IBM to Launch Blockchain-Based Tracker to Allow for Transparency in Advertising

According to a study, it is estimated that digital advertisers lose over $50 million to fraudulent activities on a daily basis. There are a lot of factors that shape this outcome, including lack of transparency, vague contracts, and unnecessary middlemen.

For this reason, IBM's business and tech consulting wing, IBM iX, is going to launch a blockchain-based tracker for digital media transactions that will monitor the flow of money from advertisers and if their commercials are showing up in the right places. The agency will work together with software supplier Mediaocean to reach their goal, Cointelegraph reported.

The tracker will be designed to act as an overseer to combat digital ad fraud by ensuring that payment is funneled to the right channels. Babs Rangaiah, global marketing partner of IBM iX, said that the platform will monitor the distribution of payment among media players and take out middlemen, who are unneeded in conducting transactions.

"Once you identify where the money is going, who the players are and what each of them is doing, I think you'll see some redundancies in the supply chain that will allow some of that production money now going to the middle players to come back and hit the publishers," Rangaiah explained.

And true to the benefits of the blockchain, the tracker will also decrease the time and expenditure of media transactions. The agency’s project is slated to include deals with Unilever, Pfizer, Kellogg, Watson, and Kimberly-Clark Corp. These companies were chosen so as to prevent competitive overlaps among them, but the project will eventually encompass different corporations once foundations have been established.

Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean, said that the tracker will be incorporated by companies operating in the digital media economy by 2019. "I started looking at this as not necessarily a moneymaker for Mediaocean, but as something the industry needs," he said.

He went on to cite one of the wrinkles that companies face, which is what the Association of National Advertisers call “ad-tech tax,” a complicated network of middlemen where 60 cents of every digital media dollar is allocated. The tracker will iron this wrinkle out by providing transparency when it comes to who the advertisers are paying and for what.