TIQ Digital

Tag: Blockchain

  • IAB’s first publication on blockchain in advertising paints an optimistic picture

    IAB’s first publication on blockchain in advertising paints an optimistic picture

    Blockchain Report

    In a sign that blockchain is picking up steam as a solution to some of digital advertising’s biggest problems, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released this week its first publication on the topic.

     

    The white paper, “Blockchain for Video Advertising: A Market Snapshot of Publisher & Buyer Uses Cases,” surveys the technology, its potential added values — including transparency, reduced fraud and increased efficiency — and looks at several use cases.

     

    Blockchains are distributed ledgers where transactions are open to all participants and, once recorded to the chain, are virtually impossible to change. There is no central authority because blockchain tech is built on various kinds of consensus. The advantage of this approach is trust between parties who don’t know each other, and possibly less fraud because transactions are known.

     

    From the IAB white paper

    The report looks at several pilot projects. There’s AdLedger, a non-profit consortium of ad and media companies that is working to mainstream the technology. Los Angeles-based MetaX has launched Ads.txt Plus, which employs blockchain so publishers can maintain and publish their own Ads.txt files of approved suppliers of their inventory. Eventually, authorized sellers might be able to verify authorized sellers even if the sellers’ names aren’t shown.

     

    Kochava’s XCHNG intends to open-source its blockchain framework later this year, based on the idea that insert orders can become smart contracts. And NYIAX has built its blockchain-based environment on Nasdaq’s Financial Framework, but instead of stocks, it adds a new asset class: digital ads.

     

    IAB’s paper is bullish on the technology, noting that this year will see more deployments in advertising, many in the proof-of-concept or pilot stage. By next year, IAB predicts, blockchain could take hold in the industry. But it also notes the challenges, such as improving blockchain’s sluggish performance speed, creating standards for identity management and a raft of legal issues.

     

    The vision is certainly enticing for an ad industry struggling to maintain its balance against fraud, transparency and a new approach to personal data because of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Here’s one glimpse of that possible future, outlined in the white paper by MadHive CTO Tom Bollich:

    “In the future, we would like to push the ad server out to the edges. Instead of housing user data in a centralized data store, [MadHive’s blockchain project] allows users to keep their data completely private by pushing ad decisioning to the edges — to the users’ devices. For example, can I put an ad server in your TV that is cryptographically sealed and holds your personal information inside of it? The ad server actually asks for advertising as opposed to getting pushed advertising. You never actually tell anyone who you are. That’s the future we see. Can your TV work with your phone, and then maybe even your fridge, to know who you are and give advertisers a deeper understanding of who the user is? We think so — and the blockchain can deliver it.”

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  • New report: The Internet of Things and blockchain tech are made for each other

    New report: The Internet of Things and blockchain tech are made for each other

    A new report from research firm Kaleido Insights proposes that two of hottest new technologies — The Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain — would make a really hot couple.

    In IoT, wirelessly connected sensors are embedded in almost everything — refrigerators, auto parts, dog collars, perhaps even cereal boxes.

    On the one hand, this means everything can be tracked, inventory-managed and made selectively accessible through a continual stream of signals. This flow of constantly talking objects and devices will help propel businesses away from a product-orientation (sell this car) to a service-orientation (sell the car, but maintain a connection with the car and the car owner).

    On the other hand, it means that there is a continual stream of signals for as many as 10 billion connected devices and objects in the next four years, according to some estimates. Needless to say, that’s a huge amount of tracking to identify those Things, verify who owns them, authenticate their interaction with other Things and so on.

    “The Internet of Trusted Things” report (free, registration required) proposes that blockchains — or other kinds of decentralized ledger technologies — could form the mechanism to monitor those oceans of signals.

    Among other features, blockchains can permanently record transactions and make them immediately available to every participant in the blockchain network.

    They can also enable “smart contracts,” which are software programs with a trigger and a payoff that can represent an agreement between buyer and seller, such as an automatic, agreed-upon payment when an ad is run on a site.

    And they can provide a coordinated, secure and transparent tracking of transactions and activities without the need for a centralized governing authority. Here’s a report illustration (originally created by IBM) visualizing the management of roles, behaviors, permissions, transactions and events through the use of a universal digital ledger:

    For report authors Jessica Groopman and Jeremiah Owyang, these and other characteristics make blockchain or similar distributed ledger technologies ideal for tracking the zillions of activities, identities and authentications that IoT devices and objects will require.

    This kind of decentralized tracking, they contend, can be essential for supply chain management, scheduling, repair histories, end-user authentication, asset sharing networks and other use cases in a world where every part, every product and many unsuspecting objects are constantly communicating.

    The report points to an IBM/Walmart pilot project that tracked food safety by monitoring the supply chain, using IoT sensors and blockchain. A startup called Everledger is employing public and private blockchains, along with sensors and computer vision, to maintain permanent records for fine wines, diamonds and fine art so that forgery is much more difficult. A group of companies is developing CarPass to track cars’ digital records as they go from manufacturer to a succession of buyers.

    Blockchains, however, currently have some issues that can derail this vision. First of all, they are relatively slow in processing, so the current generation probably wouldn’t scale to handle all those signals.

    Groopman acknowledged that blockchain’s processing speed is a “serious issue,” but she pointed to various other developing distributed ledger technologies — such as Tangle and Hashgraph — that could dramatically change that factor.

    Then there’s the matter of decentralized governance. Many blockchains process transactions through the use of electricity-demanding computer processing run by human “miners.” It’s decentralized because many people are involved, but that also won’t scale.

    Ledgers that are completely run by software could solve the scaling problem, but blockchain’s purported trust factor has been driven in part by the fact that every participant is checking everyone else.

    At any rate, this report has pointed out the huge, hidden drawback in the emerging world of constantly signaling Things. Some fabric of awareness has to be listening to all the time, and it can’t be humans.

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