In brief

  • Food delivery giant Foodpanda has launched the first blockchain-powered digital out-of-home (OOH) billboard campaign.
  • It's teamed up with blockchain solutions provider Aqilliz and adtech firm Moving Walls.
  • The project uses blockchain to provide an immutable record of when and where ads were placed.

Food delivery giant Foodpanda has launched an ad campaign with adtech firm Moving Walls; nothing unusual in that. But this one claims to be the first blockchain-powered digital out-of-home (OOH) campaign, using the technology to tackle a longstanding issue in the industry: ad fraud.

The campaign will encompass 2,750 digital displays operated by three different media owners in Singapore, including Target Media screens in lifts and lobbies, Focus Media’s network of office lobby screens and Moove Media’s in-taxi entertainment screens. 

Blockchain solutions provider Aqilliz will use the technology to verify the performance of Moving Walls’ and Foodpanda’s digital out-of-home (OOH) campaign “in near real-time,” proving that the ads have been placed when and where they should have been.

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Proving ads have been seen

Online ad fraud has long been an issue for advertisers—and a reason to spend on lavish out-of-home campaigns. But, as Moving Walls founder and group CEO Srikanth Ramachandran pointed out, digital out-of-home itself lacks an independent means of verifying whether ads have been delivered or not. “There are more fundamental issues of fragmentation and a lack of transparency that need to be fixed,” Ramachandran said.

Gowthaman Ragothaman, the chief executive at Aqilliz, explained that at present, brands that buy OOH campaigns “are provided with two separate performance reports: one from the DOOH screen aggregator laying out when slots aired in the screens, and one from the verification partner, verifying which ads were delivered.” According to him, “this is a lot of information for a brand to take in.”

With blockchain, the advertiser can independently verify whether its OOH ads have been placed accurately, how often they've been played and at what times of day. "We are saying these two sources can be reconciled into a single source of truth, so actual impressions are recorded from a campaign point of view, and nothing is lost in translation," said Ragothaman.

As Decrypt reported earlier, it turns out that not all crypto advertisements are good for your health, after Google lifted its ban on crypto ads...

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