MEDIA Protocol, Marketing And Blockchain — Part 4

4 min readMay 25, 2018

The team here at MEDIA Protocol are deeply committed to creating a more direct, transparent and secure ecosystem for content creators, publishers, and consumers through the revolutionary application of blockchain technology. We’re here to connect the worlds of marketing and technology for everyone’s benefit.

We’ve got love for both worlds, but from our own experience we know that they can sometimes feel, literally, worlds apart. So we’re committed, not just to connecting them, but to creating a common understanding between them.

This series of articles aims to explain the relationship between marketing and blockchain to help everyone — the marketeers, the technologists, and the content consumers — understand the principles behind this game-changing technology.

We want to help educate by demystifying the potential applications of blockchain technology. The MEDIA Protocol team feel it’s vital to highlight and clarify the potential of blockchain in the marketing world; how it provides transparency, efficiency, reliability and accuracy.

Strap in, and welcome to the MEDIA Protocol Blockchain Marketing Programme.

Part 4 — The Potential Impact Of Blockchain On Marketing: Veracity

In previous instalments, we’ve looked at how blockchain has improved handling of the Volume, Velocity, and Variety of Big Data. When it comes to Veracity, the fourth of the 4 Vs, blockchain is especially useful.

The Trouble With Current Data

Companies need accurate and verified information to make the best possible decisions, particularly when it comes to marketing their products and services. Analytics are only as good and useful as the data they’re operating on.

Generally, Big Data Veracity has an impact on the confidence reposed by the marketer to their database. However, in a volatile Big Data environment, accuracy becomes an issue among digital marketers regarding the collected data for their business. — Business2Community.com

A considerable amount of data, as it’s currently gathered and processed, is both inconsistent and incomplete. As we discussed when looking at Volume and Variety, huge quantities are left untouched because there isn’t the computing, or human, processing power to handle them. Latency issues can render data irrelevant after just a short period of time, especially when real-time responses are needed.

The biggest hurdle to Veracity in current systems is the scope for deception. Whether it’s inaccurate information overwriting the accurate in the one, centralised save-point, or more malicious actors deliberately tampering with data, it can be very difficult to uncover.

What Needs To Improve?

The problems outlined above leave companies with data they feel they can’t rely on. They need to then take steps to turn the big data they receive into something they can trust to be accurate.

These include:

Not mixing data, and finding a way to keep related data together for analysis
Working in real-time: sorting and analysing data on delivery. That latency between receipt and action can cost leads and customers.
Organising and triaging the data you have to work with. Not all data is equally important or valuable, so good sorting processes will make clear where your priorities and focus should be.

The Blockchain Solution

Previously, as part of our Blockchain Education Programme, we addressed the topic of blockchain and data integrity.

The distributed ledger system that is the foundation of blockchain removes the risks and limitations of centralised data storage. To even attempt tampering, bad actors would have to try to gain control of multiple nodes at once, which is next to impossible.

That ledger is also a public record of every transaction and change that’s made to the data, going right back to its original state. With every action attributed to its owner, it makes life very difficult for anyone attempting to cover their tracks.

This also helps with the organisation outlined above — a transparent and logical system that stores data efficiently is one of the key features of blockchain. It reduces the opportunities to mix irrelevant data, keeping your information and processes streamlined.

Users who need to have faith in their data will find this key feature of the technology of particular value: the way that blockchain verifies the data it holds.

Blockchain verifies multiple copies of the same data, distributed over its network of nodes, by consensus. When there is no consensus, because the data has been tampered with or attacked at a particular location, the blockchain simply isolates and eliminates that bogus data. This saves the need for human monitoring and intervention.

Blockchain Handles The 4 Vs For Marketing

As we’ve seen over this series, blockchain allows marketing professionals to deal with this age of Big Data in new and productive ways. Whether it’s handling the sheer Volume; processing data at the appropriate Velocity to match customer demands; handling a mind-boggling Variety of data types and files; or proving the Veracity of the data that you base your decisions on, blockchain brings security and transparency to the process.