It’s our birthday!
It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since AdLedger was incorporated! Our first twelve months were incredibly busy, but we’re just getting started. The next twelve are gearing up to be even more productive.
As we begin our second year and prepare for the launch of so many exciting initiatives, we wanted to take a second or two to celebrate our birthday and highlight all we’ve accomplished together so far.
AdLedger turns 1
After some informal meetings in Summer and Fall of 2017 organized by our founders — TEGNA, MadHive, and IBM — we formed our legal entity at the beginning of 2018 with a mission to bring (real) trust and transparency to digital media by leveraging innovative new technologies like blockchains and cryptography.
At our very first meetings, our members voted on initial projects to focus on and established two working groups: GDPR compliance and campaign reconciliation.
Campaign reconciliation working group members delved into the ways that blockchains could shine a light on ad tech’s messy supply chain. At the NAB Show, IBM led a conversation about the outcomes of our work.
Our GDPR working group members focused on using blockchains and cryptography to manage user consent required by the new European regulation. From this working group, ClearGDPR, an open source compliance software contributed to AdLedger by MAD Network, was born.
We launched our new website in May, unveiling our new logo along with a fresh look and feel.
In June, we attended the Cannes Lions Festival where we announced our first board members- MadHive, IBM, Omnicom Media Group, Reprise, Meredith Corp., Salon, and CoinDesk. We knew it was critical to have the key stakeholder groups of the advertising transaction represented in our discussions.
“We co-founded AdLedger because we know that technology is meaningless without collaboration and standardization,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO of MadHive. “We’re huge believers in open source infrastructure and are passionate about staying true to blockchain’s ethos of transparency and democratization.”
“We joined AdLedger because it’s so important to professionalize and standardize new technologies before people dismiss or mistakenly categorize something that has a lot of positive potential,” said Tim Ringel, Global CEO of Reprise, an IPG Mediabrands agency. “If the time is taken to truly understand it, blockchains and cryptography could liberate the industry in exciting new ways.”
In September, we had our first board meeting and our first formal all-hands meeting. We gathered at IPG Mediabrands’ fabulous office space to share updates from all of our working groups and heard from members doing exciting work in our space like IBM. We even enjoyed signature AdLedger cocktails sponsored by the team at Hooch.
In the Fall, we released the Blockchain & Advertising Special Report, the first output from our Blockchain Education Working Group. The 20-page report focused on breaking down the technical concepts of blockchain to a 101-level so that industry stakeholders could have meaningful conversations about what this new technology can do, what it can’t, and how it will impact our space.
In December, we announced that Brave Software has joined us and had another all-hands meeting, this time hosted by our friends at OMG. We had an exciting and productive conversation about where blockchains and cryptography could impact verification, attribution and privacy compliance.
We hit the ground running in 2019, attending conferences and hosting events like last week’s dinner at Mobile World Congress sponsored by IBM.
Over the next quarter, we’re excited to be announcing new additions to our board, launching new working groups, releasing more educational materials, and testing new technical standards to address some of the biggest issues in our industry, such as data privacy and verification.
“We’ve experienced tremendous growth this year in all corners of the organization.” said Christiana Cacciapuoti, AdLedger Executive Director. “Today, AdLedger encompasses dozens of very thoughtfully curated members representing brands, publishers, agencies and forward-thinking technology companies. It’s exciting to watch our member companies lead the charge in bringing about real solutions to systemic industry ills.”
We are so grateful to all of you who have joined us and contributed your energy, time and talent. AdLedger is just getting started, and we’re excited for all the achievements our next birthdays will bring!
Love,
The AdLedger team
