Blockchain in marketing and advertising

Blockchain in marketing and advertising presents vast opportunities for brands to change their game altogether.

Blockchain has proven useful across various fields of banking, finance, and currency transfers, marketers are particularly curious to see the impact of blockchain in marketing and advertising. Here’s how the architecture behind the cryptocurrencies can be applied in marketing and advertising.

Applications of blockchain in marketing and advertising

Ad-delivery verification

Trust in the advertising industry is at a low point. Ads may just not seem to deliver or have a low delivery. While flaws in ad delivery could be detected with the help of auditing companies too, doing this centrally can get very expensive. Blockchain in advertising, with its decentralized approach, could not only be used to detect if the ads are being delivered, but also if they’re going to the right place. Decentralized auditing with blockchain works well and is cheaper. The mining machines in the blockchain could analyze and scrub for fraud the ad deliveries that are taken by a brand from the ad server and released into them. Amid concerns that their ads will appear alongside content that promotes hate and extremism, brands continue to pull spend from Google. This is why the idea of using a blockchain for ad verification is proving seriously attractive to marketers. A Danish ad network, an early player in this field, displays all click-throughs in the blockchain in real-time. While still in its infancy, the blockchain has immense potential to tackle the issue of ad-fraud.

Marketing

Let’s understand the impact of blockchain in marketing with the help of this example. A popular fashion brand, at the Shanghai Fashion Week, worked in association with a blockchain platform, letting customers verify a selection of handbags. While it proved the authenticity of the brand, customers could use their phones to scan the tags and share their stories of the product. With blockchain in marketing, your brand goes from being one of many to one of a kind. The whole idea is to use advertise a product in a manner that’s much more “authentic” and does not come off as marketing.

Managing consumer data

In an era of privacy concerns, marketers can use blockchain for the safe storage of vast amounts of anonymous consumer data: using it for brand building. Most brands are intent on removing the middlemen when it comes to data and are now seeking direct connections to customers. The blockchain is a way of maintaining transaction data in a way that’s highly decentralized, secure, and massive.

Choosing the right message

As the mass consumer’s knowledge of blockchain technology is still limited, marketers should focus on practical benefits blockchain offers to consumers in their daily lives, not getting into the nitty gritty of how technology works. Marketers need to leverage technology and deliver the right message to their customers. The messaging needs to be different, explaining to customers not how the technology works, but how this technology will generate more value for them and help them do more. For example, your message to a savings account customer should help them understand how blockchain technology is giving them a chance to help farmers in Kenya grow crops. The bank can show to its customers how they are helping the community flourish by tracing their money end-to-end through the blockchain. Adding more transparency and security to your business building customer trust, blockchain boasts significant advantages for marketers.