Getting unstuck from the GooBook

GooBook and other apex predators

The digital advertising industry needs neither Goliaths nor Davys, just a better system.

Digital ad sales will reach upwards of $230 billion by the end of 2018. That’s great news for Google and Facebook — let’s call them GooBook — since they’ll see around 60% of those fiat greenbacks. GooBook will also consume roughly 85% of all new market share.

Let’s be clear. We’re not trashing either of these companies. We use their products, and we’d be miserable hypocrites to speak ill of the industry giants who’ve inspired many, and who bring incalculable value to the lives of innumerable peoples and organizations.

“GooBook has the digital advertising market on a rather short leash, and short leashes inhibit freedom of movement. If you don’t believe us, ask a dog.”

The problem is that they’ve put the digital advertising market on a rather short leash. That’s not to be wondered at. Pushing advertising content to and through GooBook is an easy way to get it in front of eyeballs. That’s what advertisers are paying for, and Google and Facebook do this well. But there’s a problem with short leashes: they inhibit freedom of movement. If you don’t believe us, ask a dog.

When products or retailers approach maximal-efficiency, and consumers find high levels of value in a thing, service, or sales-channel, market-dominance often results, and sometimes it is the dominance of a kind or degree that approaches or approximates a monopoly. Wal-Mart and Best Buy steamrolled competitors, and their savvy in scaling-up earned them their respective hegemonies. Google crushed Yahoo and flicked Bing aside like stale Gummy Bear. And as long as enough people have time to waste exposing their personal lives on Facebook, that platform will remain an apex predator.

Without begrudging GooBook their virtual monopoly on digital ad-spend, though, small and medium-sized enterprises need a better way to spend their advertising money. We’ve come up with a solution.

In the blockchain-based ecosystem we’re rolling out in August, advertisers subcontract to key service-providers all the elements of a digital advertising campaign — analytics, optimization, data management, etc. Smart contracts ensure remittance for specific-performance; independent developers and publishers get a fair shot of being in the game, and opportunities for fraud are driven down to nil. This last point is important: around 9% of display ads, and more than 20% of video ads are fraudulent.

The Adrealm ecosystem was designed to put profits in the right hands, keep margins healthy, and reward good service rather than a service provider's brand-position. As with public chains generally, the entire record of spending and vending relationships is transparent.

GooBook will surely continue to appeal to some advertisers — chiefly, we suppose, those with money to burn and no reservations about supporting the inequities and inefficiencies of centralized data dams, and the Titans which control them. For our part, we’re going to keep Googling stuff, and sharing docs in Google Drive, and we’re not deleting our Facebook accounts anytime soon.

But the world is waiting for a real, working use-case for blockchain — a smart system that does more than contributing to global warming or provide a platform for the sartorial challenged to preach disestablishmentarian social theory. Adrealm is that system.*

Adrealm Intelligence & Editorial Unit