The Marriage Of Blockchain And Digital Marketing Can Be A Powerful Union

Unless you have been living under a rock you probably have heard of Bitcoin. It’s the latest, albeit very volatile, craze in the investment world. As of today January 15th, 2021, one Bitcoin is worth $36,364. You might be wondering why I am writing about Bitcoin in a marketing blog? Well, Bitcoin uses the blockchain and the technology is an interesting development to follow for advertisers. A blockchain is a data structure that creates a digital ledger of data and shares it among a network of independent parties. In a nutshell. What are the potential opportunities for digital marketing?

First, let’s take look at some of the core benefits of Blockchain: 

1. Greater transparency
2. Increased efficiency since it’s decentralized
3. Better security
4. Reduced costs since there are no 3rd party vendors

According to a Whitepaper written by the IBM Institute for Business Value titled “Enforcing accountability in media – How blockchain technology can work for media and entertainment” (2018),  only 38 to 46 cents of each advertising dollar spent ultimately reaches the intended media outlet. As mentioned above, greater transparency will help eliminate the media spend waste. 

Fraud is a problem in digital marketing. Bots, click farms, and ghost websites can negatively skew the results of digital marketing campaigns. Of course, fraud costs the advertising industry and brands quite of money as well. Blockchain technology allows us to track marketing campaigns in real-time with verifiable, trustworthy metrics. As you can see in the chart below, ad fraud damage dollars are on the rise:

Investopedia claims that blockchain will be game-changer for online advertising. It will bring robust accountability to online advertising making it an even playing field for all. 

It is known that programmatic advertising is the fastest-growing segment in digital marketing. Two common critiques of programmatic advertising are the transparency issues and the lack of clarity of ROAS (return-on-advertising-spend). Since blockchain has a shared ledger among the different players, it will improve transparency and accuracy.  

Here’s a quick visualization of issues in the advertising industry that blockchain technology can eliminate:

The possible benefits from the fusion of advertising and blockchain technology are too many to sum up in one blog. It will increase consumer trust, reduce ad fraud, and eliminate intermediaries. I believe that blockchain technology has bright future. It is still of course in its early stages but early movers in the advertising industry need to start looking at the benefits of applying blockchain technology and begin to write down a list of questions to gauge if your brand is ready for blockchain. 

If you need any help with your digital marketing efforts drop us a line here. If you have a running search campaign we can offer you a free audit. For now, stay safe out there. 2021 is upon us and we’re all looking forward to this new year with fresh vigor. Cheers!