Web3 Is Transforming The Online Advertising World, And These Are The Major Players
The digital age is dominated by centralized tech giants, but the rise of decentralization threatens to challenge that status quo with innovative new solutions.
Few industries face more disruption than online advertising and its multi-billion dollar revenues. Currently, the domain of a handful of “middlemen” players like Google, Facebook and Amazon, the rise of Web3 could result in a spectacular collapse in their fortunes, ushering in a new era in which consumers are in control.
The problem with Web2 advertising is that it’s insidious, invasive and unnerving, with advertising networks like Google amassing petabytes of data on internet users, building up extensive profiles that reveal a scary amount of details about each individual. It’s a fierce battleground too, resulting in users being bombarded with ads on every site they visit – and it’s very often the same ads, thanks to the algorithmic targeting methods employed by the major ad networks.
Users have responded by trying to shun ads entirely, as evidenced by the huge popularity of ad blockers, which mean advertisers are struggling to target consumers as efficiently as before. Brands are losing money due to less effective marketing campaigns, while the “internet giants” continue to collect billions in revenue.
Who’s Leading In Web3 Ads?
But beyond the horizon, a new reality is emerging. Web3 is a new kind of internet built on the foundations of decentralization, driven by community-based interactions over peer-to-peer networks. It promotes greater transparency, more control for internet users and the end of censorship, and it will lead to healthier relationships between brands and their customers.
Marketers are adapting to this transformation, rethinking how they go about targeting consumers, and a new breed of advertising networks is quickly springing up.
Chief among them is AdEx, a decentralized, programmatic ad platform that aims to help brands connect with Web3 users. It was founded in 2017 as a traditional advertising network that served advertisers and publishers alike but has transformed itself into a demand-side platform that ensures consumers are rewarded for their attention.
AdEx does this through its novel “zero-knowledge” ad-targeting engine, which uses a technology known as zero-knowledge proofs to eliminate the need for vast, centralized databases packed with information on people’s browsing histories and habits. By using ZK-targeting, AdEx taps into data that’s stored directly (and only) on users’ devices, performing the ad-matching process directly on their smartphones, PCs, and tablets, meaning no third-party data collection.
Through this mechanism, AdEx ensures users have greater control over the types of ads they want to see. Users can specify what kinds of ads and brands they want to be exposed to, and those they don’t want to engage with, and in return for providing their attention to those select advertisers, they can earn cryptocurrency rewards. As they accumulate ADX tokens for viewing ads, they can even stake them to multiply those earnings.
AdEx is not the only game in town, though. A rival ad network, called Idena, pioneers the proof-of-person consensus mechanism, where ads are approved and monitored by its community of users.
The idea is that by involving users in the ad assessment and monitoring process, they will feel more enfranchised and willing to participate. Idena’s blockchain makes sure that there’s no way for advertisers to collect and store user’s browsing histories, and the fact their ads must be approved by the community forces them to up their game and come up with higher-quality ads.
Like AdEx, users have more control. With Idena, no one is forced to view any ads. Instead, they’re incentivized to voluntarily view and click on ads, earning digital tokens. As users view and interact with ads, advertisers are incentivized to burn tokens to keep their ads visible.
This process leads to a shortage of coins, stimulating demand in the market where users can freely sell their rewards back to advertisers.
Offering an even more targeted audience is Coinzilla, a crypto-focused marketing agency that operates an extensive decentralized advertising network. It operates a similar, blockchain-based rewards model that encourages users to engage with its ads, and it boasts strong connections with the Web3 media landscape, enabling advertisers to target thousands of crypto enthusiasts on some of the top Web3-focused websites. By targeting a more niche audience, Coinzilla offers advertisers the chance to find more relevant ad placements without needing to farm their audiences for data.
Then there’s Adshares, which has created a decentralized marketplace for advertisers to bid on ad spaces and employ its programmatic advertising techniques that match them to the most appropriate audience. Adshares is built on the Enterprise Service Chain that exists purely to connect publishers with advertisers and make direct deals in a peer-to-peer way, without intermediaries. Its transparent, real-time bidding system ensures that advertisers will always buy their ad placements at the best possible rates, with publishers getting optimal revenue. It also supports micropayments, giving advertisers and publishers more flexibility over the kinds of deals they make, and provides extensive analytics on ad performance, so advertisers can hone their ad campaigns.
Decentralized Ads Are The Future
These Web3 advertising leaders promise some major advantages over traditional ad networks, with the transparency of blockchain helping to eradicate the plague of ad fraud, providing advertisers with better outcomes for less money. Blockchians can also help to enable smarter ad targeting, and users will appreciate the ability to finally stave off the bombardment of ads that has become so commonplace in Web2. They’ll still see ads of course, but the quality of those ads will be dramatically improved.
Decentralization is causing a dramatic shift in the digital marketing world, and online advertising is set to be transformed. Brands should embrace this shift in order to capitalize on this innovative opportunity, which will result in better outcomes from their ad spending, giving them the visibility and engagement they need to organically grow their market presence.
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About The Author
Gregory, a digital nomad hailing from Poland, is not only a financial analyst but also a valuable contributor to various online magazines. With a wealth of experience in the financial industry, his insights and expertise have earned him recognition in numerous publications. Utilising his spare time effectively, Gregory is currently dedicated to writing a book about cryptocurrency and blockchain.
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Gregory, a digital nomad hailing from Poland, is not only a financial analyst but also a valuable contributor to various online magazines. With a wealth of experience in the financial industry, his insights and expertise have earned him recognition in numerous publications. Utilising his spare time effectively, Gregory is currently dedicated to writing a book about cryptocurrency and blockchain.
