Tegna’s over-the-top advertising unit Premion is using a new suite of blockchain-based technology from MadHive to prevent fraud, target campaign and verify ad delivery.
MadHive uses cryptography to address ad fraud that it estimates will be about $19 billion in 2019, and provide the transparency that advertisers are demanding. The open source system clears the way for buyers and sellers to transact programmatically at scale.
“Publishers, brands and agencies alike have been living in the Advertising 1.0 ecosystem – what we call the ‘Guess Economy’ – dealing with issues around brand safety, transparency and fraud,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO at Madhive. “But that doesn’t have to be the case. Our technology is ushering in a new era – paving the way for Advertising 2.0 and the ‘Evidence Economy,’ where results are trusted because they are mathematically and scientifically proven.”
The new system has been adopted by Premion, which is offering better ad targeting and an indelible accounting for buy-side transactions.
“Advertisers expect the highest level of accountability and verifiable transparency is a prerequisite for doing business today,” said Jim Wilson, president of Premion at Tegna. “The MadHive solution ensures advertisers are getting what they pay for, while providing greater trust and accuracy in all phases of audience targeting, media buying, campaign management and reporting.”
MadHive’s product suite includes tools for media planning and buying, data management and matching, campaign and yield optimization and reporting. Paired with premium inventory acquisition from partners like FreeWheel, the company said it can provide greater campaign efficiencies and performance.
Elements of MadHive ad suite include:
- Audience Device Graph: The MadHive Device Graph connects advertisers and publishers to audiences across all devices, ensuring each interaction is driven by relevant audience-specific data.
- Precision Targeting: The MadHive tech stack leverages audience-specific data to power dynamic creative optimization and message targeting strategies to generate personalized creative units based on real-time information.
- Audience Verification: MadHive employs cutting-edge technologies like cryptography and blockchain to guarantee audiences and video impressions across desktop, mobile, ConnectedTV, and OTT.
- Cross-Device Attribution: MadHive’s proprietary AI (“Roger”) improves cross-device analytics by matching impressions, engagements and conversions to consumers.
MadHive has found ways to detect several different forms of fraud that could present problems in the over-the-top ecosystem. There is misrepresentation, in which a middleman claims ads are being show on devices in the U.S., but are actually show in other countries, where prices are lower. There is also device based fraud, which cause by a bot living in a device that is able to consumer more ads than a human viewer, as many as 50 per minute. Finally there is app-based fraud, in which apps show high levels of activity around the clock.
“What we have is a system of authenticating reality,” Helfgott said. “We use cryptography at all the edges, so whether it’s at the supply side or the buy side, the source information is uneditable, so whether it’s the price of the auction or what the parameters should be, all those types of things are digitally signed so when you use the standard programmatic buying systems, everything is transparent and there’s no intermediary that can change the truth around,”
