• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 14, 2017

Not enough marketers pay attention to blockchain technology. They should. It will become the next advancement in fraud prevention while serving online advertisements. Companies such as Intel, Microsoft and MetaX are working on solutions.

In theory, the same blockchain technology used in financial transitions  can also establish secure connections to help reduce ad fraud. Proponents of blockchain claim it will cut the multibillion dollar ad-fraud problem that the World Federation of Advertisers predict will reach up to $150 billion by 2025.

Google, Chainalysis, UC San Diego, and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering used blockchain to track $25 million in ransomeware.

In June MetaX, along with the Data & Marketing Association, introduced adChain, a blockchain technology made available through the platform called Ethereum.

MetaX Cofounder and CEO Ken Brook believes blockchain will impact programmatic media buying by giving marketers more control over data, enbling them to measure the effectiveness of media spend. In this scenario, marketers can keep track of where ads serve and how much they spend on each in a member-based centralized database.

"There are so many disparate systems that when it comes time to start billing for media campaigns, all the numbers rarely add up," Brook said.

In this next version of the Internet ad serving that Brook dubbed Web 3.0, marketers have more control over first-party data and how that data gets used and shared by technologies powering ad serving, Brook said.

Content will become more personalized in Web 3, but how does someone discover new content when everything becomes personalized based on previous searches and clicks or keyword triggers? "It's one of the challenges the industry faces today," Brook said. "It's become a problem. We talk about fake news and echo chambers, but it's really about discoverability and misaligned incentives to deliver content."

Centralizing content around proprietary algorithms that customize how content gets distributed and seen could become a setback for technology and search. The process becomes selective and based sometimes on incentives that necessarily do not align with the consumer's needs. Brook said centralizing content around a handful of companies will degrade, not improve the online experience.