The advertising industry is broken.
In today’s digital era the internet is a place where we gather information, connect with others, and share our knowledge. Advertising is also something that greatly impacts a person’s decision on a particular product or service.
Yet, while it’s an industry that powers the internet, advertising is also holding back its potential. This is down to the fact that users are being overwhelmed by bad ads, which is seeing a decrease in the amount of revenue generated for publishers.
Not only that, but there is also the issue of user data being collected from sites with hopes that it will deliver advertisements that appeal to users. Many, however, are unaware that their data is being collected. You only have to look at the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, which saw personal identifiable information collected from 87 million Facebook users earlier this year, to see this.
But what if there was a solution that aims to bring web users, advertisers, and publishers together to deliver a better experience?
Varanida[1]
, a digital ecosystem, is hoping to achieve this. Taking its name from Varanidae, which are a family of lizards (including the Komodo dragon and the crocodile
monitor) known for cleaning mangroves and fields, the platform is working at cleaning “the internet of intrusive and poorly designed advertising, while introducing a decentralized, transparent, and ethical ad network,” according to its white paper[2].
By using the Ethereum blockchain for its prototype, the goal is to benefit the three major stakeholders in the advertising marketplace: give users back their data and privacy, create better revenue opportunities for publishers, and a higher standard advertising model where advertisers can track each dollar spent on an advertising campaign.
Since releasing the prototype, Varanida says that it has seen more than 120,000
