Integration of Blockchain Technology in Digital Marketing
Blockchain has turned out to be an invention of the century. Since its inception, it has disrupted many industries, such as Finance, Banking, healthcare. That’s not all, it seems like Blockchain has marked its entry into the world of digital marketing.
It has changed the face of marketing in the world, and it seems like it’s now time for digital marketing to go through a revolution by integrating with blockchain.
Let’s go through this article to see how blockchain can disrupt Marketing!!
Current Trends of digital marketing
Digital marketing exists because of the way the world has shifted to a more virtual environment and advances in data gathering and analytics that the major companies like Google, Facebook, etc are involved in.
They collect data of the users on their social media or operating system platforms and after analysis of what an individual may like, offer tools to the brands who rely on them to advertise their products.
The importance of data is so much that, “DATA IS THE NEW GOLD” has become a popular saying. With the amount of sophisticated data, companies with the help of Artificial intelligence(AI) and Machine learning(ML) can determine the interests of an individual.
Hence instead of displaying random advertisements, can tailor the advertisements, and narrow down on their potential customer, so that the user is displayed a relevant advertisement. It’s a win-win for both users and brands.
But the tech giants charge fees from brands for the data they collect and process and the users feel exploited, as their every activity can be possibly tracked! In case this data is breached, which can put users in vulnerable positions to be exploited.
This problem can be solved. But HOW is the million-dollar question!!
The answer is Blockchain.
What is Blockchain??
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger technology that records the provenance of digital assets. In simple words, a large set of databases which permanently records all of the Digital currency transactions as and when they are carried out on a peer-to-peer basis rather than using a centralized data system.
It is sometimes referred to as Distributed Ledger Technology(DLT), which aids the distribution of digital assets (not copied or transferred). This revolutionary technology is a savior, which the user’s data can rely on for transparency in a scalable way, reducing risks of fraud and verification.
Let’s consider an analogy:
Blockchains can be considered as a large set of Data storing structures that are identical to excel sheets, but you cannot edit the data once that enters. Changes to that data should constitute a new Block, or append!!
Of Course, there are more functionalities to the blockchain, but this must give you a very simple idea to define this not so easily definable technology. These sets of data are not stored in one single centralized server but on a lot of its user's devices/servers around its user community.
The BLOCKCHAIN REVOLUTION in Digital Marketing.
The most prominent feature of Blockchain is that it gives back the value of data to consumers. Many companies have benefited hugely just by being able to pull data from their users.
Here are some of the practices which can transform the marketing landscape.
- Users can have control of their own data.
Technology companies have used their apps to draw huge amounts of data from their users and sell the data for advertising. By integration of blockchain systems, the customer/an individual may control how he would sell data. The company/advertisers can offer incentives to the people who sell their data in the form of Basic Attention Tokens(BAT’s), which can be exchanged for purchasing services. This is more ethical when compared to techniques/practices used by ad-revenue-based companies like Facebook, Google, Instagram, etc.
2. Ad Fraud.
The existing model of advertising is plagued with a lack of transparency and accountability about how their marketing budget is spent. As the companies spend money on pay per click or display, it is being reported that almost 50% of the ad money was spent on non-human traffic — Bots or AI. By integrating blockchain, we can quite possibly track the inflow of visits and clicks by uniquely identifying human users. Hence reducing the losses in fake crowds.
3. Data inefficiency and transparency
As mentioned earlier, digital marketing is a data-driven model. Some of the data which the big companies generate are deemed useless and inaccurate after a certain period/time-frame as the customer may have already purchased the product which is being advertised.
When data from a blockchain platform, which is directly acquired from user inputs with consent can be more accurate which may result in better accuracy and also results in transparency for both consumers and brands.
4. Data security.
Data Security is a major issue for most people today. Since digital marketing is the reason why the data is being collected it is the responsibility of the industry to safeguard its consumers’ data. This can be achieved by the integration of blockchain, as it’s known to be fraud-proof.
Final thoughts
Although the digital marketing industry has not yet completely adapted to the blockchain, it would not be surprising if the integration happens soon in the upcoming future.
No doubt blockchain is here to stay, but it’s important how the technology is implemented. It could very well pose a problem to tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Instagram as their revenues are mainly based on advertisements, and direct data transactions between marketers and consumers will affect their business model.
