Blockchain, a decentralized shared database, removes middlemen from digital advertising and marketing, leaving you in charge of your crypto-marketing projects. The technology matches ads with compatible viewers, prevents ad fraud and marketing revenue mismanagement, and improves your leads. It also helps you source reasonably-priced original content, turn loyal clients into evangelical consumers, and expand your data, among other benefits. Best of all, blockchain technology not only reduces your costs but also can boost your profits.
Blockchain for Digital Marketing Management
Ending Marketing Fraud
Back in 2016, Forrester reported that 56 per cent of all display ad dollars were squandered in fraudulent inventory. A recent journal article in Frontiers in Blockchain commented that matters have scarcely improved since. Both ad fraud and click fraud continue to be perpetrated by persons or bots who trick brands into thinking real users are interacting with their webpages, ads, or apps. Blockchain platforms tackle this fraud by tracking ads and member behavior across their transparent platforms in innovative, effective ways.
Ending Marketing Mismanagement
One of the biggest problems for brands and publishers in the ad space is not knowing how your ad dollars are being spent, resulting in more bots seeing your ads than real people.
Blockchain stretches your dollars by validating and analyzing every consumer journey through verified ad delivery, indicating that an actual person received and saw your ad.
Blockchain’s elimination of third parties also helps you control how your ads are being placed and whether the right people are seeing them.
Example:
New York-based IBM tackles mismanagement and ad fraud through its end-to-end ledger that exposes potentially fraudulent data and helps businesses eliminate wasteful spending.
Expanding Your Data Collection
The larger your data, the more varied, accurate and informative your decisions and the better your predictions. Unfortunately, it’s mostly the rich and unscrupulous who can amass this Big Data through buying or stealing users’ data.
So how can the honest, money-strapped seller win?
Through blockchains, where users are rewarded for sharing their information through incentives like points, cryptocurrency rewards, micropayments, and cash-back incentives.
Example:
California-based Bitclave rewards participants for information shared, for example, through surveys.
Ensuring Data Privacy
People have learned through sorry experience that accessing the internet means crawling through traditional gatekeepers such as ISPS, web browsers and social media platforms — and these intermediaries don’t always have our best interests in mind. Few viewers trust brands to protect their private information.
How can blockchain help?
Its transparent ledger helps consumers know who accessed their data and how. For marketers, this system motivates consumers to provide more real, therefore usable, information.
Example:
New York-based Blockstack helps users decide which data to share and whom to share it with.
Thwarting cyberattacks and cyber crime
TechJury’s most recent report finds that around 30,000 enterprises are hacked a day. Cyberattacks include phishing and denial of service that cause sites to run slow or close and merchants to lose money. Cyber crimes include internet fraud, identity theft, online harassment and cyberstalking, all of which dent your climate of trust.
Blockchain’s public ledger thwarts cyberattacks and cybercrime by penalizing perpetrators. It also rewards users to alert brands to single points of failure.
Additionally, blockchain’s transparency and its security mechanisms, such as asymmetric encryption, digital signatures and access control, inhibit cyberattacks.
Example:
New York-based Keybase is a secure messaging and file-sharing blockchain platform that ensures users’ messages stay private.
Near-zero transaction costs
Marketing can be expensive. Costs could include paying for social ads, sponsored articles, media buying, listing fees, sales commissions and so forth.
Blockchain cuts out the expensive middlemen, helping you market directly to consumers. You use micropayments to motivate platform users to promote your campaigns, subscribe to your newsletters, participate in your focus groups, view your sites and so forth. The process works through smart contracts that you program to deposit these micropayments directly in users wallets once they fulfil the desired action.
Display Ads
One of the biggest problems in the marketing and advertising space is that most people hate ads. There are too many of them out there, leading people to use ad-blocking adoption that kills about $35 billion of a company’s advertising budget. In our frustrating marketing world, we don’t know what viewers want, nor which stage of the buying process they’re in.
What’s a better way?
Blockchain, which helps us see what viewers like and what they want more of.
Example:
California-based BRAVE helps users block unwanted ads and boost certain brands or content.
Authentic Testimonials
Almost 40% of all online reviews are fake. And consumers are catching on. Blockchain helps potential customers trust your testimonials by rewarding users for their authentic reviews.
Example:
New York-based Chlu rewards users for their reviews on actual in-store experiences or purchased products.
Blockchain For Content Marketing
Controversial Content
Say you want to publish your opinion on controversial issues but are muzzled on mass media or social platforms, what’s the solution? The autonomous ledger.
There are blockchain platforms that are not only willing to spread your views — but also pay their users to promote them.
Example:
The now-defunct Wildspark promised a freer and fairer Attention Economy through incentivizing users to promote admirable content.
SEO/ keywords
SEO can be another problem. Where you land on the Internet depends on search engines. Blockchain puts you in control through blockchain trackers that track keywords in real-time across all devices and any location. Results? Brands can create more data-driven, accurate campaigns.
Preventing Content Theft
The theft of online content is pervasive, with most victims recouping lost money only through expensive lawsuits. Some blockchain platforms use smart contracts to help creators automatically and easily receive payments for content usage.
Such platforms also help the average person who creates viral content receive compensation for every click. The authors get their rewards, instead of social platforms like Facebook monetizing themselves from that content.
Example:
New York-based Steemit rewards authors for their content, while you get access to the original content without fear of infringing copyright rules.
Designing Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs offer incentives to attract customers, but only about 75% of participants redeem their reward points, while other programs are fragmented with participants vague on rules and potential rewards.
Blockchain remedies the problem by having all stakeholders interact on the same ledger in real-time. Marketers see members’ profiles and purchase patterns, while consumers track their loyalty and reward points.
Example:
San Francisco-based Loyyal uses blockchain tokenization and smart contracts to help businesses improve their loyalty programs.
Creating Brand Evangelists
Few consumers trust sellers and their claims. Blockchain technology remedies the situation with its real-time sourcing and visibility into operations, also enabling consumers to interact with stakeholders in a virtual format.
Such an arrangement boosts customer trust and converts more loyal customers into brand evangelists.
In Short
When it comes to marketing, the best of blockchain is that it returns the steering wheel of your campaigns to you. No longer are you the passenger randomly driven by Google, Facebook, and other large corporations that determine when and where you publish your content. Blockchain stretches your funds, pushes your views, rewards people for promoting you, and improves your leads – all at a fraction of your regular cost.
True, you may need to invest some time into testing this innovative technology.
Then again, it’s the early adopters of innovations who get the spoils!
