The Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO) will be one the first places in the world to run a digital ad campaign powered by blockchain technology.
The office is participating in a pilot with Adbank, an Ethereum-based ad platform powered by its ‘ADB token’ that aims to reduce ad fraud which the company claims will cost advertisers $51 million a day in 2018.
The platform also aims to reduce fees by ad tech middlemen, some of which are marking up the cost of ads by up to 70 per cent or more.
The blockchain-powered ad campaign has another notable player in the mix with Red Bull Media House providing inventory on the publisher side via their alpine lifestyle publication Bergwelten.
The Red Bull team agreed to participate in the campaign using Adbank’s technology after a visit to their headquarters in Salzburg, Austria in April by co-founders Kelsey Cole and Angelo Dodaro.
“It’s exciting to see a country like Austria acknowledging the powerful use case that exists for advertising on the blockchain,” said Dodaro.
“This level of transparency between advertiser and publisher is unprecedented, especially for an organization like ANTO. For the first time advertisers like them can see where their money is going, rather than going into a ‘black box’ that shows data we know for a fact is questionable.”
The company also claim that 56 per cent of all website traffic is being driven by bots & non-human traffic.
“We are actively positioning Austria to be one of the premier global destinations to visit all year round,” added Michael Scheuch, head of brand management for ANTO.
“In the pilot with Adbank, one of the more interesting blockchain applications in the advertising sector, we hope to overcome on a global scale various difficulties within classic online advertising.”
Adbank completed their blockchain-based payment protocol in March. The technology will work in combination with their patent-pending anti-fraud AI.
The company of the few ad tech companies in the world in the race to fix the advertising industry’s problems with the tech that was birthed by
“Markups and ad fraud cost the tourism industry billions per year and there is little to no accountability with the current advertising ecosystem,” said co-founder and CSO Kelsey Cole.
“ANTO will be the first of many travel-focused partners to mark the beginning of an era where the advertiser has the control they deserve using Adbank’s technology.”