Advertising technology company Mediaocean has announced a blockchain partnership with Amino Payments for detailed auditing of digital advertising buys.
Mediaocean processes $150 billion a year in advertising spend through its platforms and a year ago revealed it had gone live with its own blockchain platform developed with IBM. The blockchain pilot solution supported two dozen brands, including Kellogg’s, Kimberly-Clark, Pfizer and Unilever and delivered $670 million in ad spend.
One of the challenges in digital advertising is the sheer number of companies involved in the ad spend process, which means advertisers lack visibility into this media supply chain.
Typically if there’s a campaign, the ad buy might go through a Demand-side platform (DSP) which is essentially a portal to enable the campaign to be spread across multiple advertising exchanges. But on the other side, the publisher has the same idea, sell-side platforms (SSPs) which allow them to place their inventory on multiple exchanges.
We’ve just described three layers, not counting the primary ad agency and Mediaocean. But recent research found there can be as many as 28 technologies used.
Mediaocean CRO Ramsey McGrory told Ledger Insights via email that Mediaocean captures the end-to-end purchase order to payment data. What Amino Payments adds is the detailed breakdown of suppliers. This means the buyer can see all the partners, vendors and fees charged.
So in the comparatively simple three-step example above, Amino Payments would deconstruct the data from the DSP, the exchanges and the SSP. Ultimately brands and agencies will be able to see reports showing the suppliers, technology and data partners involved in a transaction, as well as how much money each of them receives.
“Delivering programmatic media supply chain transparency inside the financial and contractual workflow has been one of the top requests we’ve received as we’ve innovated with blockchain,” said McGrory. “The partnership with Amino Payments will help us to deliver this.”
“By combining Amino’s impression-level cost analysis and supply path optimization tools with Mediaocean’s cross media management solutions, marketers will have complete and detailed visibility of their programmatic buys from purchase order to payment execution,” said Amino’s CEO Will Luttrell.
Mediaocean is also a member of the Adledger consortium which has published several reports about blockchain in advertising. There are numerous blockchain advertising initiatives around the world, including multiple from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Others include PepsiCo and Mindshare in the Asia Pacific, and in the UK McDonalds, Nestlé and Unilever are participating in the JICWEBS pilot.
