When we talk to advertisers about their pain points, the top things that trouble them all have to do with measurement:
- Determining ROI
- Ad fraud
- Inaccurate measurement
- Incomplete cross-media measurement
We can all agree that the state of measurement in our industry is woeful. 87% of advertisers hold back spending due to poor measurement. So not only is the state of measurement woeful, it’s costing media sellers a lot of money. This is an expensive problem to have. Why haven’t we solved it yet?
While advertisers believe that media sellers and ad tech companies should take as much responsibility for delivering good measurement based on universal KPIs as the measurement companies themselves (comScore, Nielsen, etc.), nobody wants to pick up this complicated, difficult hot potato.
Second, companies across the industry need to start working together on this problem if any real progress is to be made. This means eliminating conflicting results between providers. We’re not saying this will be more difficult than negotiating peace in the Middle East. But we are saying that this situation cries out for an inherently trustworthy technology that can deliver undisputable measurements across platforms.
This is a situation made for blockchain technology. Blockchain isn’t a new idea in ad tech, but it’s an idea that has yet to gain real ground with the builders in our industry. Blockchain technology can change the ad measurement landscape in three ways:
- It decentralizes measurement.
Media sellers don’t own the numbers, and neither does the ad tech company. The way blockchain works is that the database is hosted in parts across multiple computers in a network. This eliminates the risk of data manipulation.
- It’s inherently trustworthy.
The records in the blockchain aren’t changeable. Once a block of data is verified, it can’t be altered. Anyone trying to hack into the blockchain will have to change the data at every node, which is impossible. Say goodbye to fraud.
- It will reduce costs.
Not only will blockchain streamline measurement by removing a long line of intermediaries and vendors, it will take huge chunks out of fraudulent ad spend.
From where we’re sitting, the blockchain revolution in advertising can’t come fast enough. What are your thoughts on this potentially disruptive technological breakthrough?
