Introduction:
The advertising world has undergone a massive revolution over the last few years. Advertisers purchased blocks of impressions from the publishers. They reached a lot of people but not necessarily the appropriate audience who would relate to such advertisements. Therefore, several advertising dollars went futile as the ads never reached the people who would actually benefit most from seeing them.
But that was back in the day.
Thanks to programmatic advances, the proliferation of “intermediary players” in the advertising cosmos (DSPs, SSPs, Ad Exchanges, etc.) and the “real-time” connectivity brought about by nifty software and technological evolution, “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB), became a reality.
RTB is the process of selling and buying online display advertising in real time, on one ad impression at a time basis. It allows ad inventory on a web or mobile site to be purchased by the individual impression through a bidding system that occurs in milliseconds before a web page gets loaded for a consumer.
But RTB is not entirely efficient:
Thanks to RTB, the ad ecosystem today is cluttered with intermediaries. While these intermediaries help in faster fill-up of impressions but they also end up distributing the advertiser ad spend across several layers (shown in the illustration below) leading to a lower throughput for the publishers.
The existing system of revenue distribution across the advertising ecosystem…
Imagine a scenario where the publishers can directly interact with advertisers and transact without any intermediaries. In that case, the whole of $10 above will land in the publisher’s kitty (75% increase)
Blockchain technology can make this possible:
Taking a leaf out of “blockchain technology’s applicability in the music industry” gives us a clear view of how this technology can revolutionize the revenue system in the advertising industry. Being the distributed ledger that it is, a direct relationship between advertisers and publishers can be established. Any advertiser (just like any creator) can simply publish the ad on the ledger with a unique ID and timestamp in a way that is effectively immutable. This advertisement will contain crucial metadata visible to all advertisers who, in turn, basis the kind of audience visiting the site will quickly “pick and choose” the ads from the ledger and display it on their websites. For doing so the advertiser will pay them an incentive per impression or per click (as per the understanding) which will directly flow into the publisher’s kitty without being eaten away by the intermediaries.
This transparent system will not only motivate publishers to serve ads judiciously but also assure the advertisers’ community that their money is being spent wisely.
Envisaged Framework:
Blockchain would improve publisher’s throughput in the Ad Ops industry
While the above model seems all so good and rosy on the surface, to pull this off will require so many parties to get on board and accept the “transparent” principles which are normally an anathema to those who profit from the opaqueness and confusion around payments, ad serving, and inaccurate data.
The HCLTech Advantage:
Experts like HCLTech who are well-entrenched players in the digital industry and are trendsetters in the ever-evolving ad operations eco space are best positioned to translate innovative models like above into reality.
Be it the technological edge that is required to redesign, reimagine, and recraft the blockchain framework, be it the domain expertise required to tailor new financial models, or be it the provision of one single workflow that could take care of the whole of ad operations, HCLTech has it all and more.
With delivery centres in over 33 countries, catering to 100+ clients and the availability of 3000+ digital experts makes HCLTech a tantalizing hub of digital evolution that could possibly play a big role in shaping the future of ad operations.
HCLTech’s wide partnership network allows it to cater to niche areas in the long digital pipeline and thereby is best suited to not only deliver what clients want but also accommodate any service adjacencies that they might need eventually.
The advertisement industry is at a tipping point and HCLTech is well-positioned to make the most of the opportunities that have been discussed in this blog post.
So come along, embrace HCLTech Digital & Content Services and take a big first step in improving your ad operations throughput.
