Why the Adtech industry needs another revolution?

Currently, the Adtech industry is thriving on audience attention. With mechanisms such as Real Time Bidding (RTB), advertisers can target audiences relevant to them across the internet to show them ads based on their data and preferences. The publishers, who show these ads on their websites, are paid for their efforts of creating engaging content and attracting audience. Users are shown only ads relevant to them, based on factors such as their age and gender, and their preferences inferred from their browsing history. Such ads enable them to make well-informed buying decisions. Win-win situation for everyone? Far from it.

Individual data from publishers is aggregated by Data Management Platforms (DMPs), who communicate with with Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), Ad exchanges, trading desks, Supply Side Platforms (SSPs), and a host of other intermediaries before an ad impression is finally served. However, DMPs lack comprehensive data coverage and have inadequate mechanisms for establishing data accuracy. As much as 26% of ad impressions served through RTB don’t have any user data linked to them. Thus, though RTB solutions are capable of presenting highly selective ad impressions, their effectiveness is marred by the lack of accurate user data. While at the same time, there is a vast amount of user data lying with the publishers which isn’t being used by DMPs. The publishers suffer because they are unable to monetise their data efficiently. On the other hand, advertisers have ROIs much lower than the optimum level

In this muddle of selling ad impressions, a few giants have created a comfortable space for themselves where they function smoothly and with great efficiency— Facebook & Google. With their billions of users, they have a mammoth amount of user data, which they monetise in a duopoly-like arrangement in their sophisticated advertising powerhouses. Owing to this, Facebook and Google gross nearly 50% of the total profits of the global $200b dollar ad spends, and enjoy nearly 99% of the industry’s annual growth. It is of no surprise that a significant percentage of publishers — 40%, feel that their digital advertising revenues are shrinking.

A plausible solution to solving this problem could be designing a common platform to organise all the publishers where they can pool their data, and set up transparency mechanisms for data exchange between different stakeholders on the platform. This platform should also be augmented by data authentication tools to ensure the inclusion of only genuine data points. We, an India-based group of geeks, we are working on a blockchain-based solution to this problem. We were earlier engaged in building a video-based social network in India, and had faced problems working with Google Display Networks. We then realised the scale of this problem and started working on a blueprint for a blockchain-based data aggregation platform. This data platform — Zohem, will be augmented by a data exchange protocol encompassing rewards for data contribution and verification of data points. We believe that Zohem will bring about the much needed transparency in the Adtech ecosystem and ensure that publishers are compensated optimally for their data contributions, and advertisers get accurate data for better targeting, enabling an increase in their ROIs as well. Zohem is the beginning of a decentralised AdTech ecosystem, and we are quite optimistic about it. For comments and queries, write to us at hello@zohem.com