Is Blockchain Technology the Future for Regional Companies Media Monitoring?

More than just a use for cryptocurrency, blockchain technology may be the best option to ensure accurate and proper delivery for a mid-market company’s digital advertising.

There has been a ton of hype around blockchain technology and it has become a buzz word in the advertising industry. With all the issues surrounding digital advertising transparency, this new “checks and balances” technology seems to be a great way for advertisers to make sure that their ads are delivered as purchased.

There has been more and more information coming out about digital ad fraud. It seems as though digital advertising running incorrectly is becoming more prevalent and from what I can tell, the only ones taking the hit are the advertisers themselves. Even the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) understands that a solution needs to be found for all the fraud running through our industry.

The IAB’s Tech Lab is looking into blockchain technology and partnering with companies like Lucidity to launch a pilot program to officially test the applicability of blockchain for programmatic advertising.

Regional companies, who purchase highly targeted advertising, need to guarantee that their advertising is running exactly as ordered. It means even more to them that their message is delivered in the right city, state or region since their product distribution only goes so far. This new blockchain technology may be the best answer to verifying proper delivery. It goes beyond having the service provider’s delivery reports or even a single third-party vendor tracking it.

By adding a small tracking code to digital ads, and having it monitored by thousands of independent servers all over the world, the data can be matched up to see if the ads were truly delivered as scheduled. Did the ad run on the right type of sites? In the right areas or markets? During the scheduled time frame? Above “the fold” of the page where a viewer can actually see it?

This type of technology takes time to be developed and some people in our industry have given up on it already, but I think we should sit tight and give it a chance. Blockchain technology makes a lot of sense for what our industry needs. No advertiser should have to pay for ads that didn’t delivery correctly or deliver at all and unfortunately that has been the case for far too long.

As an advocate for full transparency, I look forward to a time when advertisers feel, not just comfortable with their marketing decisions, but confident in them.