AdLedger’s Blockchain Education Working Group Lays Foundation for Blockchain Use in Advertising with New White Paper

In Partnership With IPG Reprise Digital, Omnicom Media Group, IBM, GroupM, and Publicis Media

AdLedger, the non-profit research and development consortium building and implementing blockchain standards for digital advertising, today released the Blockchain & Advertising Special Report, the first output from its Blockchain Education Working Group, produced in partnership with analyst group TV[R]EV. The report shares insights from a survey of nearly 100 top media experts and features in-depth interviews with more than 20 senior advertising executives.

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The report includes extensive commentary from AdLedger’s Blockchain Education Working Group chairs Chad Andrews, Global Blockchain Solutions Leader at IBM; Tim Ringel, Global CEO of IPG Reprise Digital; Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer at Omnicom Media Group and Yale Cohen, EVP, Activation Standards, Publicis Media.

Senior leadership from GroupM, CoinDesk, MAD Network, and other AdLedger members also contributed to the report.

“There’s been an abundance of grandiose promises about blockchain’s potential in advertising,” said Tim Ringel, CEO at IPG Reprise Digital.

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Tim added, “The goal of our group is to uncover and implement real best practices, but first we need greater industry understanding of the technology and to develop supporting standards.”

The White Paper’s chapters address the prerequisite questions the industry must answer to move from hyperbole to the pragmatic application of blockchain-

• What is a blockchain?
• How do blockchains work?
• Blockchain and advertising: how do they work together?
• What are blockchain’s potential implementations?
• Extreme blockchain: what comes next?

The non-profit also today unveiled guiding principles [hyperlink] that details the consortium’s mission and methods for working together to revolutionize the advertising ecosystem. A few big takeaways from the document are:

• Advertising should be free of theft, fraud, waste, and deception.
• The advertising industry must truly embrace transparency and trust to thrive and grow.

Blockchains and cryptography are two of the most critical technologies needed to deliver us into the future we envision for advertising.

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“Although it’s often overlooked, advertising financed the creation of the internet,” said Christiana Cacciapuoti, Executive Director AdLedger.

Christiana added, “In the early stages, the ad-supported approach was instrumental in driving adoption, but it has also left us vulnerable to the problems plaguing the industry today, like a wasteful supply chain and a lack of consumer data privacy controls.”

AdLedger is bringing industry players together, providing a critical forum for collaboration and developing the standards for solving the problems plaguing the advertising ecosystem. The consortium is leveraging cutting-edge technologies like blockchain and cryptography to identify solutions while ensuring the development of critical materials through the Education Working Group to share knowledge across the industry.

AdLedger consists of IBM, Omnicom, IPG Reprise Digital, Meredith, Publicis Media, Salon Media, TEGNA, MAD Network and more than 50 other influential companies in the advertising industry.

Currently, AdLedger is a nonprofit research and development consortium charged with implementing global technical standards and solutions for the application of blockchain to digital media. The consortium is comprised of industry leading companies who have joined forces with the goal of furthering trust and transparency within the digital media space.

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