The advertising industry has benefited from the digital revolution as evidenced by the massive reallocation of money from traditional media to digital advertising. However, such has also highlighted problems that have plagued the industry as it continues to assert its value to the advertisers who provide the cash, let alone to actual consumers.
Alan Wolk writes about an unprecedented collaboration of the four largest ad holding companies on the planet:
- IPG
- Publicis
- Omnicom
- WPP
Their participation in the nonprofit AdLedger was established to “further trust and transparency within the digital media space.”
The AdLedger website also states: “We are a nonprofit research and development consortium charged with implementing global technical standards and solutions for the digital media and blockchain industries.”
Wolk describes the initiative as an attempt to solved the “Four Horsemen of the Ad Apocalypse”:
- Fraud
- Lack of consumer privacy controls
- Too many middlemen
- Lack of transparency between publishers and advertisers
Blockchain represents a potential and meaningful solutions to these issues which have been a bane to the industry.