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Can Blockchain Repair the Broken Digital Advertising Space?
Most of us find digital advertising irritating. When online ads first came to platforms like Facebook, it was something of a novelty. For the first time, we were being shown products and services that were actually relevant to us, based on our likes and preferences – and data. That four-letter word has become a precious commodity. Because valuable data is, in fact, worth its weight in gold. But as with anything in our rapidly evolving lives marked by limited attention spans, we got bored pretty quickly. And Facebook responded by changing its algorithm to prioritize content from family and friends over corporations. Awesome for users (until they found out their data was being leaked anyway), but a real quandary for online advertisers seeking to reach their targets. The Point of Audience Fatigue Elsewhere online, where advertising proliferates, some 40 percent of millennials already use adblockers, and that number is on the rise. As for Gen-Z, their tolerance for ads is next to zero, and Gen-Alpha integrates technology into their everyday lives without so much as blinking – even my three-year-old knows how to skip the ads on YouTube in a fragment of a second. So, how can online advertising exist in such an environment? How can advertisers reach consumers despite growing apathy and government regulation? Through blockchain technology, of course. Its decentralized nature can democratize data, releasing ownership of your personal information back to you. Companies like Facebook and other data middlemen are consequently cut out of the system. Here’s how it works: Monetizing Micro-Fragments of Data Thanks to blockchain’s ability to register microtransactions, it is creating new value opportunities. Consumers can maintain control over their data and monetize it if they want to. Because everything about them is interesting to someone. While not many people care how many steps you took with your Fitbit today, you can bet there’s at least one advertiser aching for that information. ICOs like Sooloox are springing up everywhere, allowing consumers to authorize their own data use and trade directly with the companies which want to buy it. Advertisers get the laser-targeted information they crave, and individuals get compensated. No bothersome banner ads involved, and no data middlemen. The platform transforms consumers from “data providers to data authorizers,” and gives them control over its use. A similar premise is put forward by Social Cash, which intends to use blockchains to “disrupt digital advertising” and help consumers secure their identities. In what they call a new market (the “attention economy”), Social Cash aims to bring trust and transparency back to digital advertising (if those things ever existed). They also plan to resolve the problem of advertising fraud, which cost the industry around $7.2 billion last year. Another player in this increasingly competitive space is YouGov Direct, making promises of consumer protection, transparency, and efficiency. These companies want data and are willing to pay for it. But now they can deal with consumers directly, helping individuals avoid ad fraud, abuse of data, and a whole host of underhand breaches of privacy as we move into an era of increased consumer data protection. Final Thoughts When we’re hearing about the marvels of blockchain technology every day, about how it will transform industries far and wide and change life as we know it, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype. Will blockchain tech resolve the online advertising industry’s woes? Maybe. But it will be interesting to see what happens during the fallout.
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Bolivar to Bitcoin Trading Surpasses a Record $1 Million per Day
Venezuela’s economic situation has been steadily declining in the past few years, bringing Venezuelans to turn to cryptocurrencies.
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The US and Asia Pacific Are Still Behind the EMV Adoption Curve
Making payment cards more secure is no easy feat. Thankfully, we have the EMV standard, which is slowly gaining traction. According to EMVco, over half of the cards issued globally now use this new security standard. There is still a lot of work to be done, but so far, the efforts are paying off. It…
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Online Lending in Risk On Mode: Unprecedented 21 Months of Non Stop Securitization Issuance
PeerIQ has just published their quarterly marketplace lending securitization tracker. The periodic report gauges activity in the online lending sector providing an interesting barometer of industry sentiment and investor activity. The most recent report stated that PeerIQ has observed an "unprecedented 21 months of
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Fiserv scoops up Mexico credit union biz with Siscoop
Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, today announced Siscoop, a cooperative providing services to credit unions in Mexico, will enable 26 credit unions to offer digital banking services using Fiserv technology.
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DAOs, DApps, and Stacks: A Decentralized Governance System
The human body is a decentralized structure made of organs, sub-organs and sub-sub-organs, all the way to the cells, which themselves have their internal structure. The functionality of the body is pretty decentralized and no cell instructs other cells on what to do. Rather, each cell operates autonomously according to inputs it receives from its environment. Now, imagine a company without a CEO or hierarchy. Imagine an organization that can essentially run on its own, without managerial supervision, completely autonomously, as if there were a CEO or managerial structure in place. Scary or brilliant? What Is A ‘Decentralized Autonomous System?’ A ‘decentralized autonomous organization’ (or “DAO”), is a business or organization whose decisions are made electronically, strictly through written code (rules) or by vote of its members. It is a system of hard-coded rules that define which actions an organization will or will not take. But, what’s the benefit of having a self-running or self-aware company? I mean, let’s face it, this isn’t Tony Stark we are talking about. The idea behind DAO companies is that the rules upon which a company functions are enforced digitally. Those decisions that aren’t hard-coded onto the blockchain platform are made and enforced by shareholders who control a certain amount of tokens or smart contracts. Examples of rules include the amount of dividend payouts a company distributes, or whether or not a company will engage in or support a certain event. The issues that DAOs currently face concern the participation of all shareholders as well as the ease of changing the code or a smart contract once it’s deployed in the blockchain. It’s a double-edged sword in that it’s a huge advantage that the code and smart contracts deployed are not easily manipulated or accessed, as this minimizes the risk of fraud and corruption, while at the same time, it makes debugging and changing the code extremely challenging and time-consuming. This challenge was illustrated by the failure of The DAO company, which was drained of all its funds by hackers who simply exploited a bug in the system. We are now on a pathway that John Connor “once” tried to fix—self-aware technology and organizations, e.g., SkyNet. What are DApps? While there isn’t one standard fit-all definition for a ‘DApp’, it can best be described as an open-source, decentralized application that connects users and providers directly. There are three types of DApps: apps that manage money; apps that manage where money is involved, but requires another piece; and apps in the ‘other’ category, which includes voting and governance systems. How Can a DAO be The Missing Link In The Blockchain? DAOs are meant to provide a new method of scaling. One company, DAOstack, believes that by providing a toolkit comprised of a multitude of distinct but interoperable DAOs, it will allow for a harmonious ecosystem characterized by compatibility and functionality. By homing in on three categories—decentralized collaboration, decentralized cooperation, and decentralized curation networks—the company believes that a DAO can be a successful model that the blockchain ecosystem can benefit from and thrive on. “By providing an open, universal framework, comprised of smart contracts, collective value management, and DApps, we believe interests will be aligned and the result will produce a new web of open collaboration and interoperability among web companies,” says a representative of the company. “Middlemen are everywhere in our economy; they are there to store records, for agreements over those records, and making decisions,” says Matan Field, the co-founder of DAOstack. These agreements need to sit somewhere, and one should not simply trust the record keeper. Decentralizing these records allows them to sit nowhere, but everywhere. Each computer stores a copy of that ledger, confirming the validity of that code copy. “The whole magic of blockchain is the ability to maintain that consensus continuously,” says Field. But, in the economy, we also rely on intermediaries to direct and coordinate—we need the CEO to run a company, the government to collect and distribute taxes, and a mayor to run a city. “As long as power is concentrated, there is unavoidable conflict of interest and great risk for failure,” says Field. “Blockchain 1.0 was the ledger; Blockchain 2.0 is the network. So, what if we moved to Blockchain 3.0—decentralized governance. No company. No management. Self-organization.”
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Wall Street Veteran Likens Cryptocurrencies to Candy Crush Game Currency
Join our community of 10 000 traders on Hacked.com for just $39 per month. Richard Bernstein isn’t building any bridges with the cryptocurrency community. The head of the Wall Street research firm that bears his name said in a note to clients today that there’s little difference between cryptocurrencies and the virtual currencies you earn
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Smart Contract Pioneer Nick Szabo: Don't Ditch Decentralization
One of the few cypherpunks in a room full dominated by financial services, Szabo urged blockchain developers not to forget about decentralization.