The Impact of Cryptocurrency in Digital Marketing
Linking digital marketing and Cryptocurrency gives complete control to customers over companies that have their information. It also increases the level of the consumer and challenges the marketers to show case their relevance.
Blockchain technology can be compared to an open record system or a shared ledger which helps to keep track of different transactions. Apart from being used for cryptocurrencies, blockchain can also be used to track data such as voting records, home records and medical transactions. Each transaction is segmented into blocks and these blocks are verified by users within the system. The blocks and transactions are irreversible which means they cannot be changed once verified. The blocks after being verified become permanent blocks and get added to the chain of the already existing ones.
People at present are constantly buying and selling goods on the net through various websites. For example ebay is one such site where people buy and sell products. These market places turn a profit by charging fees to the buyers and sellers who are using the platforms. If a person buys something on ebay, the platform used the buyer’s bank and sellers bank to verify the transactions. They also confirm that the buyer and seller exist and are genuine.
The Blockchain technology helps the buyers and sellers to cut out this middleman. The transactions are made possible without the need of a third party marketplace. It does not involve any banks or transactions fees associated with the purchases. Both the parties need not worry about the exchange rates be it an international purchase.
Blockchain acts as the backbone behind peer to peer electronic payments and is considered to be safe and fast way to make a transaction. Blockchain was first created for cryptocurrency with its software is an open source, it allows anyone to see the coding and make modifications if necessary. Later, various companies and people have come up with different versions of blockchain without using the original one.
The transactions made with blockchain are visible to everyone though it is completed between two people. The blockchains may be visible but the identities of the users are anonymous. The names of the users are seen by a public address. Algorithms are written to automate the transactions similar to that of paying a subscription every month using the credit card.
With this basic knowledge of blockchain, let’s understand the impact of this technology to revolutionalize the digital marketing industry. Middlemen in the digital market can be eliminated.
Blockchain makes it advertisers possible to eliminate the middle man. At present marketers take help of these third parties to make the transactions or handle advertisements. For example, if a company wants to offer the banner advertisements on a website and does not want to sell add space to anyone, then how does the company proceed? It goes through a platform like XYZ, if XYZ wants to act as third party. Here the company participates with XYZ platform and will be connected only with the credible business which wants to buy the advertising space. This kind of process makes both the parties to feel secured about the ads.
The site selling space knows it has no malicious content from non-reputable brand being displayed on the page and the company also feels secured about its ads to run on a legitimate site. For this process the XYZ platform charges the fees as part of the deal, which is the current system going on in the market without the blockchain technology.
If the example is applied with blockchain concept then the companies won’t have to go with the third party platform such as XYZ. The blockchain users can be verified through the network, where people can know what they are getting and what they are paying for and can oppose the clicks to potential paying that which are no genuine. The Blockchain eliminates the need of the intermediate in this procedure and is still safe and secure to process the transactions.
The concepts behind the blockchain technology makes possible for the companies to avoid these types of third party platforms. Avoiding the middleman can make the advertisements more profitable as the marketers won’t have to pay any additional fees for the transactions.
At times when the customers make a transaction or provide information on a third party they keep receiving advertisements even when they never opted for. The Blockchain technology gives the consumer a right to charge the companies for the contact information. If a company wants a customer to subscribe to their newsletter, the customer can reply with a price to receive that content.
Every customer to read a mail of the company can charge a cent and the transactions can be done through cryptocurrencies directly. This kind of concept gives a complete control for the customers over the companies that have their information. It also increases the level of the consumer and challenges the marketers to show case their relevance.