The Impact of Blockchain Technology on Digital Marketing

Just when you thought you had your head around digital marketing, along comes blockchain to shake things up a bit! Let me simplify the structure for you: blockchain is a secure and transparent digital ledger that ensures transactions cannot be tailored or replaced by any other forms. With its numerous possibilities, blockchain has the potential to add validation to the world of digital marketing. So what does the future hold for blockchain and how does this impact digital marketing?

Look no further for answers. This article gets into the different ways blockchain has started to revolutionize digital marketing and gives a taste of how this technology could impact businesses in the future.

An Introduction to Blockchain

Blockchains have come a long way since recording cryptocurrency transactions. Telecom companies, transport and logistics firms, retailers, healthcare providers, and media companies use blockchain every day for an array of purposes.

Nowadays there are various types of technology coming for digital marketing. They also swear the blockchain will lower ad fraud and protect customer data. Advocates are lobbying for more money to go to owners of blogs and news sites for permitting ads on their sights.

We’ll discuss blockchain, explain why people get excited about it, and provide four potential uses of blockchain in digital marketing. We will also evaluate the likelihood of it being adopted by today's digital marketing behemoths.

What is blockchain?

A blockchain is a type of database that records information. Its adherents will argue the technology has two very compelling and unique selling points over its normal database:

Blockchain databases are public. Unlike a traditional centralized database or ledger, many independent parties maintain copies of the database cross-referencing each other for accuracy. Members of the public can check more than one database to verify an individual data record.

Blockchain databases are immutable. Once data has been entered into the ledger, it cannot be changed. If an error is made, then a new item of data must be added to the ledger that reverses the previous one.

What Does Blockchain Marketing Mean?

So when someone says “blockchain marketing,” they probably are referring to being able to use blockchain technology within a digital marketing strategy. While, for the time being, blockchain is used almost exclusively to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrency, we’ll start to see even more applications as well as learn even more about this new technology.

And here are some of the marketing-related applications of blockchain that we’ll see.

Blockchain could create a safer connection between brands and their customers in marketing, allowing them to have better-informed ads without revealing so much data with that many organizations.

If you asked me, as we go further down this rabbit hole of blockchain technology, there are just so many different opportunities that open up to brands. What those opportunities and impacts might look like, we're going to talk more about shortly.

What is the Future of Blockchain in Digital Marketing?

Below, we shall look at various benefits that accrue from the incorporation of blockchain technology in different activities and initiatives of digital marketing.

1. Keyword tracking

What one user sees on Google is usually personalized to just them. Results viewed by other searchers would be based on where they are in the world and what device they're on. As a result of this, marketers find it difficult to track keyword rank.

For example, if the search was combined with blockchain, the page ranking may be stored on the blockchain at an individual level; location and device usage data could be stored along with the ranking position.

Marketers could use this information to know what actions they need to take in order to be at par or better than others on areas and devices where they are not doing well. The same data could be used to determine why some locations feature on Google Local Pack results while others don't.

2. Tools for tackling ad fraud

Advertising is equivalent to fraud as marketers are all too aware. Veracity saw that by 2023, advertisers could lose about $100 billion from ad fraud. In battling ad fraud, Verasity's VeraViews tool overlays first and third-party data using blockchain to produce a score that indicates the likelihood of users actually having seen an ad.

Such tools promise the advertisers that they will pay only for valid views and publishers that they’ll be paid more quickly because of the speed, accuracy, and immutability of blockchain.

3 Boosting Transparency

This can be ensured by the recording of all payments or negotiations with blockchain as distributed ledgers.

It means that the customers will have more control over their online experience while creating trust in digital marketing activities. In addition, an increase in transparency will also ensure better remuneration to both the macro and micro influences or content creators.

4 Improved lead quality

Consumers handing over their data to your brand are most likely interested in your company. This makes it incredibly easier to score leads and conversions because they're already prospects ready for nurturing.

Currently, the odds are that data collection for marketing is at best patchy. Most marketers collect data from various sources, put it all together, and run a campaign based on that. This method is far from perfect and many campaigns have been run from inconsistent or incorrect data.

Because blockchain transactions are decentralized, the marketers have to go right to the source - the consumer. Take for example Brave who has built a browser that blocks ads. While that’s not news, what is though, and quite interesting, is the fact it displays ads to its users which it sells to companies via its Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). Brave gets 30% of the value of the tokens while users get 70%.

So how does Brave target ads? Users give the company as much or as little personal data they want. Advertisers pick audiences from the demographic data Brave holds, without ever knowing who is seeing the campaigns. Now this might be a new model for the future.

What businesses or industries will blockchain tech affect?

According to Grand View Research, the global size of digital marketing software was at $56.52 billion in 2021. This value is poised to grow at a CAGR of 19.1% per annum till the year 2030. But how big will blockchain be in that growth? It’s early to say but the first signs are not promising – as yet.

Market leaders do not currently seem to be affected by blockchain technology

Gigantic demographic databases of billions of people all over the world.

Advertisement platforms that are good enough to give the clients what they want and have them coming back for more.

The commercial incentive for these companies to build in blockchain is not clear, as it would require a partial or full giving-up of control.

Blockchain may work for ad demand-side platforms

Blockchain is extending in the selling ads on third-party sites much like the Google AdSense business model.

Common complaints with incumbent systems are they’re too susceptible to click fraud and publishers get shortchanged because of the number of intermediaries such as demand-side ad platforms.

One of the biggest pushes in this direction has come from IBM and Mediaocean who have been trying to make a blockchain-based AdSense-like network. But they are not alone and the competition also increases within this space.

Success has never been seen on such a large scale by any other social media blockchain platform

A number of blockchain social media companies have launched and gone out of business subsequently. Consider these examples:

Peepeth: Founded as a Twitter-inspired platform to foster “mindful discourse and effective altruism.” Its last update on the micro-blogging site came in January 2021.

Sapien: This social news platform is a blend of Facebook news feed and Pinterest in some way. It has only 1,000 downloads from the Google Play store.

Steemit: This social network claims to pay creators for user-generated content, based on a system of upvoting. The site says it has paid out $59 million to contributors since its launch.

Even earlier blockchain-based social media apps such as Social and WildSpark also floundered. In fairness to these app creators, it’s almost impossible to create a new social platform that scales quickly enough to benefit from the “network effect,” which the leading platforms enjoy regardless of whether they’re blockchain-powered.

FAQ

1) How can blockchain be used in advertising?

Blockchain can be used in the advertising industry by infusing transparency and trust within the ad ecosystem. It can create a secure layer for ad impression verification, delivery tracking of ads, as well as viewing of ads by real users. Also, blockchain can facilitate far more exact ad targeting through streamlined and safe user data use and preferences.

2) How is blockchain impacting the digital marketing industry?

Blockchain could possibly get the digital marketing industry down on its knees by providing cures for its multiple diseases of fraud, issues with transparency, as well as privacy of data. All this will be made possible through a decentralized ledger that is also immutable and which further assures unaltered information available across all fronts in real-time. Thus, blockchain technology would change that and lead to a higher level of trust between brands or advertisers and consumers as intermediaries who most times are taken by shams running away with money at once.

3) How might blockchain improve marketing strategies and how does blockchain influence consumer behavior?

Blockchain can revolutionize marketing strategies as it provides more data privacy and control for consumers. With blockchain, people can share their volunteered data in a very secure and open way so that only authorized brands may be able to have access to personal details. This data control can affect behavior because it provides the consumer more confidence in sharing data for a more reliable and personalized marketing offer with better engagement or brand loyalty.

4) What are the benefits of blockchain in digital marketing?

The benefits that can be associated with blockchain to digital marketing are so many. It increases transparency by reducing ad fraud so that it can increase integrity within the industry. Blockchain further ensures greater data security that empowers consumers with their personal data ownership and is at a lower risk of being exploited through compromised systems. It encourages trust as well as accountability amongst all the parties involved such as brands - advertisers, and consumers for example. Digital marketing can, therefore, apply blockchain technology for automation, individualization as well and full trust.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the generation of blockchain is revolutionizing the digital marketing enterprise in a large number of methods. It enhances transparency and trust between advertisers, publishers, and consumers as it provides an immutable and secure ledger for transactions. It is eliminating fraud and ad-click on bots hence ensuring the advertiser gets accurate and credible facts concerning their ad campaigns. Blockchain is also empowering users by giving them a handle on their personal information and permitting them to monetize their attention. As business giants and industries undertake the potential of the blockchain era, we can expect a similar revolution in digital advertising that will demand it to become more of an efficient, fairer, and consumer-friendly industry.