Nestlé, McDonald’s complete TAG advertising DLT tests – Ledger Insights

For the last year, Nestlé, McDonald’s, and Johnson & Johnson, as well as other major brands and agencies have been taking part in an advertising DLT pilot. Yesterday, the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced the completion of the UK cross-industry program.

Some of the key findings include identifying that 34% of the ads served should not be charged for. Plus research has shown that 59% of industry experts thing campaign reporting and reconciliation needs to be automated.

The pilot was launched in July last year by the U.K.-based Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS), which will complete its merger with TAG this month. TAG itself is a cross-industry accountability program, established to increase transparency and trust in the digital advertising industry while encouraging innovation. It’s four core areas include combating malware, eliminating fraudulent traffic, fighting internet piracy, and promoting transparency. 

The
results of the pilot showed DLT could help supply chain transparency
and optimization, and operational efficiencies. DLT can harmonize the
formats
of the recorded
data and automate data access securely, as the ledger data
is only accessible on
a permissioned basis through
the encryption keys which the data provider controls. TAG research
shows programmatic teams spend up
to 60%
of their time preparing and
reconciling
data, so DLT automated business processes can significantly increase
operational efficiency. 

A
major benefit of DLT is the ability to filter whether impressions are
real or not. For
impressions reconciled with the DLT platform, it was found that 34%
either didn’t start to render (were non-qualified) or non-viewable.

Additional
brand participants in the pilot included Telefonica/O2, Virgin Media
amongst others. Several agencies were represented including  GroupM,
Havas, IPG, Mindshare, OMD, and Zenith
as well as 15 adtech providers and publishers.

London
tech company FIDUCIA was the blockchain partner for the project. It
used a permissioned version of Ethereum combined with proprietary
technology. In terms of scale, the pilot analyzed £1.4 million
impressions across 127 campaigns.

Earlier
this year
,
blockchain advertising consortium Adledger and blockchain video ad
firm MadHive published their ‘State of AdTech Study’ report
discussing technology in the advertising industry. The report found
83% of the respondents considered blockchain could increase
transparency and efficiency in the industry, and 92% of them
advocated for industry-wide standardization.

If
successful, TAG’s program could offer precisely this. CEO Mike
Zaneis says
“TAG helps create a collaborative environment for companies to
share new ideas, exchange information” and points to DLT’s
ability to create a new set of common standards through this
cooperation.