Source | Shiji Business Review (ID: eFuture 555)

In the marketing and advertising industries, blockchain technology has more important application significance. However, according to the survey data of CMO, only 8% companies believe that blockchain technology plays a medium or important role in marketing.

Although the concept of blockchain has been widely publicized, the obvious result is that blockchain technology has not been well understood. Such "concept hype+lack of in-depth understanding" has caused certain obstacles to the in-depth application of blockchain technology, leading marketers to take a "wait-and-see" attitude towards this technology.

Blockchain technology has the characteristics of transparency, stability and security, which makes it have reliable and credible advantages in information management fields such as supply chain management (SCM), smart contracts, Internet of Things for financial reporting, Internet of Things (IoT), private medical care, and even power grids. At the same time, the data transmission mode of blockchain technology greatly reduces the transaction cost, realizes the effective exchange of verification and ownership, and opens the door for real-time micropayment. This information exchange mode reduces the payment friction, and some intermediaries and intermediate links that make a living disappear, making it possible for consumers to own and control personal information. All of the above let us see the subversive potential of blockchain technology in the fields of information management, trading and marketing.

Nowadays, financial transactions have considerable transaction costs. Retailers need to pay 3% to credit card companies, and gas stations pay more. Sellers who open stores in Yi Bei and Shopify need to bear the payment fees and transaction fees paid by PayPal. All these costs will increase the cost of goods and will usually be passed on to consumers. Therefore, with the widespread use of credit cards and debit cards, many businesses have set consumption limits to avoid the loss of profits caused by excessive spending.

Blockchain technology will greatly reduce financial transaction costs, even close to "zero transaction costs", and even small transactions will enjoy this profit. In the financial field, financial giants such as MasterCard and Visa have been using blockchain technology to handle local currency remittance business. The whole process is safe and transparent, which brings more choices and cost comparison opportunities to merchants, not just relying on credit card transactions.

In the field of marketing and advertising, blockchain technology also has a far-reaching impact. At present, marketers have been using * * * information purchased from third-party social media (such as Facebook) to obtain customer marketing data, which undoubtedly shows the marketing value of the data and points out the trend and potential of digital marketing.

However, with blockchain technology, micropayments can be used to encourage consumers to share personal information without an intermediary. For example:

A chain grocery store can pay 1 USD for consumers who install its APP program;

If the consumer agrees to turn on the location tracking function, he can get another reward of $65,438 +0;

If consumers open the application "1 time every day" and spend at least 1 minute on it, retailers can pay them a few cents or store points to reward customers' loyalty.

During this period, merchants will push promotions and special offers to consumers.

In fact, consumer customization has opened some legal marketing mechanisms, for example, providing personalized marketing or price, which is one of the most important price values for consumers to voluntarily provide various data. This revenue forecasting method based on real consumer data can not only reduce the fraud risk caused by anonymous marketing, but also reduce the trouble of promoting APP application caused by incomplete and inaccurate consumer information.

The same means as the above-mentioned method of promoting the use of APP can also be used in the marketing of "smart protocol" (a virtual protocol, supported by blockchain technology, without the need for intermediary agencies to confirm, review and verify identity). Based on the support of blockchain technology, consumers will activate this "smart agreement" when subscribing to emails and receiving registration incentive plans. After that, whenever consumers interact with emails or advertisements, small incentives will be automatically deposited into consumers' wallets. This brings us to the next topic.

The advertising business promoted by the website can also adopt a similar model, that is, to stimulate consumers through compensation to boost the page views of each advertising page.

In 20 16, a study published by HubSpot showed that most netizens didn't like pop-up window advertisements and mobile window advertisements, and thought that online advertisements seriously interfered with vision and had some intrusive and destructive negative effects. Therefore, more and more users have installed advertising blocking tools. This general trend of aversion has produced great punitive consequences for the advertising industry. It is estimated that by 2020, advertising interception will cause publishers to lose a huge income of 35 billion US dollars.

With the support of blockchain technology, marketers can rethink their advertising, marketing promotion and income model, that is, consumers who pay attention to marketing and advertising can directly pay them "small rewards". Of course, this means that it will also get rid of the advertising middle layer of Google or Facebook.

It is believed that the "double monopoly" of Google or Facebook in the field of Internet and digital advertising will soon be threatened by the application of blockchain technology. Although keyword-based search will not disappear completely, its advantages are gone. Ultimately, individuals will control their private online data and manage their social networks.

With the help of blockchain technology, enterprises can directly interact with consumers, bypass some current social media "crocodiles" and share the rewards brought by browsing advertisements with consumers. It is reported that in 20 16, Google brought an average income of 73 dollars to each active user through advertising. Of course, $73 is only the average return of more than 65.438 billion active users. We can reasonably predict that the revenue Google brings to some high-value people will definitely exceed $654.38+0,000. Imagine how effective marketing will be when enterprises use blockchain technology to "browse advertisements voluntarily" and deliver effective product consumption value to consumers.

With the help of blockchain technology, we can also confirm the degree of advertising and consumer participation, and avoid excessive advertising and abuse of e-mail advertising. Because excessive advertising and excessive mail advertising will not only make consumers tired of losing the motivation to buy, but also arouse consumers' resentment, and then intercept and stop advertising. For example, consumers are reluctant to receive any advertisements from the company after purchasing products.

Blockchain technology can also be used to verify the source of marketing information. Micro-payment will effectively destroy large-scale phishing spam, weaken the interference of ineffective marketing to people and purify the mail environment.

Every day, about 654.38+03.5 billion spam messages are sent to users, accounting for 48% of the total emails sent. Among these emails regarded as "junk", there is only one reply every 6.5438+0.25 million, and the waste and interference are equally amazing.

Using blockchain technology, as long as you pay a small amount of marketing expenses to the recipients, you can filter or stop spam through these small marketing expenses, and with these marketing expenses, help enterprises identify consumers who have independent will to market or trade.

Similarly, on the Internet, every time a user clicks a link, a micropayment transaction may occur. In most cases, users only need to pay a small fee, such as reading a news article for only one cent. This kind of micropayment will become a sharp weapon to defeat the "denial of service attack". (Translator's note: Denial of service attack, referred to as denial of service attack or Dos attack. Dos attack is a kind of network attack, which has always been an unreasonable problem. For example, an attacker recruits robots to attack a website and sends millions of requests, resulting in website downtime, delayed response and even downtime because the cache is full).

Blockchain technology can also prevent robots from establishing false media accounts, preventing them from sending a lot of false information to users and stealing online advertising revenue of big brands. Online authenticity has indeed been integrated into blockchain technology.

Keybase.io is a company dedicated to solving the problem of social media fraud, using blockchain technology to enable individuals to prove that they are the legitimate owners of various social media accounts. This makes the influence of marketing easier to be tracked, and the marketing expenditure easier to be proved. Both of these methods mean major breakthrough achievements in the marketing industry.

By the end of 20 16, the losses caused by fraudulent or deceptive display advertisements reached $7.6 billion, accounting for 56% of the total display advertising revenue. In the next few years, this figure is expected to rise to 109 billion US dollars.

Using blockchain technology to track advertising display activities, marketing organizations can monitor the implementation of the entire automated advertising activities to ensure that marketing support is used to promote ROI, and can directly quantify the input and output of marketing activities generated by each user and each email.

By associating micro-marketing behavior with micro-payment, blockchain technology has solved these attribution problems that have plagued marketers for decades.

In addition, ordinary people who create popular content on new media, such as some popular videos or social posts, will get "rewards" every time they are clicked, and these rewards will be attributed to "blockchain technology". But the current situation is that unless their works are published on the subscription network platform or channel, they will not get a penny.

In all these blockchain application scenarios, content creators have the right to create and manage their own successful works.

Coupit is not only a platform for Coupit coins, but also an open market where enterprises and individuals can sell their own products and services. The difference is that Coupit is an e-commerce platform driven by blockchain technology, and Coupit is prepared to maximize the use of blockchain technology to improve the influence of its marketing content.

Based on the support of blockchain technology, the company's marketing staff can participate in the planning process of consumer loyalty programs and group buying alliance. Consumers can exchange their own rewards and discounts, and marketers can easily distinguish dormant customers from loyal customers. This visual, transparent and easy-to-operate means helps marketers to create personalized marketing prices and preferential activities for customers, thus expanding marketing benefits.

Even if data aggregator analysis or intermediary analysis must be adopted, micropayment will allow enterprises to bypass the advertising interception tools, individuals will control and manage the amount of personal information they enjoy, and get direct returns through advertising browsing, and many privacy issues will be completely solved due to legal protection.

Take the Brave Browser as an example. This one was created by Brandon Ash (Brandon? In addition to providing a higher level of privacy and security protection, Brave also allows the blockchain system to change the relationship between users, advertisers and content creators. Its Basic Attention Token (BATs) is an advertising platform token based on blockchain. The project aims to improve online advertising by eliminating third-party advertising transactions, protecting users' privacy, reducing advertising fraud and rewarding users' attention by sharing revenue with users. _ Translator's Note) Publishers and advertisers will be allowed to monetize value-added services to gain some growth related to advertising business, of which 73% will be dominated by Facebook and Google.

With the blockchain becoming mainstream, all intermediaries need to adjust their business models. The structure of the decision chain has changed:

Consumers will be able to better control and manage how they enjoy their private information;

Consumers will decide how to spend time interacting with advertisers;

Spam and phishing scams are blocked. From a cost perspective, the more spam they send, the less sustainable their business will be.

From the enterprise's point of view, this may mean that the drainage quality of all marketing promotion has more advanced control ability and a better understanding of consumer behavior based on data management.

On the other hand, if the transaction fee is not paid to each affected individual, the advertisement cannot be placed. Consumers will also have the incentive to post real and accurate social information online, such as explaining what they are interested in, and they will also pay for it. Marketers will pay directly for the final consumers, instead of paying marketing fees to social media middlemen. When the target consumers are high-value customers, the incentive mechanism will be improved and marketing will hit the bull's-eye.

Blockchain technology has great potential in reshaping social trust, making social trust stronger, increasing visibility, connecting various resources, and rewarding individuals' contributions to transactions. Marketing activities and advertising will be fundamentally affected by these changes. Not only for the marketing decision-making senior leaders of enterprises (CMO, Chief Marketing Officer), but also for decision makers such as strategic planning, financial and technical decision-making, thus promoting them to make the design and implementation of blockchain a priority business matter. From the operational point of view, enterprises may establish a new high-level trust model with consumers, and finally connect consumers with products through credible marketing activities.

Marketing managers and technical managers may use blockchain technology to reshape the customer relationship of enterprises. Introducing this far-reaching technology as soon as possible will promote enterprises to seize market opportunities and benefit from this widely used technology in the future.

Introduction to the original author:

Campbell R. Harvey is currently a professor of finance and J. Paul stich professor of international business at the Foucault School of Business of Duke University. 20 16 was the chairman of American financial association. Professor Harvey is an investment strategy consultant of Man Group, PLC, and a partner and senior consultant of Research Affiliates, LLC. In the past five years, he has taught blockchain courses at Duke University: innovation and encryption venture capital.

Christine Moorman, is that T? Austin? T Austin Finch is a senior professor of business administration at the Fuka School of Business at Duke University and the editor-in-chief of Marketing Magazine.

Marc Toledo is a senior assistant of PricewaterhouseCoopers, focusing on blockchain and digital transformation. He graduated from Duke University with an MBA. While working at the World Bank and Apple, he led large-scale projects related to network security, machine learning and artificial intelligence.