The Blockchains That Bind Us

Stupid title, I know. But would you really read this if I named it: Blockchain For Beginners?

Anyway, if you’re an avid ad tech publication reader, you may have seen a recent uptick of articles online recently regarding Blockchain. It’s not actually exactly new tech – as it’s been around for around 10 years – but it’s recently matured into a technology that is poised to change many industries from finance to healthcare to, yes, even ad tech. Since it has applications within my industry, I did some research and thought I'd share my findings here on the blog.

To put it simply, blockchain is a technology that consists of batches of transactions linked in sequential order (similar in concept to a simple ledger). While not revolutionary in concept – since ledgers obviously have been around for centuries – blockchain is special because it is collectively managed with no trusted entities; meaning that it's decentralized and certain information can be purposefully limited in supply or access. A blockchain ledger can track every piece of information created or transacted, and the exact path of any piece of info is visible to all. It allows for a distributed, verifiable, and secure record of events. Blockchains also allow for the rules which govern them to be written directly into code.

This makes it possible to conduct certain actions much more efficiently than they have traditionally been done. Transfers of digital assets (transactions, permissions, etc) can be done in seconds to any entity on the network without the intervention of humans other than the sender. These transfers can be verified programmatically (That’s the secret word!!) and nearly instantaneously. This cuts out middleman technology and lowers the threshold for human error. The sender and recipient also don't have to know very much at all about each other if they don't need/want to.

Blockchain technology can be used for a lot of purposes. The most obvious is as a decentralized currency with Bitcoin and Ethereum as the biggest examples. However, they are also being used today for tracking and exchanging company/entity ownership. Here’s a great little graphic on how secure “smart contracts” can be executed through the technology. So, now that you know what blockchain is, you are probably asking: what can blockchain do specifically for the ad tech industry and programmatic media buying/selling? Here are a few notable examples of what blockchain tech could do:

Remove unwanted supply chain intermediaries (Bye bye arbitrage!)
Allow TV networks and other premium publishers to feel safer and have more security when selling their inventory to SSPs
Easily authenticate users within a application or network
Facilitate faster, and more secure, 1st party data sharing between brands and tech platforms
Reselling digital inventory for the appropriate value with less markups
Create open, secure, and decentralized apps that allow brands to share information with tamper proof information passing

Obviously, the technology’s use cases in ad tech are still in their infancy, but that's not stopping media people from talking about it. Here are a few more articles for everyone to read up and learn more: