AdLedger, a blockchain-based consortium recently on-boarded The Hershey Company, a world-renowned American chocolate producer according to a report by media outlet AdWeek posted on March 26.

Hershey, in conjunction with a French media group Publicis Media and The Global Audience Based Buying Conference & Consultancy (GABBCON), has reportedly joined forces with AdLedger. AdLedger itself was founded by IBM, Tegna and MadHive another blockchain company back in 2018. AdLedger stands as a nonprofit consortium which creates shared ledger technologies for the digital advertising industry.

In addition to advertising, Hershey’s foray into the world of blockchain could extend to the operation of its chocolate factories, aiding the tracing of cacao “from bean to bar” as per a statement from Vinny Rinaldi, the head of addressable media and technology for Hershey.

Rinaldi added:

“This would be a fundamentally massive shift in the way that we think.”

The advertising industry lacks in terms of transparency of data and processes. Blockchain technology offers a possible solution to these issues by making sufficient data available to everyone within the ecosystem on how publishers verify traffic as well as the processes which advertising agencies and their intermediaries follow to assure that they operate with publishers with verified traffic.

Back in 2018, IBM partnered with Salon Media to launch a pilot of a proof-of-concept blockchain product called “The Campaign Reconciliation Project” developed by AdLedger. The product is aimed at reducing intermediaries between advertisers, publishers and consumers, which currently leave the industry open to high-tech ad fraud, for example, bot fraud and domain spoofing.

Back in October 2018, Toyota teamed up with blockchain advertising analytics firm Lucidity to combat fraud in the purchasing of digital ads. Utilising the partnership between Lucidity, Toyota and leading global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi the goal was to achieve transparency in Toyota’s digital ad campaign purchases as well as eliminate wasted expenditure.