The digital marketing industry has evolved dramatically over the last decade, and it’s undergoing another massive transformation powered by Blockchain technology.
Although many equate digital marketing with AI and analytics, blockchain technology could be the most significant innovation to reach marketers yet. It will transform digital marketing in ways that were unimaginable not long ago.
Blockchain has entered the world stage as the driver for the cryptocurrency phenomenon. It has been viewed by many as a synonym with Bitcoin. At its core, Blockchain facilitates transparent transactions without the need for third-party authentication. Although Bitcoin started the Blockchain revolution, it represents only one of the countless applications for the technology. Think of Blockchain as a computer operating system (Windows, macOS, e.g.) and Bitcoin, one of the countless applications enabled by blockchain technology. Such applications will revolutionize how we live our lives, conduct business, and consequently, the methods used in conventional digital marketing.
While analytics and AI have undoubtedly benefited businesses over consumers, blockchain technology serves as an equalizer since it gives the power of data ownership back to the consumer. It will require adaptation and resilience, but Blockchain will transform digital marketing for the better by making transactions and communications processes more seamless.
The power of data back to the people
One of the most exciting aspects of Blockchain is the potential to grant users power over their data. Until now, several businesses have benefited immensely from the access they have to consumer data. All businesses from PetSmart to Walmart need our phone number, email address, address, and the name of our first pet or favorite singer to allow us to make quick online purchases. Consumers have undoubtedly benefited from the convenience of today’s e-commerce ecosystem, but with hidden, underlying costs represented by your personal data to “personalize” your shopping experience. Most consumers don’t realize how intrusive that is, and enterprises want this intrusion to remain unnoticed. Data has become the world’s most expensive commodity, and several business models have personal data aggregation at their core to sell it to other companies.
Blockchain will transform how digital marketing is conducted by restricting companies’ ability to aggregate consumer data without compensating them for it. For instance, Brave browser is changing this practice and offering users compensation when interacting with online ads published on their platform. Users are allowed to opt-in to any ad they want and are provided with Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) for the ads they want to display. The brave browser gives us an insight into the future of online advertisement. It represents a total paradigm shift to what we are accustomed to. Brave shares part of its ad revenue with its users as a payment for their attention and gives them full control over the amount and frequency of ads displayed. Users can fully disable ads if they wish.
Another emerging technology, Blockstack, is a blockchain-based framework built to allow consumers greater protection of their digital rights. In the past, users would send their data to individual apps, which would then retain the information, and the user would have no power over it. However, with Blockstack, the data stays with the user. It functions like a key that opens data to some applications, but it quickly returns the user’s data when the application finishes using it. The concept is relatively simple, but it is groundbreaking for digital marketing since free for all data grabbing will become a thing of the past.
The digital marketing industry might find this new reality disruptive since it will require a complete shift in strategy and force marketers to go back to ground zero. Marketers will need to find a way to get consumers to hand them their data willingly in order to serve them better. It will represent a significant step forward regarding consumer protection, but not such great news for digital marketers since today’s tools and mechanisms will longer work. New ones will need to be put in place, and digital marketers should start envisioning this new reality and prepare for it.
Say hello to transparency and authentication
In the past, people would rely on eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon to purchase products marketed directly to them based on their online behavior data. Consumers had no option but to hope that the product information provided was authentic. To put it into context, can you independently and quickly verify claims such as?
- 100% organic
- Vegan
- Fairtrade
- Made in the U.S.A.
- Cruelty-free
- Scientifically proven
- Developed by dermatologist
- No child labor used in manufacturing
Blockchain technology enables end consumer traceability regarding all product information and every step in its life cycle. This is a huge step forward in a world populated by increasingly educated, quality-focused consumers.
Say goodbye to Ad-spend confusion
Unilever and IBM are creating tools to diminish or eliminate the confusion regarding online advertising spend. Blockchain provides a trusted, validated framework that indicates with precision the actual value of ad-spend for customer acquisition through online advertisement. The scheme is estimated to save Unilever tens of millions of dollars.
Blockchain is already impacting the digital marketing industry, and adaptation is crucial since it can wipe out a generation of companies that rely on a lack of transparency and ad-spend confusion as a source of revenue.
The bottom line is not about the use cases for blockchain technology in digital marketing. Instead, it’s about how these use cases will impact entire networks, tools, and methodologies employed in traditional digital marketing. In an unpredictable world, where everything is moving online, Blockchain will completely change our lives, and the “business as usual” mentality regarding digital marketing will no longer be sustainable. There is no question about it; digital marketing as we know it today will be disrupted irreversibly.
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