactive Advertising Exchange

So, in the world of digital advertising and media, the next round of change almost to the extent of a seismic one is brought by Blockchain technology. From transparency in rewarding and monetization to ensuring credibility to publishers and viewership, thanks to Blockchain digital advertising will no longer be the same again.