The media buying process for traditional media assets such as Radio, Television, Out of Home and Print is an outdated practice. There are a number of middlemen, delayed and imprecise tracking, large fees, and lots of emails and excel sheets. Much of this industry is controlled by a few giants. This includes WPP, Omnicon, Publicis, Interpublic Group, and Dentsu to name a few.
What is AdBit?
In order to solve the problem of centralization and inefficiency in the media market, AdBit is launching a blockchain solution for media buying. As the founder puts it, “media planning and buying should be autonomous.” They automate many outdated practices and help buyers and sellers transact on a trustless exchange.
Industry Problems
Many of the media industry problems stem from administrative inefficiency, but can be lumped into four categories: workflow management, reconciliation, transparency, and monitoring.
Workflow management deals with the flaws that come from running this business off of emails and spreadsheets, rather than having a simple transaction platform. In turn, reconciliation of accounts and ad performance is time consuming and adds a major expense. There is no transparency between buyers, sellers, and middlemen about pricing. Furthermore, monitoring of ad performance is done via surveys and samples rather than digital analytics.
Ciinch
AdBit is utilizing some of the proceeds of their token sale to acquire an existing platform called Ciinch. Ciinch is built for ad agencies to see their current media accounts and proposals. It automates much of the workflow in the industry and currently has done over $200 million in ad buys since 2016.
The automation features of this platform help AdBit remove many of the workflow problems from the system. This acquisition will help the blockchain platform immediately have media buyers and a workflow management solution in place.
AdBit Media Exchange
One major flaw in the media industry is that up to 30% of ad inventory can go wasted each year due to inefficiencies in placement. With the AdBit Media Exchange, media buyers and media owners will be able to communicate directly, improving the sales process and boosting efficiency. Additionally, the Media Exchange will come with powerful data collection tools that offer real-time metrics for ad performance. This helps tackle the transparency and monitoring of media buying.
Media Match
Utilizing proprietary software, they have built a feature called Media Match, which extracts key information from media proposals and stores them in Ciinch. This will reduce the number of errors when coding between proposal files and better tracking of ad budgets and ad spend with media owners. Media Match will solve many of the problems from reconciliation between different accounts and streamline the process for users.
Media Monitor
Media Monitor is one of the most interesting components of the project. It utilizes data analysis and social media monitoring to track and price the value of non-digital media. For instance, if a TV show has a certain following on social media a 30 second ad for that show should be worth a specific price.
This helps bridge the gap between traditional and digital ad media and enables companies to better negotiate with media owners. Additionally, since many companies do not have the requisite connections or ad spend to typically work with ad agencies, this can help promote more marketing flexibility for businesses thinking about trying traditional media.
AdBit has built an interesting product to decentralize and optimize the traditional media buying industry. Their solution helps connect buyers and sellers, streamline the system, boost transparency, and offer data analytics. With their acquisition of CIINCH and proposed functionality they should be able to grow a strong blockchain media network within the next year. Their initial offering is in August 2018 and the client is scheduled to launch in October 2018.
