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Comcast is Developing a Blockchain Video Advertising Platform

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:57 PM
Josiah Wilmoth
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:57 PM

The rise of video streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu has forced video providers to rethink the traditional advertising model. Now, Comcast Cable is turning to blockchain technology to facilitate a new approach to premium video advertising.

Comcast Announces Blockchain Insights Platform

Comcast’s Advanced Advertising Group plans to use its “Blockchain Insights Platform” to make premium video advertising more efficient. Using the platform, programmers and advertisers will be able to use consumer data to create and execute precise, targeted advertising campaigns to streaming customers. Comcast anticipates this will increase current revenue streams and open up new ones for blockchain participants.

As Comcast Cable President of Advertising Marcient Jenckes said in a statement :

Television advertising is an efficient and effective way for marketers and their agencies to reach a large audience, yet today the way advertisers use insights to plan, buy and deliver advertising is limited. This new technological approach would make data-driven video advertising more efficient and consumer data more secure. We’ll work with the participants in this initiative to improve ad planning, addressable targeting, execution and measurement, to ultimately create even more value for the television advertising industry.

Such data-driven advertising would raise consumer privacy questions if undertaken with a traditional technological approach, but Comcast notes that the inherent security of blockchain technology allows participants to “ask questions of” one another’s marketing data without being able to access it. Consequently, blockchain participants retain sole control of consumer data and privacy settings on their own systems.

Comcast plans to leverage its existing advertising relationships with Disney, NBCUniversal, Channel 4 (UK), Cox Communications, and others to develop and implement this technology. These partnerships, along with Comcast’s tremendous market share, could lead to blockchain-based advertising becoming standard practice in the video streaming industry.

Other Corporate Blockchain Investments

Despite Morgan Stanley’s recent claim that blockchain technology remains in a “proof of concept” stage, corporations are increasingly turning to blockchain technology to increase efficiency and security. Telecommunications behemoth AT&T recently acquired a patent to build a Bitcoin-powered “decentralized and distributed home subscriber server” device. Walmart submitted a patent application for a blockchain-based system that would track delivery drone shipments, as well as a blockchain-based platform trial designed to manage food safety.

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