The online sphere has certainly brought a lot of value to people and changed the world for the better, but from a critical standpoint, the way we communicate, advertise, and consume online still has a long way to go. Fraud is rampant, spam is a fact of life, and advertisers find it hard to genuinely communicate with prospective customers.

A great many commentators have looked at how blockchain might be able to solve this. The transparent yet immutable and secure nature of blockchain technology is a spammer’s or fraudster’s worst nightmare. One such example of a company using blockchain to address this is NOIZ, which is developing an ad network that leverages AI and blockchain technology to, in theory, improve the experience for all involved.

“NOIZ is solving these problems by combining an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system with blockchain technology to create a hybrid Proof of Engagement concept to fight ad fraud while forming a consensus-based ecosystem that makes advertisers and publishers accountable for their actions and business practices. The result is a completely new digital ad exchange platform that will revamp the entire advertising ecosystem.”

And given the difficulties faced by Facebook among others in recent months, with declining revenue and public criticism for their role in ethically questionable practices regarding consumer data, the issues NOIZ is trying to address are certainly hot-button topics now and in the coming years; “It is the belief of NOIZ that a decentralized ad server, which allows the community to be the driving force behind the advertising ecosystem, will be the only way to build a robust advertising model for true engagement now and in the long-term.”

Rapid prototyping

There are several, relatively novel components of the NOIZ platform. AI has a big role: “The NOIZ cognitive ad uses 3 forms of AI for two objectives. The first objective is to increase consumer engagement. The second objective is to filter out fraudulent, spam data. As a result, advertisers will receive a much higher ROI.” This part of the prototype is already live.

Furthermore, dashboarding is extensively used in the platform to bolster the overall UX: “NOIZ will have 3 unique dashboards. One will be specific to advertisers; the second to publishers and the third to social impact organizations. Consumers, advertisers, publishers and social impact organizations will all use the NOIZ wallet to keep track of, use and exchange their NOIZ tokens.”

This is all based on a testnet “that merges Ethereum Blockchain (to support P2P Ad contracts) and HyperLedger, that would record intent transactions over blockchain.”

Long-term future

Whether or not NOIZ can crack the incentive alignment equation well enough to ensure users, publishers, and advertisers are all happy with the system remains to be seen, but they are separating themselves from many other blockchain projects by having an ethical intrinsic motivation for success as well as an actual working product. This should go some way to convincing investors of their potential. The NOIZ token sale starts early August.