Unilever’s chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, in his speech at Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Summit, at Palm Desert, California, made their stance on lack of transparency in digital ad supply chain. As it has now become a customer issue and “…they do care about not seeing the same ad 100 times a day.” Customers are concerned about their “data being misused and stolen.”

To tackle many such issues of ad transparency, Weed has continued to work with IBM to develop a blockchain in order to deter fraud. This pilot program with the help of blockchain technology will track the digital ad buying ecosystem and how it is delivered.

The association of IBM and Unilever came about as IBM’s executive partner, Babs Rangaiah, saw the potential solution of Unilever’s digital ad discrepancies with the help of blockchain technology.

Blockchain As A Solution For Ad Management

With the increase in more parties, ad buying process has become a process with much discrepancies which earlier was a straightforward process. It could be solved through blockchain technology. Rangaiah said, “You can have 10 to 20 people at an agency doing nothing but trying to solve these issues,” he added. “It’s a total waste of time and resources. With blockchain, at its most basic level, it will solve for that.”

Unilever itself having a multi-billion dollar marketing budget targeted the social media giants. It warned Facebook, Google and other digital platforms to clear up their act. Unilever forged transparency by threatening to pull back billions of its money spent on advertising.

Keith Weed, in his speech, talked about the cultural impact and said, “So, 2018 is the year when social media must win trust back.”  Weed asserted, “Across the world, dramatic shifts are taking place in people’s trust, particularly in media. We are seeing a critical separation of how people trust social media and more ‘traditional’ media. In the US only less than a third of people now trust social media (30%), whilst almost two-thirds trust traditional media (58%).”

A Step Towards A More Efficient Future

The rise in objectionable content running on the digital platforms is continuously abrading reliance among consumers and is impacting the society in a not so good manner. In such conditions, Unilever took a strong stance and displayed its commitment to trusted platforms and content which will protect children and do not divide the society. Unilever, also, trying to combat the gender stereotype in advertising. Thus platforms not meeting these standards will not be invested in by Unilever.

YouTube’s chief executive officer, Susan Wojcicki,  called Unilever’s effort to clear up digital platforms, as “the right thing to do.”

Blockchain technology gained attention through much-hiked cryptocurrency is now going to help to reduce deceptive and fake publishers, and buyers are increasing the efficiency on both technical and social level.Thereby increasing trustworthy digital advertising supply chains.