The cost of ad fraud for this year alone is $19 billion, according to Juniper Research. That amounts to $51 million lost each day of the year. And things are expected to get worse, hitting yearly loss of $44 billion in four years. Blockchain may be one key to combatting the problem of skewed market data that results from spam traffic.
A company called NOIZ serves as an AI+blockchain ad exchange network to offer transparent data to all parties, ensuring optimized user experience. The company’s Chief Strategy Officer, David Kang told me, “It’s a good example of how blockchain can be helpful in the real world sense,” he said.
A combination of AI and chatbots can spot behavior that is inconsistent with how real people respond to ads, or conversational cues to weed out the fake accounts. Kang observed that it works very well on its own. But: “I imagine with a reward system on top, it will only be better,” he said.
The reward would be based on a NOIZ token, released to the customers for specific behavior like viewing an ad or expressing particular interest in certain types of ads to be served. In addition to identifying fraudulent accounts, NOIZ enables consumers to control their own data and the types of ads they wish to be served
How rewards are built into the blockchain
- Should an individual respond to an ad for a particular brand, and provide some information about habits and preferences, that person can be rewarded with a NOIZ token. Additional tokens can be earned for things like providing an email address or phone number the brand can use for direct contact. The agreement is set up in a smart contract between the individual and the brand that allows it to store the provided information but blocks third party access to it.
- Once the information is stored and secured on the NOIZchain, the other NOIZ community members will be able to see the number of NOIZ tokens that the brand Wallet ID associated sent to Wallet ID of the individual. The community will not see your name or the information that was shared in this transaction
- Should someone want access to the information that was shared, they will have to ask the individual for permission. That individual can set the terms others need to follow in order to see the detailed data
- The individual can exchange the tokens earned for a discount on the items sold by the participating brand. The tokens sent to the brand store are then forwarded to a social impact organization, so that one can support a good cause while shopping with a discount
- Individuals can also opt to retain their tokens, exchange them or make donations to a charity of their choice.
- Individuals could also opt into allowing additional brands to advertise to them, indicating interests so that they are not served irrelevant ads. The system also can get to learn more about the individual’s tastes when they up-vote or down-vote specific ads and brands
But it’s not just about the ads themselves but improving the quality of the data available to advertiser. This system opens a whole new level of data beyond clicks, impressions and downloads.
“NOIZ is going to harness conversation data – not just the number but the contacts behind numbers, which is a much higher quality kind of data,” Kang said. It means that you not only have a head count for a group but have data on what the group is talking about, which gives the data much more meaningful context
All that data and the extent to which their personal information is shared will be kept under consumer control. Going forward, NOIZchain will be using NEM Catapult to build up its permission-based blockchain network. It will then store the data collected from ad interactions along with consumers personally identifiable information, though only general information like account numbers, would be publicly visible. Consumers who wish to sell their data can do so there for tokens.
