Weekly
Digest
#18

March 15, 2018

Blockchain Advertising?

The advertising industry is reshaping in a massive way. But despite the uncertainty that comes with change, agencies continue to innovate and their latest tool is blockchain. For those unfamiliar with it, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger that tracks transactions involving cryptocurrency (such as bitcoin). Records are distributed and public, bringing full transparency and a new level of security to consumers.

There are some interesting and evolving conversations around how blockchain will affect advertising. Some herald it as the key to transparency, a way for brands to ensure the clicks they’re paying for are from people, not bots. It’s also praised as a disruptive business model. Where publishers now pay a certain rate per 1,000 impressions, blockchain could cut out the middleman and pay viewers directly using “micro-currencies.” There are also monetization tools that help writers and content creators get paid instantly for their work. Given the nature of the technology, it even allows consumers to track the flow of a product through the supply chain, a game changing tool for luxury brands that spend millions in anti-counterfeit tools and tactics.

As with many emerging tools, there’s talk of the importance of getting ahead of this, reminiscent of the call-to-arms around voice strategy. Now, marketers are being told to put together blockchain strategy, that there is incredible marketing potential to all of this and that they can’t afford to wait to get on this. But is all that true?

Despite these promising benefits, skepticism is alive and well. Much of the issue is due to the fact that it’s not yet widely adopted and is intensely theoretical. With any new technology, there have to be enough adopters of the tool to make the network function and we may be years away from seeing that with blockchain.

It’s easy to get swept up in all the excitement of buzzy new technologies, especially when it’s making a splash in major venues like SXSW and Cannes. A lot remains unknown, but some saying it has the same disruptive capabilities as the internet. Time will certainly tell.

Who Run the World?

Last week, Unruly announced a tool that tests if ads are sexist. Facial coding and survey responses measure factors like objectification and the types of roles women embody in advertisements. This week, 180 female advertising executives launched “Time’s Up Advertising,” an initiative to create policies and practices in the industry to combat discrimination, harassment and abuse.

Hot on the heels of International Women’s Day, it’s invigorating to see these things come to life. It’s initiatives like this that become movements, whose present-day beginnings turn into established agents of change. But along with these radical and positive advancements come questions and speculations of who will rewrite the rules and who is just along for the ride.

Brands like Smirnoff and Uber debuted activations for IWD that encourage us to be mindful of our gender biases and tell women’s stories. And while the activations themselves are solid, unfortunately the companies motivations are cause for speculation. Smirnoff is no stranger to wildly inappropriate ads that objectify women, though in recent days, they’ve downgraded to just casually offensive ones. And Uber was the subject of many unflattering headlines last year amidst sexual harassment scandals. For every genuinely positive brand activation, such as the one from Brawny showing strength knows no gender, there are examples that seem a little too convenient.

The tides are changing and injustice is being overturned by the very people who have been exploited. But every cause isn’t a good match for every brand. For some, the passion for women’s issues is clear. For others, the waters are murky. But in the end, any attention and positive action that contributes to this Year of the Woman has some merit. Even if it is an act of redemption.

Photo credits: Chuttersnap (top post) and David Marcu (bottom post)