Mindshare taps Zilliqa to test media applications of blockchain technology

The global media agency, with over 7,000 employees and $31 billion in annual billings, has partnered with the high-speed blockchain platform developed by researchers at the National University of Singapore to test new technologies in the media industry.

One of the largest media agencies in the world, Mindshare, has announced an exclusive partnership with Zilliqa, a high-speed blockchain technology platform developed by researchers at the National University of Singapore. The exclusive partnership will involve testing whether Zilliqa’s blockchain protocol can be used to address pervasive industry challenges including contextual advertising in relation to fake news; develop strategic initiatives around data privacy and develop an industry-wide tokenisation program which can be used for publisher and content scoring.

In an official release, Gowthaman Ragothaman, Global Chief Strategy Officer at Mindshare’s integrated performance unit, FAST, said: “Blockchain technology is going to influence the media and entertainment industry at a much more rapid pace than we ever thought possible. There is a popular saying that in technology we often overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten years. Mindshare is absolutely delighted to partner with Zilliqa to test this technology and its possible future application in the media and entertainment industry. We have a set of hypothesis that we want to prove either right or wrong and to build some tools that will eventually benefit the business of advertising and technology, especially when it comes together to influence consumer behaviour.”

“We are incredibly excited to be working with Mindshare on this ground-breaking industry initiative and applying the Zilliqa blockchain protocol to address pervasive industry issues around contextual advertising and validated content,” said Xinshu Dong, CEO of Zilliqa. “Zilliqa’s underlying infrastructure has already been applied in applications in the financial services sector, and it is a great move for us to explore the power of a high-throughput distributed ledger in the advertising industry, and in particular with Mindshare, which is a pinnacle for innovation and agility in the industry.

“We are confident that with the unique technology provided by Zilliqa, and the industry-leading expertise from Mindshare, this partnership will deliver innovative and timely solutions to some of the most challenging issues plaguing the digital advertising industry.”

Zilliqa was created by researchers at the National University of Singapore to solve the issue of scalability of blockchains, one of the most pressing problems facing the technology today. The new platform they have developed is based upon the technology of sharding that was originally proposed by the research team in an academic paper in 2015.

Zilliqa has already built a working platform and has recently announced that their internal testnet has reached a peak throughput of 2,488 transactions per second (TX/s). For perspective, if Zilliqa were fully operational on the same number of computer nodes as Ethereum (~22,000) their transaction rate would be over 15,000 TX/s, nearly double the average of VISA, the largest electronic payment network in the world.

The partnership will be piloted out of Singapore, where Mindshare’s Asia Pacific FAST Hub is based.