The IAB Tech Lab launched a blockchain working group on Monday to explore how the digital ledger technology can benefit the advertising industry. Read the blog post.
Richard Bush, chief product and tech officer at NYIAX, and Michael Palmer, mPlatform’s global director of product, co-chair the group – which is looking for members to join seven current participants from GroupM, Kochava, MetaX and NYIAX. See the full list.
While the working group eventually hopes to build standards around blockchain’s use in fraud, measurement, billing, financial transactions and asset management, among other areas, that’s a heady list and members will first need to prioritize resources, Bush said.
“We’re definitely not doing all of these things all at once,” he said. “We’re canvassing for membership to get involved to help set the priorities. There are a lot of areas that talk about where blockchain can help with.”
The working group also wants to figure out the extent to which the ad industry is familiar with blockchain, and to educate where needed. Bush pointed out that blockchain is a well-defined technology. “We want to educate based on the technical definitions as we bring it into advertising,” Bush said. “We want to make sure we’re all talking the same language.”
He also says educating will help the working group prioritize.
So, in the next three months, look for the working group to start building its membership roster and setting priorities so it can focus on which areas of advertising blockchain can actually help.
And the working group isn’t just looking for blockchain experts. Bush said he hopes to recruit members who understand problems in the world of ad tech, like the issues facing measurement and fraud.
“As we use blockchain to solve those problems, we have to understand the use cases,” he said. “We’re canvassing from both worlds, and we want participation from a bunch of companies.”
Bush himself is curious whether ad industry professionals even care how blockchain works, or if they’re mostly just interested in the possible results.
And from a technical perspective, he’s also interested in seeing if blockchain’s speed and scale issues can be worked out.
