Blockchain is Adtech's Cool Topic of the Day

Blockchain has existed for ten years - and yet very suddenly, it's all the rage in adtech. While I'd contend that a lot of the talk of blockchain disrupting adtech is coming from people who want to sound like they're on the visionary bleeding edge - and so should be ignored - a lot of people also thing that it will make a real difference.

I think that the reason for blockchain's sudden prominence in digital media discussions is being driven by the coincidence of two huge things:

1. Cryptocurrency is having its moment, and blockchain is essential to cryptocurrency. It's a technology riding the coattails of another technology. In this case, it's sharing in a gold-rush level of attention from the world.
2. Transparency, accountability and privacy are having their [overdue] moments in the digital media and adtech industries.

This coincidence makes for an irresistible topic: how can blockchain be implemented in such a way that advertisers can see (and maybe even approve) all transactions using their dollars across all of the middlemen in the space? It has undeniable appeal; advertisers would rightly like to know where their money is going. Publishers would like to increase revenue and help eliminate bad actors.

But like many fad topics, I think this one is unlikely to disrupt anything anytime soon. The piece below from The Drum lists good reasons: blockchain is space-hungry and energy-hungry, and in an environment where there could easily be dozens of transactions for a single impression (and trillions of those globally per day), those are big problems. It's also not as secure as everyone thinks it is.

I think people would still press ahead despite those challenges - but the main blocker isn't even mentioned here. The truth is that the martech / adtech / digital media industry is built on a set of technologies that, despite being positioned by their creators as cutting edge, is not very adaptable or easy to change quickly. For blockchain to be a "table stakes" offering to advertisers would take years of experimentation and troubleshooting. It's more likely that the concept is baked into coming generations of programmatic technology yet to be built from the ground up.

http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2018/03/02/blockchain-the-answer-programmatic-advertising-s-woes