The advertising industry is fighting a losing battle with consumers, but no one is winning.

Print advertising has been in decline for years, and TV is following suit; US TV ad spend is now less than a third of the total market share, and is projected to continue its slide. Consumers are cutting the cable cord in record numbers and adopting other viewing platforms, which is also contributing to the shifting advertiser story.

A recent Kantar Media study confirms that heavy internet users (which is likely almost everyone reading this) prefer ads that are more tailored to them and don’t like the “spray and pray” approach to online advertising. It’s no surprise, then, that people are increasingly using ad blocking browser extensions, and a number of browsers now feature ad blocking in their list of default settings. Consumers are frustrated and dissatisfied with the sheer amount of “repetitive, intrusive and irrelevant ads.”

This isn’t new: our desire to avoid ads unless they are entertaining or of direct value has been around for years. Before there were ad blockers, VCRs and then DVRs allowed us to record shows so that we could fast-forward past the commercial breaks. Marketing has become something consumers are suspicious of — particularly most online advertising that appears on their pages and in their feeds — and even more so after the recent revelations about political advertising. Brands want solid relationships with interested consumers who have dollars to spend, but the current deployment methodology of modern online advertising runs counter to that. In the race for impressions, consumers are reminded on a regular basis that advertisers have reduced them to sweeping demographic and psychographic categories. Best intentions for effective audience targeting aside, brands are largely unsuccessful in reaching people in a way that engenders trust.

The rise of sponsorship advertising, product placement and influencer marketing where brands partner with stars and the internet famous is one way that marketers have attempted to bridge the gap. While this is lucrative for influencers, it largely fails consumers; even with celebrities, brands struggle to connect at scale and end up feeling disingenuous. As a consumer, it’s frustrating that the current system of user-targeted advertising is still so lopsided, where consumers give up a wealth of identity data by participating in data-powered apps and websites, only to be rewarded with annoying, irrelevant or barely-relevant ads that follow us ad nauseam in search of a click. It’s a terrible deal for both the consumer and the brand.

In the new world order under GDPR, the way marketers use data is going to change significantly. At the same time, our ability to target at a very granular level is exponentially improving. There’s an opportunity to shift the marketing value proposition when you are able to marry this very granular audience data with clear direction from consumers on what messaging they want, and when. With the coming data and digital revolution, brands will increasingly reach us as consumers in our exact moments of intent in ways that feel supportive and informative rather than predatory. Our attachment to mobile devices will allow savvy brands willing to play in a consumer-focused, virtuous data environment to target us responsibly and with our permission. As the CMO for Phunware, where we see a very broad and deep data set from the 1 billion devices actively using our installed software monthly, I’m excited by how platforms like our knowledge graph will be responsible for driving and powering this new relationship between brands and consumers. For almost 10 years our company has enabled brands to engage, empower, serve and delight consumers via mobile, and taking the lead in this transformational shift is the natural next step for us.

Online marketing teams have dreamt of truly personalized advertising for years, yet have been largely unable to deliver. These days, CMOs, CDOs and their teams are tasked with delivering great ROI on every marketing dollar spent, yet rampant online advertising fraud is the enemy of an effective and efficient use of shrinking budgets and defeats attempts at long tail targeting. Juniper Research estimates that fraud will cost digital advertisers $52M per day this year, and Procter & Gamble has reported that between 20–30% of advertising budgets are wasted in the supply chain due to lack of transparency. Marketers are looking for solutions, and the blockchain is the answer. Contract-based blockchain solutions are beginning to make waves as a new insistence on transparency has led to development of proof-of-view (PoV) structures that use an immutable ledger to invalidate fraudulent, “farmed”, dubiously visible and otherwise wasted views and clicks at scale.

Of course, this still leaves us with the problem of the consumer actively resisting advertising, and solving this problem won’t have a single, easy solution. Systemic adherence to a new standard of transparency will be the most effective way to rebuild trust. Blockchain can provide transparency around verifying views and clicks that will benefit both brands and consumers. Brands will know they are speaking to exactly the audience they want to and consumers will understand when and why their data was accessed and targeted by a brand. This is, with little exaggeration, a paradigm shift for the advertising industry.

Pairing this shift with a blockchain-based rewards program, where consumers can be rewarded for brand loyalty behavior and sharing their information, will give brands the opportunity to develop a trustworthy and value-based relationship with consumers in exchange for better performing campaigns, leading to better overall brand perception. They will also become part of, rather than a disruption of, the online experience. After all, paid content succeeds when it fits naturally with the social, editorial and/or entertainment content being consumed.

Phunware has recently launched PhunCoin, a cryptocurrency that will enable brands to reward consumer activity in a meaningful way. Pairing PhunCoin with our data capabilities will give us an opportunity to lead in establishing this new paradigm and take it to the next level. When consumers are empowered by ownership of their personal data, and allowed to decide what, when and how much to share, brands are also empowered to build trusted and stronger relationships with consumers, so they can target and personalize marketing content in ways valuable to all.

As a consumer, imagine a world where you are delivered a mobile ad that is meaningful and relevant, through which a brand is able to directly and immediately reward you in PhunCoin. Imagine that this reward is for activity that is related to something you’ve indicated an interest in or a need for. That’s delivering value that almost all of us would welcome, particularly when it is delivered with transparency.

As marketers, most of us spend a lot of cycles trying to understand how to best attract, engage, entice, monetize and delight consumers, and a lot of it feels like a shot in the dark. Think of how much value this sort of relationship with consumers — at scale — will deliver to your business. Consumers who see evidence that a brand actually cares about their opinions are consumers who tend to be loyal, and loyal consumers are a brand’s best evangelists. This is the revolution we plan on powering with the PhunCoin ecosystem.

Stay tuned for more in-depth information on what Phunware is doing with PhunCoin and our knowledge graph to empower consumers and enable brands.