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Blockchain-based cryptocurrency apps aren’t just for day traders and Libertarians any more. In fact, crypto technologies can dovetail nicely with marketing and advertising efforts in a myriad of ways that have the potential to work just as well — or better — than traditional methods.
While blockchain tech isn’t exactly perfected just yet, the truth is that there are a number of companies that are experimenting with various crypto-centric marketing models. Challenges like ad delivery speeds, especially when it comes to the ultra-crucial mobile device market, will need to be overcome to increase viability, and blockchain technology is still not simple enough — or affordable enough — for widespread adoption. Yet despite this, there are a number of ways that advertisers and marketers can sue crypto-based, or crypto-inspired, tech to supercharge their advertising strategies or marketing campaigns.
Marketing Meets Cryptocurrency
Increased Freedom
Blockchain-based technologies can provide marketers with greater opportunities in crowdfunding new products and services. The key technology at play here is the initial coin offering — the ICO — is offering avenues with heightened freedom when it comes to promoting emergent products and services in a multitude of markets.
That’s not all, though. Marketers and advertisers can construct newly-designed reward programs that are more resilient to cheating or gaming the system. The blockchain can, additionally, be leveraged to provide better authentication and vetting for contracts, or be used as a distributed digital asset storage service instead of centralized cloud-based hosting. Not only customer data can be stored this way — prospective and current employee data can be entered into blockchain ledgers, which can also be used as an identity verification tool or a paperless document repository. Such systems reduce costs, which in turn have the potential to increase the freedom to spend resources elsewhere.
As blockchain tech aids in sourcing a higher number of project participants, either through ICOs or otherwise, this provides heightened access to creations and information to marketers. Leveraging diverse skill sets from the participants of a project becomes easier in such environments.
Revenue Sharing
A blockchain-based marketing platform has a serious advantage over traditional ones — its focus on revenue sharing. Systems that can effectively cut out the middleman, or at the very least reduce his or her impact, have taken to providing content publishers direct rewards, or for those participating in a distributed storage system. Meanwhile, the opt-in nature of blockchain tech has led to an upswing in consumers providing data to ad networks with informed consent thanks to incentivization of such activities.
A number of projects in fact pay participants and consumers for explicitly providing key advertising data. The sale of purchase plans, interests, personally identifiable information rewards consumers while also providing marketers the information needed to generate more accurate leads. Additional advantages to such a system include encouraging users to curate content that they are passionate about, providing a motivating factor.
Enhanced Fairness
Blockchain tech, through the use of smart contracts, can provide enhanced fairness and honesty in certain systems. More specifically, a platform or system that has interactivity in the form of voting for sponsored content or an award show can ensure that each vote is counted accurately and that each participant’s vote carries the correct weight. Imagine if a show such as “American Idol” provided avenues for fans to vote for their favorite artists without any of the kind of voting chicanery that has damaged the show’s reputation in the past.
Fairness and honesty can be reinforced in other ways as well. Blockchain ledgers are, by their very nature, highly transparent, which means that ad performance, engagement, and delivery can all be much more accurately verified. Combining crypto ledgers with machine learning has the potential to further supercharge metrics, providing the kinds of accuracy that can track specific timing for ad delivery, user engagement down to the second, and conversion-related performance.
Ad monitoring through a blockchain-based system can even aid in reducing the impact of so-called nuisance issues through metric collection. Precise monitoring will minimize the chance of advertisers serving specific add to users too often, as there’s nothing that frustrates users so much as being bombarded with the same ad over a relatively short period of time.
Better Cost Control
Meanwhile, one of the most noteworthy possible benefits of blockchain-based marketing strategies is that of cost control. Marketing efforts are cost-intensive, with many estimates of $1 invested in a marketing and advertising campaign providing just $0.44 in ROI. Removing middlemen, as some analysts have recommended, could provide CRP increases of as much as up to $5, up from $1; the key here is to make advertising smarter and less cost intensive by using crypto-inspired methods.
There are additional cost control benefits to blockchain, as crypto-centric commerce can aid in minimizing the costs of high transactions. This benefit is universal, as it is just as applicable to local payments as it is to those across geopolitical borders. Automatically enforceable contracts meanwhile create higher levels of security by making it nearly impossible for these agreements to be terminated immaturely or abandoned illegally.
Heightened Security
Finally — and perhaps most importantly — blockchain technologies are incredibly resistant to compromise and tampering. This means that the dangers of spam, hacking attempts, and fraud are minimized by a wide margin. With ad fraud from automated bots topping more than $7 billion in 2016 alone, security is a major issue for the marketing sector that needs to be resolved, and crypto-focused security solutions are positioned advantageously to do so.
In a world where fraud and spam are so apparent — and where successful hacking attempts make major headlines across the world — high levels of safety make specific marketing platforms or procedures a major asset. Advertisers that can offer secure marketing services are going to be in high demand, making blockchain-based security features a major marketable asset.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.