GABBCON Announces the Launch of Ad Ledger, a Blockchain Initiative

Blockchain was a top discussion point last year, but after the initial burst not much has appeared in the press. 

However, that doesn't mean that blockchain is any less important ... or its rollout dormant in any way.  In fact, according to the recent GABBCON conference, Dear Marketers: Help Me Help You, there has been decisive progress in rolling out the protocol in the media industry.  One major initiative is the creation of Ad Ledger, which is described as a "forum for collaboration" by Gabe Greenberg, Co-Founder GABBCON.  Over the span of two years, Ad Ledger has quietly ramped up. Christiana Cacciapuoti as Executive Director, just announced a set of  board members (including c-founding companies as Tegna, MadHIve and IBM), holding-company members and new rules of engagement.  The most important aspect of Ad Ledger at this time is to educate the industry and present the parameters of what blockchain can and can't do. 

The GABBCON announcement is the first salvo -- and now, the rest of 2019 is dedicated to taking the industry forward with members seeking eventual accreditation by the MRC.  Greenberg and his team are on the cutting edge of this blockchain roll out.  We met at the conference for an exclusive interview on the whys and wherefores of Ad Ledger, how it will impact the industry, next steps and obstacles to overcome.

GABBCON helped co-launch Ad Ledger and then transferred the GABBCON working group into it.  Becoming a founding partner was important, Greenberg explained, "because we saw an opportunity to bring buyers and sellers together in a way that the IAB and other groups weren't doing."  He noted that his company is participating to support the work that Ad Ledger is doing, including "breaking down the walled gardens and creating new open standards that help brands and agencies on one side and media sellers on the other side to extract the most value out of the market and pay as little for that as possible."  The way to this economic efficiency is by "cutting out the intermediaries and the folks that represent ad taxes," he added.

Greenberg has his eye on accreditation, which is necessary for scale and adoption.  "The team is in the early stages of working with the MRC," he indicated.  "It takes some time but the process is starting."

Looking to the future, Greenberg hopes that two years from now Ad Ledger will be at a point where the group "is chasing the scale of an IAB, develops a cryptoRTB standard that reaches a significant scale of the market, is not still in its infancy or nascent stage and that more and more brands are involved."

Currently, Hershey's and Bob Mills Furniture are involved and other brands were in attendance at the event for a look-see.  "But we need to get more brands that are demanding these solutions to come to the table and help form them," Greenberg asserted.  "More than anything Ad Ledger is a call to the industry to come together.  We don't need another consortium that's come and gone.  We need a group that is making real impact and making a difference."

For Wallace Kittredge, Senior Content Strategist for Bob Mills Furniture, a regional retailer of furniture, blockchain and participation in Ad Ledger will help his company explore more options, help justify their digital and offline budgets and close loops.  "Reporting is difficult enough at this time," he says.  "Blockchain will help with transparency and valuation."

For others, implementing blockchain into the media pipeline will help solve for one persistent vexing problem – ad fraud.  “Blockchain has many use cases from identity and risk management to fraud and decentralizing data," explains Alysia Borsa, Chief Marketing and Data Officer, Meredith.  "The low hanging fruit is fraud.  With disparate data coming in, how do we bring it all together in a centralized form? How do we create pilots that will be proof of concept for advertisers?”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

GABBCON Focuses on Audience Based Buying Challenges and Opportunities

GABBCON, a relatively new conference now in its second year, held its conference in New York City last week. The event offered visionary thinking about the progression of programmatic, audience based targeting, cookies, blockchain technology, data and brand safety.  In his opening remarks, Gabe Greenberg, CEO and co-founder of GABBCON, Inc., noted that "audience based buying is at a turning point. We need to break down walled gardens and find new solutions to bring the industry together."

The ways to bring the industry together were outlined throughout the day:

It’s All About Data and How We Use It

Data continues to be one of the hottest topics but the focus of the data discussion is shifting. For some, data has become paramount, even over programming. According to Peter Naylor, SVP Sales at  hulu, “Audience is the product, not the shows. We sell audiences first. Data allows us to go beyond age and demo.”  Denise Colella, SVP Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy Advertising Sales, NBCUniversal, explained, “Data is paramount to everything we do. We have access to all types of data including Comcast STB data that allows us to help our advertisers and reach niche audiences. Data advises everything for us and we need to be able to measure it properly.” But, she continued, “there is new data all the time. It is a living and breathing thing. We are seeing more brands bringing their own data to the table – their own first party data.”

Understanding which data sets in combination are the most insightful is emerging as one of the key challenges and opportunities for marketers. Gary Reisman, CEO and Founder of LEAP Media Investments agrees: “While it’s true that data is powerful, we have almost too much data and are employing mostly tactical uses of that data.  The next generation of audience-based targeting will be focused on transforming the data sets we have into intelligence, leading to better informed strategic planning and audience creation.”

Guarantee Brand Safety

There has to be a sense of comfort among advertisers that their ads are being showcased with the right audience and with contextual brand safety. Fraud takes on many forms and is an impediment to robust advertising growth. John Montgomery, EVP of Brand Safety at GroupM, explained, “Brand safety means different things to different people. The risks that have emerged for some of our brands include fraud, privacy, viewability and ad blocking. We looked into data rights and data permissions, addressing one by one. We haven't conquered the beast but we caged it. We have done what we can.” But more is expected. “Marketers have moved trust transparency up the digital chain. It is the number one priority in the next year,” he added.

Embrace Blockchain Technology

To those who may not be familiar with the term, blockchain is the public ledger of bitcoin by which payments are executed peer-to-peer. Since blockchain essentially tracks transactions in a highly secure manner, there are those in our industry who believe that its roll-out in audience-based buying will help in tracking the consumer path with a higher level of trust and efficacy. Stacy Huggins, Co-Founder/CMO at Madhive, noted that, “the cost of trust is enormous. So blockchain is gaining a lot of adoption. The protocol secures data and lowers the cost of trust.” Jim Wilson, President at Premion, a Tegna Company, added that clients are asking for transparency - what networks were bought, who is seeing the ad. “We are trying to create standards. Blockchain creates transparency and consistency. It is efficient for publishers and advertisers.”

Put an End to Walled Gardens

Walled gardens, Montgomery noted, “are safer and there is less fraud.”  But walled gardens also create and perpetuate data delivery silos that make it more difficult to standardize and blend measurement across platforms and devices. For Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer at Turner, audience measurement today still has many challenges. “We still measure in silos and walled gardens create this challenge. We don't understand what drives outcome. What is it about a given exposure that drives an outcome?” he asked.  Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer at Omnicom Media Group, agreed, “We need some standardization across the walled gardens. We need some building blocks of comparability - how to count a duration, what is a viewability standard.” The answer, according to Shimmel is, “Get everyone in a room together and decide on the platform we need to build. We need to get aligned to where the future will be.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com