Blockchain MarTech and AdTech Grows 1,127% in 12 Months

in #blockchain5 years ago

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TL;DR: When it was launched in Q3, 2017, the Blockchain MarTech Landscape had 22 projects. Six months later, there were 88. Today, there are nearly 250. Innovation at the intersection of blockchain and marketing continues at an explosive pace.

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More than a year ago, we developed a hypothesis about the intersection of blockchain technologies with the marketing function.

We believe that blockchain technologies represent a significant opportunity for enterprise marketers to reduce the cost of marketing operations, create more unique customer experiences, build improved customer relationships, and reduce corporate risk.

The Blockchain MarTech Landscape was created to help test this hypothesis, by identifying and organizing those companies planning use blockchain technology to disrupt marketing.

Over the past year, we have tracked the emergence of projects and companies across 6 areas within marketing: Advertising & Promotion, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerce & Sales and Data, and Management.

The format deliberately mirrors that of the original MarTech Landscape, both because it makes sense and because it serves as a useful comparison. We tip our hats to Scott Brinker and Anand Thaker for their contribution to the marketing industry.

Rapid expansion of the landscape has continued with each issuance.

  1. In version 1 of the Blockchain MarTech Landscape (Q3, 2017), we identified 22 entities that we believed fell within the Landscape.
  2. In version 2 of the Blockchain MarTech Landscape (Q1, 2018), we identified 88 organizations.
  3. And just released, version 3 of the Blockchain MarTech Landscape (Q4, 2018), has 248 projects.

That is some remarkable growth in only one year.

This most recent version (Q3, 2018) of the Blockchain MarTech Landscape also allowed us to contemplate a fundamental question. Should we include “pure-play” Blockchain MarTech entities only or should we include existing companies building solutions to leverage blockchain technology?

We decided to include all companies and organizations. Anyone trying to leverage the capabilities of blockchain technology with the intention of helping marketers belongs in the Blockchain MarTech Landscape. What’s more, this decision mirrors the reality. Blockchain MarTech isn’t just for start-ups.

Babs Rangaiah, Executive Partner, Global Marketing iX at IBM stated on a panel at Advertising Week in NYC recently that “Blockchain will do for transactions, what the internet did for communications.” IBM appears to agree that blockchain will change the way marketing transactions are completed – and has no intention of skipping the next major tech wave.

Tracking growth in various sectors of the Blockchain MarTech Landscape provides a window into where entrepreneurs and startups believe the impact of blockchain will fall, or fall first.

Those sectors have grown as follows:

  • Advertising & Promotion – From 24 to 55 companies, doubling
  • Content & Experience – From 6 to 20 companies, 3x growth
  • Social & Relationships – From 26 to 38 companies, 50% growth
  • Commerce & Sales – From 10 to 66 companies, 600% growth
  • Data – From 11 to 40 companies, quadrupling
  • Management – 3 to 23 companies, 600% growth

The Blockchain MarTech Landscape tells you who is out there, not a view to performance; as more of these projects get into the pilot phase and beyond, we’ll be able to provide additional data around how these projects are satisfying marketer needs.

For the moment, here are 22 companies using blockchain technology to address some of the numerous challenges within advertising , ranging from transparency in the supply chain, fraud mitigation, data privacy, payments & settlements, and putting consumers first.

Many are running tests now.

The IAB announced a series of Pilots with MetaX, FusionSeven, Kochava/XCHNG, and Lucidity back in July, mostly to provide transparency through the programmatic media supply chain. Unilever is testing IBM’s blockchain platform to validate the agreed spend and clarify discrepancies. Additionally at Advertising Week, Brian Wong showcased Kiip’s test with AB Inbev to verify discrepancies using a single ledger to record time-stamped impression level campaign delivery.

We are also seeing significant increases in both the number of employees hired by these entities and in total investment amounts raised, which we tabulated at $145 Million in the programmatic space, based on press releases. Employee growth examples include, Brave (Basic Attention Token) who now have 82 employees – up from 25 12 months ago, Lucidity with 35, up from 10, and MetaX with 12, up from 9.

There is also a notable inflow of seasoned talent into the industry. Joni Leimala, the former Chief Strategy Officer at GroupM is now CEO of AdCoin and Richard Bush who previously was GM of Publisher Solutions at IPONWEB is now President at NYIAX.

Informally, venture funding (as opposed to ICO funding) of blockchain-based martech appears to be becoming the norm, and business models that involve blockchain but for whom tokens are merely a part of an executional strategy are increasingly prevalent. Use of technology appears to be entering a phase of build-out, rather than pure speculation.

Overall, the growth in the number of venture funded companies forging ahead into the blockchain space, particularly in a down period for the “crypto” markets, is a powerful signal of an emerging consensus that there is real value to be created through use of blockchain technologies for marketing, regardless of the success or failure of the token economy.

All eyes are now looking forward, to the results from the case studies these first companies are selling through and executing. Over the next few months, those experiments will open a new chapter for marketing – one that may well vindicate these early entrepreneurs and their big bets on blockchain.

To go deeper on this and find out more about the Landscape, contact the GM of Never Stop Marketing, Research, Donny Dvorin. donny AT neverstopmarketing.com

and a big thanks to Donny for doing the heavy lifting on writing this post

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