How Blockchain Could Change Digital Marketing Forever

What a blockchain is

A blockchain is a chain of information held over a distributed network with a timestamp that cannot be altered once it has been entered.

How a user is affected by a blockchain

These days hacking, breaches, and data leaks of personal information are common, and we hear of one or two such instances periodically. Sometimes, even money is involved, and if transaction details are leaked, an individual’s banking details or other personal information are at stake. This is where blockchain comes into place; it secures your data in a key-lock manner in a non-technical language. Basically, there is a lock to your information, and only you have the key to access that data.

The digital market is affected by blockchains. Facebook and Instagram are used to advertise products, which is fine. But many companies pay a hefty sum to such organizations, like Facebook and Instagram, so that their products are advertised. When a customer clicks on those ads, the customer loses his identity to the ISP (Internet Service Provider) or Web Browser and all his surfing details are analyzed to provide personalized search results for him. This is fine according to some people, but many feel insecure that personal data is being shared. That is when a blockchain can be used as it not only eliminates the intermediary but also secures your information.

Some implementations of blockchain are:

Brave and Blockstack provide autonomy to the customers. Blockstack allows you to hide your information from a third-party. The intermediary companies gather your information and use that to create information-based sales. To bypass this, we can use a blockchain.

Example of frauds that a blockchain could have prevented:

The PNB Scam: Jesse Chenard, Founder and CEO of MonetaGo, a US-based blockchain firm says, “What happened at PNB was the result of numerous systemic failures. These failures would have been easily spotted and prevented on blockchain.”

How could a blockchain influence digital marketing?

Let ‘abc’ be a company, Google be an intermediary, and you be the customer. Now, what happens is that ‘abc’ pays an amount to Google so that Google displays their ads to you. You have no control over which ads you can see. Now Google tracks your searches and your recent visits to specific websites and then matches the results with the ads it has got from ‘abc’ and many other companies. If they match, then Google starts displaying you those ads.

So, do you want to decide which ads should be displayed on your device and which should not? A blockchain could soon do this for you. A blockchain eliminates the intermediary like Google and says that you should be able to decide which advertisements you see. It simply says that your personal information and privacy is important, so it tries to advertise between the companies and the consumer without an intermediary.

Now the question arises: How would digital marketing firms benefit with the blockchain?

Improved Transparency and Privacy

Increases in ad-blocking software show that most people are not interested in 80% of ads being displayed to them, but another study says that these people like, or at least don’t mind, seeing ads that are would interest them.

A blockchain could create a better opportunity for new business setups who want to reach a specific audience. Only 6% of new websites are displayed in the top 10 search results on Google within a year, making it difficult for new businesses to find customers. A blockchain promises to solve many such issues faced in digital marketing. Some companies like online.io and the cable giant, Comcast, are already developing blockchain platforms.

Improved Targeting

With different organizations trying different methods to implement blockchain, they could be used to improve targeting.

The best examples may be Brave and Bitclave. Brave is an ad-blocking web browser that compensates the users with (basic attention tokens, or BATs) for the time they spend with those ads on the platform and the information they share so that businesses could target them intentionally.

Another example is Bitclave, which allows its users to add their personal data on the platform in exchange for tokens. This is a win-win situation for both users and the companies who want to target these users by giving some compensation to them directly.

As blockchain is a decentralized technology, it assures digital marketers that their transactions are secure by improving cyber security. Clearly, blockchain is a very useful technology that is revolutionizing various industries, and it can create a great positive impact on the digital marketing industry.

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