Posted by Crypto is a digital ledger technology that stores records of transactions across multiple computers. The highlight of Crypto technology is that it is decentralised and distributed, and the records are immutable and transparent.
Such a technology has many use cases in the tech industry, one of which is digital advertising. The most obvious use of crypto in advertising is combatting ad fraud.
In this article, we will look at a few ways blockchain can help with digital advertising.
How does Blockchain Help in Digital Advertising
Given below are some ways in which blockchain helps with ad tech.
- Enhanced Transparency
Digital advertising has two aspects: publishers and advertisers. Advertisers are the ones who create ads, and they want to place them online. Publishers are the ones that advertisers contact to get their ads placed online.
The supply chain between advertisers and publishers is longer than you think. There is a media agency, trading desk, DSP, ad exchange, and ad network. The more steps there are in the chain, the higher the advertiser will have to play.
The more steps there are, the more obfuscated the costs become. This is counter to transparency.
With blockchain, the entire procedure can be made more transparent. Since an immutable record is created on the blockchain, advertisers can see exactly who they are paying and how much.
This can help them manage their advertising costs.
- Transaction Verification
Transactions in ad tech refer to clicks, impressions, and conversions. Ad fraud typically relies on fraudulent transactions. Using bot farms and fake accounts, a malicious actor can undermine an advertisement campaign by costing PPC (pay-per-click) ads too much money.
A blockchain system integrated into the ad transaction system could help identify fraudulent transactions.
For example, click verification can check whether an advertisement was clicked on or not. The blockchain would keep a record of the click so you would know that it was an actual occurrence rather than a fake one.
Conversion verification is the process of checking whether a customer clicked on the ad and then took other desirable actions on the resulting webpage or not. More often than not, a fake click does not result in any new actions. So, it is easy to determine whether clicks are fake or not.
What’s even better is that if you use complementary techniques like IP address lookup, you can find out which regions have higher volumes of clicks. This can help identify areas that engage in fraud.
What’s hard is tracking the client that made the click. When thousands of clicks are made per second, keeping track of each one is nigh impossible. But not for a blockchain.
With a blockchain, you can create an immutable ledger for every click that occurs and track all actions that resulted (or didn’t) from that click. So, it’s easy to find out how many of the transactions are fraudulent or not.
- Decentralised System
The blockchain is a decentralised system. That means no entity has controlling power over the records. Everyone part of the chain can see all the records, but they cannot change them.
This makes the ad tech system extremely fair because no one can change the records or otherwise mess with the system.
This also means that the system is bereft of a single point of failure. Since the entire thing is peer-to-peer, the loss of one or two systems in the network does not compromise the blockchain. So, the ads can stay up indefinitely.
- More Privacy
Blockchain also has the advantage of providing more privacy to its users. They can do this by using smart contracts. Smart contracts are special digital contracts that, once signed, enforce themselves automatically.
Since the contract is in a blockchain, it cannot be changed or altered in any way. Using smart contracts, a user can decide which data they are willing to share with an ad company.
A smart contract enforces the user’s choices, and their privacy is preserved (to the extent they allow).
Conclusion
So, these are a few ways in which blockchain technology is enhancing transparency and trust in ad tech. It gives users more control over their data. Advertisers can see how much publisher services cost. And advertisements are protected against fraud.
With all of these uses and benefits, it is only a matter of time before blockchain technology becomes commonplace in the ad tech sector.
Spyboy blog 