The AdLedger Consortium has been launched to transform the advertising industry with blockchain-powered solutions. Its inaugural meeting was held today on June 26th, 2017 in New York City. The consortium will be comprised of advertising and publishing executives committed to exploring the use of blockchain technology to bring increased transparency and data security to the ad tech supply chain.
IBM iX Executive Partner of Global Marketing, Babs Rangaiah, said:
“We at IBM believe that blockchain will do for transactions what the Internet did for communications. We are particularly interested in blockchain’s potential to solve many of the issues facing Programmatic buying today.”
Prospective AdLedger members from both the buy and sell side will be part of the conversation, all with the understanding that the greatest potential benefit of blockchain technology is achieved through collaboration.
The overarching goal of AdLedger will be to harness the potential of a real-time, blockchain-based, peer-to-peer network to lower costs for publishers while increasing transparency and ROI for advertisers. Specifically, the network will validate placements and transactions to ensure brand safety through greater transparency, enable data portability using multi-signature wallets and cryptographic keys for unduplicated campaign execution and measurement.
The network will aim to remove layers of inefficiency in technology stacks to address the issue of the disappearing ad dollar, introduce cross-network identity management and attribution reporting, and establish a protocol around a decentralized peer-to-peer data sharing solution. Based on existing industry standards, AdLedger will also determine rules and standards for the protocol that would apply to audience segments, regulatory compliance, data uploads, encryption via keys, and a universal language for smart contracts.
Jim Wilson, President of Premion, a division of TEGNA said:
“Blockchain technology is well-suited to address many of the advertising industry’s requirements and to fix the issues of frequency capping, attribution and data quality with Advanced TV. Participation by advertisers, agencies, and publishers is essential for building a network that meets the needs of all players in the ecosystem.”
Currently, a combination of fraud and supply chain weakness costs the advertising industry an average of $8.2B per year, according to an industry-wide study conducted by the IAB. The supply chain describes all data transfers between industry players starting with creative and ending with the consumer’s browser. By leveraging a blockchain-powered network, the consortium will be able to increase the security and efficiency of data exchanges throughout the supply chain.
AdLedger will use open source code to develop its blockchain-protocol. By making the project open-sourced, the organization enables consensus-driven workflows and cryptography to ensure security and reliability. Open source code for blockchain protocol will be made available for peer review and the organization will release an API specification.
AdLedger’s mission is to bring together advertising industry players to collaborate on creating technology and protocol to the end of improving transparency and streamlining the supply chain.
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