SEOUL, South Korea, March 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week, Asia-Pacific Blockchain Association (APBA) organized a two-day blockchain conference in Seoul attracting much attention among blockchain enthusiasts, including government and institutional speakers, scholars, investors, and blockchain project teams from all over the world. The conference highlighted the newest ideas and developments of blockchain technology and applications. Brian Xie, Co-Chairman of AdRealm, was invited to speak on blockchain's application to digital advertising, delivering a keynote speech "Auroville of Digital Advertising".
In his keynote, Brian drew the connection between an ideal digital advertising ecosystem to the modern utopian community "Auroville (City of Dawn)" which was established in 1968 in southern India. He stated that Auroville is perhaps the best real-life case of blockchain concept being implemented. Similar to Bitcoin, Auroville has its own decentralized structure, consensus mechanism, and its own economic "currency" – the "Aurocard." In this city, people live as "citizens of the world" where there is no money, politics or religion and everyone would follows one single authority – the supreme Truth. Since its founding, Auroville has already been through 50 years of practice, far exceeding blockchain's age on the planet. This leads some to the question: can an "Auroville of Digital Advertising" be built?
Through analyzing a set of data, it can be understood that the digital advertising market has reached a large and ever-growing size: it is estimated to reach 237 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 and is expected to reach 348 billion U.S. dollars after four years. However, the two giants, Facebook and Google, accounting for about 60% of the total, have monopolized the huge market. In addition, on the digital advertising value chain, a large number of participants and middlemen have emerged, these are advertisers, ad networks, service vendors, data tracking, advertising optimization, anti-fraud, publishers and so on. However, since the shift from the PC age to the mobile Internet era, the industry's ills have become increasingly serious: fraud is rampant, lack of transparency, siloed and stagnant data, data leaks and abused usage. These challenges not only greatly increase the cost for advertisers but also gradually shrinks publisher revenues. More importantly, they severely impede the overall efficiency of the digital advertising process.
The phenomenon of a market duopoly by Facebook and Google raises the question of why there isn't a third player dominating the market. Brian explained the importance of "trust" and reputation in the digital advertising industry, in which Facebook and Google have built throughout the years with their brands. Having a large user base has allowed them to provide very accurate advertising for very specific demographic conditions, where no other company has yet been able to match. At the current rate of growth, the duopoly is expected to take over 95% digital advertising market share by 2025. However, despite the efforts made by Facebook and Google over the years to improve their solution, they have not been able to rid of the challenges that plague the fundamental value chain.
Brian quoted Yuval Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, "In order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order," referring to the emergence of blockchain and its ability to reconstruct the entire industry through disruptive innovation. AdRealm, powered by blockchain, aims to achieve the vision of reconstructing global digital advertising ecosystem.
Following and building on the fundamentals of blockchain technology, AdRealm tackles the primary pain point of digital advertising – the lack of trust. By structuring digital advertising transactions on the blockchain, AdRealm provides an environment where "code is trust." Through open-source code and asymmetrical cryptography, developers on AdRealm can build a trusted platform for their own data, ensuring advertising effectiveness and data security. By giving access of data to select services on the chain, data can be easily distributed to leverage big data analytics and AI to improve advertising accuracy. This drastically reduces the number of middlemen involved and amount of diluted earnings from irrelevant services, giving back to advertisers and publishers. Another key feature on AdRealm is the function of crowdsourcing model through "micro-services" on the chain. By "unpacking" traditionally default and black box services, vendors will register their service category on the chain and will be allocated smart contracts from advertisers and publishers that fit the service scope.
Brian outlined the timeline for AdRealm's development where in the first phase, AdRealm aims to become the largest digital advertising league and the third largest advertising platform. In phase two, AdRealm's goal is to co-exist with the large players and gradually introduce them onto the ecosystem, and in the final phase, AdRealm will also migrate traditional media onto the digital ecosystem and onto blockchain ecosystem.
Finally, Brian shared his own entrepreneurial journey. As a serial entrepreneur, Brian has built three companies with great success: Holaverse has amassed 390 million users under nine months, setting a new record for Chinese mobile internet companies in overseas markets. Avid.ly, a mobile game publishing company, also gained success under 15 months to become China's largest casino and casual mobile game publisher for overseas markets. UPLTV, established in April 2017, focuses on global mobile game advertising monetization, providing both intelligent and customized solutions to raise monetization efficiency, outpacing similar platform performance by an additional 20% and more. During his entrepreneurial experience, Brian and his team have felt the many challenges presented by the market dominated by large players; due to their sheer size, alternative solutions were not possible. He wishes to open a new ecosystem that is powered by blockchain, led by his own team, products and users on UPLTV, striving for the common goal of a fair, efficient, and trusted "Auroville of Digital Advertising".
AdRealm -- Building Global Digital Advertising Ecosystem Based on Blockchain Technology
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