Online scams are a pretty serious issue in the advertising world, causing annual losses up to 6 or 7 billion dollars every year. Cutting down on such losses would automatically lead to an increase in the marketers’ profits and in the collection of higher funds to be invested in digital advertising, to the benefit of the market as well.
Nevertheless, marketing seems to be still neglecting the blockchain technology and experts believe the situation won’t change in the next 4 or 5 years to come. BitTeaser, a Danish advertising network, is one of the very few exceptions to such phenomenon, since it has been using the blockchain technology to collect earnings coming from advertising in Bitcoin instead of proper currency.
Despite the time such change is taking to be implemented, the blockchain technology is actually the next big thing which may revolutionize the marketing sector, starting from multimedia publishing and digital advertising.
Considering that the blockchain technology, bypassing central authorities and cutting down on costs to be paid to mediators, makes micro-transactions much easier, it may pave the way to new ways to use contents and therefore to new, potential opportunities for generating profits.
For instance, publishers could allow readers to view content pages without banners by paying just 1 cent or less. And, again, it may allow access to websites to subscribers only upon payment of minimal amounts. Whereas advertisers would be willing to pay more to be allocated more profitable advertising spaces than today.
In the same way, the blockchain technology makes it possible to check products authenticity. Last October, during the Shanghai Fashion Week, the Babyghost brand used the VeChain blockchain platform to enable its customers to check the originality of a selection of bags, by scanning their labels through their smartphones. By pointing at the labels with their phones cameras, customers could track back the whole history of the objects starting from the designers who had created them to the manufacturers and so on.
Such a system helps reducing the spreading of counterfeited products, establishing a closer relationship with customers and drives advertising better than traditional systems. Also, it allows brands to directly and more carefully manage data concerning sales, by preserving, at the same time, their customers’ privacy.
Therefore, looking at the blockchain technology through the eyes of marketing specialists, the only question to be asked should be: considering the various advantages offered by this technology, how can we use it to exploit it to the benefit of our companies and customers ? There are many ways to do it and it is time to start looking into them.
What do you think about the blockchain technology? Do you think it may be useful?
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If you liked this post, you should read : How blockchain will spark a digital marketing revolution [part one]
