CANNES, France, June 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mediaocean, the
foundational software provider of the advertising world, and IBM
iX, one of the world's largest digital agencies and global business
design partners, today announced the launch of a blockchain
consortium for the digital media supply chain. Bringing together
some of the world's largest advertisers, agencies and publishers,
including Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, Pfizer, Unilever and IBM Watson
Advertising, the solution aims to provide transparency and build
trust and accountability in the advertising ecosystem.
The new Mediaocean and IBM blockchain solution, powered by the
IBM Blockchain platform, the leader in enterprise blockchain, will
provide a comprehensive, timely and actionable view of the supply
chain. It will tackle supply chain opacity from the rapid
proliferation of intermediaries, which makes it difficult for
advertisers and agencies to identify exactly how much spend is
going towards "working media."
"We must innovate our approach to the market by looking for new
technologies like blockchain to help solve complex business
challenges," said Mukund Kaushik, VP
Digital Capabilities and Innovation for Kimberly-Clark. "In this
partnership with IBM and Mediaocean, as well as other leaders in
the media industry, we are on an exciting journey to use blockchain
to solve the challenges of media spend transparency and
assurance."
Built on top of Mediaocean's end-to-end campaign management
platform, which today processes over $140
billion in ad spend and is trusted by all agency holding
companies, the Mediaocean and IBM blockchain solution aims to
provide visibility into the entire lifecycle of an advertiser's
media dollar flow. From issuing of the purchase order, to the
execution of media and payment – a blockchain is used to record all
media transactions in a secure, immutable, standardized and
comprehensive manner. The program will launch in July.
"For over 50 years, Mediaocean has been the system of record for
the advertising industry," says Bill
Wise, CEO, Mediaocean. "We have done so by providing
reliable, neutral, and integrated systems for brands, agencies and
suppliers to execute media, globally. In recent years, however, the
industry has been plagued with unsustainable economics and
transparency issues that hinder progress – particularly around
intermediary fees and non-working media. By partnering with IBM,
we're able to launch the first advertising blockchain solution that
will improve spend transparency - at scale. This will help us come
together as an industry under a single source of truth and rebuild
trust to push us into a new era of advertising transformation."
"Blockchain is creating new ways of doing business across
industries, particularly where greater trust and transparency is
required. As it relates to media, we expect blockchain to be able
to provide a single source of truth to any given media buy,
eliminating the doubt and uncertainty that is common today," said
Babs Rangaiah, Executive Partner, Global Marketing, IBM iX.
"Measurement and transparency require new solutions across the
programmatic supply chain and blockchain is a technology
strategically used to create an environment of trust. It will bring
tremendous benefits to media buying, especially with industry
leaders like Mediaocean leading the charge."
"Marketers today have to deal with a whole host of issues in the
digital ad environment from quality control and security to
financial transparency. What this pilot has shown us is the
potential blockchain has to help us drive more quality into the
digital ecosystem and get to one source of the truth for our
digital investment," said Rob
Master, VP Global Media, Unilever.
Risa Wexler, VP, Media, Digital
Chops & Innovation, Pfizer Inc., added, "Digital advertising
can be tremendously valuable for companies and customers alike; but
in any advertising medium, transparency, trust and simplicity are
central. A blockchain solution has extraordinary potential to
bring all three to the ecosystem."
During the initial build phase, Mediaocean utilized the IBM
Blockchain Platform Starter Plan, designed to help organizations
quickly and cost effectively build blockchain proof of concepts and
test networks using blockchain.
Contact blockchain@mediaocean.com for more information.
To learn more about IBM iX, visit www.ibm.com/IBMiX and follow
@IBM_iX on Twitter.
ABOUT MEDIAOCEAN
Mediaocean is the world's leading media software company that
automates every aspect of the advertising workflow - from planning,
buying and selling, to analyzing and optimizing, to invoicing and
payments. Mediaocean's open cross-media platforms power
$140 billion in global media budgets
and have unmatched reach and bridge traditional and digital media.
Mediaocean serves more than 80,000 users across agencies,
advertisers, broadcasters and publishers worldwide. The company
employs 950 people worldwide and is part of the Vista Equity
Partners portfolio of software companies. Mediaocean is
headquartered in New York with
fourteen offices worldwide. Learn more at mediaocean.com, or
connect with Mediaocean on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
Advertising. Powered by Mediaocean.
Contact: press@mediaocean.com
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SOURCE Mediaocean