The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) announced “the successful completion of a twelve-month cross-industry pilot programme to evaluate the feasibility and potential benefits of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to increase trust and transparency in digital advertising” Participants included more than 15 ad technology providers and a number of major brands.
“Our pilot showed promising opportunities for a DLT platform, including the potential to achieve a ‘Shared Truth’ where the same data is recognized as valid and accurate across the supply chain,” said Jules Kendrick, Managing Director UK & Europ for TAG. “We look forward to expanding our consultative efforts to help ensure that every participant in the supply chain can be sure that ‘what you see is what I see.'”
Why it matters
If DLT can identify a legitimate chain of custody for advertising, it can also be used to identify instances of infringement. Blockchain has also been implemented as an anti-piracy countermeasure, tied with content distributed over the Internet.
Piracy Monitor identifies advertising fraud as one of the four major types of piracy; the other three being theft of content, theft of services and the “theft of you” (such as the theft and weaponization of personally-identifiable information). Many millions of ad dollars are stolen by pirates that fraudulently place legitimate branded advertising on infringing Web sites.
