While it might not be so obvious, the trucking industry is a critical component of the U.S. economy. This billion-dollar industry serves as the backbone for U.S. commerce. In the U.S. alone, spending on overland logistics reached over $700 billion last year, a number that is only expected to grow.

Unfortunately, the trucking industry is also broken and has developed a reputation for falling behind on technology adoption. As a result, many problems often occur between key players in the industry – shippers (the demand), carriers (the supply), and brokers (the intermediaries).

For example, manufacturers (the shippers) often have a tough time finding available capacity for their goods. This is ironic, however, as every year carriers (truckers) drive over 29 billion miles with partial or entirely empty trucks. Within the trucking industry, demand is said to be exceeding supply, yet there are still many empty trucks on the road.

Of course, this problem could be due to a number of issues, yet freight brokers, who are responsible for connecting millions of trucks with distributors, have become part of the problem. Additionally, brokers are known for charging high fees to coordinate transport, yet the disconnect between shippers and carriers is cause for concern.

This specific problem, along with many others facing the trucking industry, struck a nerve for Jon Fox. Mr. Fox owns a freight company called Lewiscoholdings, which spends million of dollars each year on domestic freight. Mr. Fox grew tired of working with third-party brokers, as there were many problems with shipments and the company was paying a 20 percent markup to do business with these middlemen.

Mr. Fox eventually had an “aha” moment when he decided to stop using brokers and go direct. Within a week the company had negotiated deals directly with some of the largest carriers in America.

Shortly after realizing that brokers were no longer needed, Mr. Fox looked towards the blockchain as a source of truth that would completely revolutionize the freight industry. After all, some of the main benefits of blockchain technology are eliminating middlemen and creating a transparent network based entirely on trust.

Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd

Mr. Fox founded Fr8 Network, which serves as a decentralized protocol for the freight industry. Based entirely on blockchain technology, Fr8 Network aims to solve a number of problems currently facing the freight industry.

“Blockchains are great for moving critical data out of silos and onto an open network. In order for a $700 billion marketplace comprised of primarily small business to have a fluid process of discovery, transparency is a must,” Mr. Fox said. “In the old model, an intermediary holds all the critical data and controls matching and price discovery as they are the fulcrum point for transactions. Incentives are aligned with their profits - not with creating an efficient marketplace. In this new model, we create truly open marketplaces that allow for security between actors, along with aligning incentives of individual users. The blockchain creates a truly efficient marketplace that drives prices down, and in our case fills greater capacity of trucks, creating less empty miles and more profits for truckers and reductions in carbon emissions.”
For example, Fr8 has created an “Fr8 Market,” which serves as a decentralized marketplace where carries and shippers can coordinate freight transactions through customizable smart contracts – a key feature of blockchain technology. The Fr8 Market is open to all carriers, suppliers and even brokers, and provides users with full visibility into available capacity and pricing data. Historical data is also preserved to serve the future intelligence of the Fr8 network.

Fr8 network also uses smart matching technology to provide users with the best options to optimize shipment capacity. To simplify this process, Fr8 applies a user-rating system, where everyone on the network can rate users. Using a proprietary algorithm, the network combines peer reviews with historical transaction data to create an “Fr8 Rating” for users. This rating is visible to everyone on the network, serving as a quantifiable reputation for both shippers and carriers. This aspect plays a key role for providing trust within the Fr8 market.

Smart contracts on the blockchain also help create an easier, faster and more efficient shipping process. High shipping costs through brokers, along with non-transparent tracking fees, have always been an issue for the freight industry. Smart contracts, however, are making the shipping and tracking process much easier. Smart contracts on the Fr8 network will send users automatic shipment updates and monitor progress every step on the way, so manufacturers stay informed about their shipments throughout the entire process.

Once shipments are received, the smart contract technology offers an option for a series of 1-click interactions by various parties. Users can confirm receipts via their smartphones, while the fr8 network validates the information. As a result, high coordination costs between three or more parties are eliminated.

The Crypto Aspect

Many blockchain networks are associated with a cryptocurrency. The Fr8 Network uses an “Fr8 token” generated on the Ethereum blockchain. The Fr8 token is necessary within the Fr8 Market, as the fee for using the marketplace is paid in this token. All users on the network must have enough tokens to cover shipments fees, but Fr8 Network also enables shippers and truckers to operate as they always have and work through a layer of brokers who can facilitate credit for them in the marketplace.

Furthermore, Fr8 Network addresses a major pain point for truckers in the industry of expensive credit terms for invoice factoring. Fr8 Network creates a new vehicle for invoice financing that not only enriches the network itself, but allows truckers cheap access to working capital to grow their businesses.Fr8 Network is expected to launch an ICO during late February of next year.

The Future of Freight

Blockchain technology has the potential to completely transform the freight industry by eliminating brokers and allowing peer-to-peer transactions to take place on an entirely transparent, distributed ledger. As a result, shippers and carriers can conduct business on their own terms, within a network built on trust. The blockchain may just be the next silver bullet technology for the freight industry.

Every good company needs a logline. A descriptive sentence or two that ignites public interest, demonstrates the possible, and if you’re lucky, eventually earns the project a green-light. A logline for Fr8 Network, a new dApp using blockchain technology to revolutionize the freight industry, might read something like this: A set of decentralized applications that create trust in the freight industry: A smarter way to ship.

CEO Jon Fox’s idea for Fr8 Network — a platform where shippers can contract carriers outright — emerged out of a recognizable need to increase efficiency at his own company, Lewisco Holdings, a food distributor for the secondary market. Lewisco is the perfect proving ground the test out Fr8 Network’s potential impact. By shipping directly through FedEx and Ward, Lewisco can dog-food the idea while Fr8 Network is still in early development. The transition hasn’t been entirely smooth — manually executing the job of a decentralized software application has its challenges — but it has proved out Fr8 Network’s future efficacy. The impact to their bottom line has been significant.

Jason LaMountain came to Lewisco Holdings about 6 months ago, when he was hired as a logistics coordinator. At the time, there were just two salespeople juggling both sales and shipping, so they worked with external freight brokers to find them carriers. But this method stretched the sales team’s focus, LaMountain explains, and made tracking the trucks and any issues that arose, difficult. Not all brokers have the same M.O. either, so if there was a problem, Lewisco would often hear about if from the customer, not the broker.

“It makes a lot of sense to go direct,” says LaMountain, adding that brokers will “mark it up as much as 20%.” He noticed the savings immediately, but says determining the exact percentage is tricky because not every shipment is the same and shipping lanes tend to change. Fox pegs the company’s savings by shipping direct at approximately 18%.

“FedEx alone has made a huge difference to our bottom line in terms of shipping,” says LaMountain. “They are super, super competitive” because their large fleet of trucks can pretty much “guarantee” capacity. “Basically, any business that they do with a company like ours is just free money.”

But Fr8 Network’s aim is not to eliminate brokers entirely, but to create an inclusive community, one in which brokers can still participate. For companies like Lewisco who are looking to ship direct in today’s market, shipping direct means more paperwork, a burden usually tasked to the brokers. For instance, Bills of Lading documents (BOLs) are required for a company to ensure blind shipping; if you’re not careful filling out the BOLs, a random pre-school may be the unhappy recipient of 30 pallets of socks intended for your customer. There’s definitely a learning curve, and LaMountain thinks companies wanting to avoid the paperwork may still prefer brokers. With Fr8 Network, brokers could easily obtain things like carrier quotes informed by Fr8 Ratings, the network’s proprietary rating algorithm that provides valuable transparency on a carriers’ historical performance. “In theory, this could make their job easier for them as well.”

Lewisco Holdings has shipped over a billion dollars of freight in the company’s lifetime. They make anywhere from 3 to 8 shipments a day, so the need for a user-friendly platform that further streamlines LaMountain’s process is key. Although Fr8 Network is in its early stages, it is poised to provide a solution to a mammoth problem — and save companies a lot of money in the process.

Consumers have long demanded privacy online and with GDPR and other new regulations, advertisers and publishers are catching up to meet these new standards.

Powered by blockchain and AI technology, MAD is building a protocol with privacy by design, allowing advertisers to effectively reach their audience without compromising the privacy of consumer data. Led by thought leaders in the media and blockchain space, Project Lead Adam Helfgott and Zynga co-founder Tom Bollich are re-thinking how advertising works -- from the ground up.

Watch this video to learn more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcRxIeeBgk&t=1s

MadHive is the blockchain ad-tech firm that developed the MadNetwork protocol, for accurate, efficient, and completely private ad serving. Using blockchain technology, machine learning models, and artificial intelligence agents deployed to users’ devices, MadHive has created a platform where the traditional ad tech intermediaries are unnecessary, and advertisers can target consumers more effectively without ever accessing their “personally identifiable information.” As consumer privacy regulation mounts in key ad markets, MadNetwork’s technology marks a major step forward, allowing advertisers and publishers to reach their intended audience while simultaneously delivering complete privacy to the consumer. MadHive’s technology is a completely new approach for ad tech. Leveraging blockchain and technology at scale can be a real challenge, requiring serious scalability coupled with reliably low latency and massive processing power. Add to that MadHive’s sophisticated machine learning requirements and a short timeline to get to market, and you’ve got a tall order for a cloud provider. The MadHive team knew not just any cloud provider would suit their needs.

 

Solution
To face this challenge, SADA recommended Google Cloud Platform (GCP), based on the cloud provider’s reputation for handling huge-scale data and low latency requirements. “Google definitely had the right solution,” says Tom Bollich, MadHive CTO and former Zynga founding team member. “At Zynga our products generated so much demand that we had to scale out our infrastructure to match all of Facebook’s. AWS was too piecemeal to do that effectively. Google has ‘recipes’ for everything we need to do at scale with data.” GCP’s industry-leading machine learning engine, as well as its large suite of plug and play tools, makes them a natural partner for MadHive.

SADA’s consultants first analyzed the limits of the Kubernetes- and Dockerbased implementation MadHive had previously used for prototypes. Then they applied their in-depth knowledge of GCP to help MadHive redesign the entire platform using Google BigTable, Google App Engine, and TensorFlow.

“The solution SADA suggested has been working amazingly well,” says Denis Kezerashvili, MadHive’s SVP of Engineering. “We process and analyze terabytes of data in real time. When our traffic suddenly spikes 10 times, we can boot new instances — and use them to handle requests — in under 200ms. It’s the first platform that’s truly elastic under intense loads.”

SADA assisted on the research side as well. “Blockchain gave us a platform to push machine learning out to the edge,” says Aaron Brown, MadHive’s VP of Engineering. “Google’s TensorFlow and Cloud ML were the perfect tools to build on. It let us focus on our core tech: fully private targeting through collaborative and anonymous machine learning.”

Results for MadHive
It began with an analysis and a redesign, but SADA System’s work with the ad tech company continues. MadHive continues to reap the benefits of SADA’s expertise and the GCP toolkit at every stage.

MadHive’s network responds to traffic surges while maintaining extremely low latency and high availability for all users.
MadHive is saving 60% on cloud services with GCP, due to building more efficient scaling and lower latency reads and writes.
When MadHive hits limits of certain Google products, SADA is immediately available to assist, either by suggesting an alternate implementation or connecting MadHive engineers directly with Google Cloud engineers to work on problems together, quickly.
The MadHive team spends its time researching, iterating, and deploying, instead of patching scaling issues and performing DevOps.
Ultimately, MadHive’s success will benefit consumers, advertisers, and publishers, delivering full compliance for regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which goes into effect in May 2018. Using the collaborative machine learning models enabled by TensorFlow, and deploying those models to the MAD Network’s blockchain, Madhive is recreating digital advertising with privacy by design.

SADA Systems is proud to be part of such a transformative moment in advertising technology.

Dive Brief:

Tech firm MadHive is developing “Mad tokens,” a cryptocurrency that will support an open blockchain ad network with an initial push centered on connected TV inventory, according to reporting by MediaPost Communications. The company is currently raising funding .
The company is raising $25 million in Bitcoin to build out the Mad Network and plans to distribute 220 million tokens. The network will use a machine-learning strategy to later include linear TV and then digital channels, Adam Helfgott, MadHive CEO, told MediaPost.

The Mad Network consists of “Books,” “Core” and “Data” with Books being an automated bookkeeping network running on the Ethereum cryptocurrency, Core as the ad tech platform and Data supporting the data management platform (DMP).

Dive Insight:
MadHive isn't alone in betting that blockchain has the potential to rewrite the foundations of marketing and advertising. While some have focused on how the peer-to-peer digital ledger technology could bring added transparency to the media supply chain, MadHive's Helfgott believes blockchain-based bookkeeping coupled with cryptocurrency could change the economics of advertising.

Mad Network could give Google and Facebook an incentive to enter TV advertising, bringing more competition into the space, according to Helfgott.

The news comes as research shows a growing number of businesses across sectors are experimenting with blockchain. A survey of enterprise businesses by 451 Research emailed to Marketing Dive reveals that 20% of organizations are using blockchain in a discovery or evaluation phase and 4% are running trials.

“Blockchain will do for transactions what the Internet has done for information. It promises to disrupt business models and entire industries. It allows for increased trust and efficiency, and is pushing us to challenge how we define and exchange value and reward participation,” said Csilla Zsigri, senior analyst, cloud transformation and blockchain at 451 Research, in a statement.

For the marketing industry, Blockchain tech certainly has the potential to alleviate some of the largest concerns around ad buying — namely issues around ad fraud and the murkiness of ad tech process between marketers making an ad buy and the eventual publisher running that ad. Blockchain technology provides an end-to-end record of the entire transaction.

One issue for MadHive and others getting into cryptocurrency is regulatory action around bitcoin. For now, the U.S. is taking a hands-off approach, but other areas globally, such as South Korea, are taking steps to regulate bitcoin.

NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, MAD Network, a distributed ad tech ecosystem which uses blockchain technology to increase transparency, efficiency, minimize the role of intermediaries, and return lost value to advertisers and publishers, is announcing the roster of its advisory board. MAD Network is also announcing a partnership with strategic advisory firm MediaLink to broaden awareness of the positive impact blockchain can have for brands’ and publishers’ businesses.

MAD Network's Advisory board is a compilation of prominent figures from the media, ad agency, and blockchain industries. They include; Bo Shen, Founder of Fenbushi Capital, David Bailey, CEO of BTC Media, publisher of Bitcoin Magazine, Barry Cupples, Global CEO Omnicom Media Group Investment, Greg Clayman, formerly of Vimeo, Fox, and Viacom, MT Carney former Global President of Marketing at Disney, and Co-Founder of Naked Communications, Mike Germano, Chief Digital Officer at Vice Media, Tim Ringel, Global CEO at Reprise Media, and Gabe Greenberg, CEO & Co-Founder at GABBCON.

MAD Network's core objective is to create a network of decentralized advertising tools that enables direct transactions between advertisers and publishers. The network was developed by MadHive, a software startup which builds blockchain solutions for the programmatic advertising industry.

For advertisers this means greater transparency and innovative opportunities to use their first-party data and establish new customer connections. Publishers will be able to grow their margins and better understand their audiences.

"We are strong believers in MadHive, and are excited to support the MAD Network because it leverages an existing business with a blockchain-based product and active customers," said Bo Shen, Founder of Fenbushi Capital. "MAD Network has demonstrated that ad tech is ready for decentralization."

"In 2000, I co-founded Naked Communications which was built on the premise that media buying should not be based on percentage of media fees and side deals, but based on creative strategy with the best interests of the client as the highest priority," said MT Carney, CEO and Founding Partner of Untitled Worldwide LLC. "The MAD Network is poised to be the next generation of that vision, through the introduction of blockchain technology."

In addition to the naming of its Advisory Board, MAD Network announced they have engaged strategic advisory firm MediaLink to help increase awareness and adoption of blockchain technology across the ad tech and marketing sectors.

"Blockchain, and the token economy specifically, may be one of the most important technological advancements to impact the advertising industry today," said Michael Kassan, Chairman & CEO at MediaLink. "The work MAD Network is doing in this area will facilitate aligned incentives and more transparent attribution, while creating a fair ad buying environment, which benefits both advertisers and publishers. We are very excited to work with them and help change the ad industry for the better."

ABOUT MAD Network 
The MAD Network is a distributed ad tech ecosystem designed to minimize the role of intermediaries and return lost value to advertisers and publishers. The MAD Network aims to cut costs and optimize ad placement by facilitating trustless data exchange, effectively  providing an alternative to the duopoly of Facebook and Google. By establishing a strong decentralized framework for future ad tech applications, the MAD Network will enable the accelerated creation of blockchain-based programmatic advertising tools. MAD is based in the United States and Singapore, with offices in New York City. For more information, please visit https://madnetwork.io/.

ABOUT MadHive 
In a time when cost-efficiencies and transparency are top of mind for marketers and publishers blockchain provides an unprecedented opportunity to authenticate the true value of transactions in the ad tech ecosystem. At the center of this ecosystem sits MadHive, a data management platform using blockchain to establish a more fair, accurate and efficient exchange of ad impressions and data. The MadHive platform is 100 percent transparent on both fees and auction dynamics. MadHive uses blockchain to securely connect inventory sources, data sources and buyers together in a network where trust is governed in code. MadHive is headquartered in New York.

Advertisements were once purchased and negotiated by humans through an inefficient, unreliable process. Then, the digital revolution enabled programmatic advertising, which automated ad purchasing but still has shortcomings.

Now, blockchain technology is upending the world of advertising once again, thanks to companies that are using blockchains to resolve the challenges and inefficiencies that are associated with traditional programmatic advertising.

A Brief History of Ad Buying


Before the digital revolution and the advent of the internet, the only way for advertisers to purchase ad space from publishers was for humans to negotiate contracts manually. This approach was inefficient and difficult to scale. An advertiser or publisher can only negotiate so many contracts in a day, and the time required to discuss, sign and implement a contract manually is not insignificant.

In more recent years, computers have made it possible to automate ad buying by having software do much of the work. Humans still have to plan ad campaigns, of course, and design the actual advertisements. But programmatic advertising removes the tedium of having to purchase ad space manually.

In a broad sense, programmatic advertising has been around for years through platforms like AdWords , which connects advertisers to content publishers automatically. However, AdWords still requires advertisers to sign up manually, so the ad buying process is not completely automatic. If you adopt a narrower definition of programmatic advertising, the term applies only to situations where the ad buying process is fully automated. Google (among other companies) offers that as well , as a newer type of advertising solution.

The Challenges of Programmatic Advertising

Whether you use a solution like AdWords or more advanced programmatic advertising platforms, the process is prone to certain challenges.

The greatest is that, although programmatic advertising is much more efficient than manual ad buying, the process usually requires the services of a middleman. In the case of AdWords, for example, people who want to run ads don't buy directly from the website owners on which the ads will appear. Instead, advertisers pay Google, which in turn places ads for them. The requirement of a middleman is inefficient from a cost standpoint for both advertisers and the content publishers whose sites host ads.

In addition, programmatic advertising is sometimes subject to fraud. The Interactive Advertising Bureau found that as much as $8.2 billion is wasted on fraud and other flaws in conventional digital advertising processes.

Finally, programmatic advertising as most organizations use it today makes it difficult to measure campaign effectiveness. The main metrics available for tracking ad performance on a website are clicks and page views. Correlating these metrics closely with performance is challenging at best.

A Blockchain-Based Approach to Ad Management: The MAD Example

Blockchain technology can resolve many of these challenges. To illustrate how blockchain is being put to use in this space, consider the example of the MAD Network , which is building a blockchain-based ad management solution that is designed to benefit advertisers and content publishers alike.

One key innovation of the MAD Network is the creation of an ad server that uses smart contracts to allow advertisers and publishers to negotiate ad buying. Because the smart contracts are run on the blockchain, they can be enforced automatically.

The blockchain also eliminates the need for a centralized party to oversee ad buying. The MAD Network is building the ad server platform, but that is all; it is not a middleman in the ad management process. Advertisers and publishers are instead able to interact directly and automatically with agreements enforced through the blockchain.

The MAD Network also seeks to introduce innovation to the process of tracking ad effectiveness. The network will allow content publishers to sell anonymized data about user behavior on their sites and will allow advertisers to buy it. This feature provides an additional revenue opportunity for publishers, while enabling advertisers to gain more specific information about user behavior and impressions than they could by counting clicks and pageviews alone.

Because the ad buying processes on the MAD Network are all handled by software, not humans, it is easy to build decentralized applications or other tools that interact with the network for programmatic advertising.

In short, solutions like the MAD network are enabling a new generation of programmatic advertising opportunities, using the blockchain as their backbone. Advertisers and publishers alike will enjoy faster, more cost-efficient processes for buying and selling ad space.

The ad tech industry faces serious challenges . MAD Network , a new ad tech platform built by MadHive , is working to solve them using blockchain technology.

Built by a team of entrepreneurs with experience, not just in blockchain technology, but also in the SaaS, online gaming and digital media spaces, the MAD Network is an ad tech platform designed to disrupt the likes of Google and Facebook, whose platforms are constructed as walled gardens with no transparency giving them increasing control of the industry. The MAD Network's end-to-end ad tech solution consists of three components: MADnet Books, MADnet Core and MADnet Data.

Each part of the platform leverages blockchain technology to deliver services that help match advertisers who are looking to place digital ads with publishers who have ad space to sell.


Following is an in-depth look at how each part of the MAD Network works and which ad tech problems it solves.

MADnet Books

Most conventional ad tech platforms rely on payments in non-digital currency. Such payment systems lack transparency and can be manipulated to benefit the ad tech platform owners at the expense of advertisers and publishers.

In contrast, MADnet Books, the first platform component that the MAD Network plans to make available, is an open, decentralized payment rail that enables transparent financial transactions using blockchain assets.

MADnet Books is more than simply a means for advertisers and publishers to exchange payments. It does that, but because payments are recorded on the blockchain, MADnet Books also provides visibility and transparency into the way ad dollars are spent.

That means that advertisers and publishers are aware if third parties become involved in the ad placement process. In this way, MADnet Books sheds light on all of the third parties imposing fees on advertisers or publishers - a problem that contributes to the "disappearing ad dollar" issue on conventional ad tech platforms.

MADnet Books is powered by MADtoken, an ERC20 token based on Ethereum. Payments are enforced automatically via smart contracts, which prevent fraud and penalize untrustworthy behavior.

The token economy is an important tool in the MADNetwork, which is designed to flip the market dynamics for the middle layer of the ad tech industry. Doing so will make it more profitable to be in business and to serve the interests of buyers and sellers, which is not always the case in today's supply chain. For the buyer, this results in greater reach for the cost, while publishers actually lower the margin compression, which currently plagues the digital advertising ecosystem.

MADnet Core

Matching advertisers seeking to place an ad with publishers who are selling ad space suitable for the advertiser is challenging. Traditionally, ad tech platforms have performed this work using closed-source software whose algorithms are known only to the platform owner. Here, again, it is difficult for advertisers and publishers to determine why a particular ad placement decision was made or even to measure its effectiveness.

MADnet Core, the ad server and exchange within the MAD Network, takes a different approach to ad placement. MADnet Core implements a decentralized, blockchain-based process for generating ad pairings. In order for an ad to be placed with a publisher, a sufficient number of nodes on the network must agree that the advertiser-publisher match is valid based on the network's consensus rules.

This decentralized approach has several benefits. For one, it helps to ensure that ad placement is performed quickly. Because MADnet Core is a distributed, decentralized ad server and exchange, it is not subject to the types of bottlenecks or failures that can impact a centralized ad server.

In addition, by requiring validation of ad pairings by a distributed network, MADnet Core prevents fraudulent and ineffective matches. Attempts to manipulate pairings, or place an ad in a way that violates the rules set by advertisers and publishers, will be overridden by the network.

MADnet Data

On conventional ad tech platforms, not all meaningful data about the performance of an ad is shared with advertisers. Instead, the benchmarks that ads are paid out on are typically based on primitive panel-based metrics, such as rote summaries of pageviews for a website hosting an ad. The way the system is set up now, it is quite difficult to measure the true impact of an ad campaign when the currency a campaign is traded on is outdated or biased, such is the case with Facebook, which is consistently called out for "grading their own homework."

MADnet Data, a data management platform that will be integrated into the MAD Network, is designed to solve this challenge. MADnet Data provides an opportunity for publishers to collect rich, detailed data about ad performance and exchange it with advertisers. In most cases, the data will be anonymized in order to protect the privacy of ad viewers.

MADnet Data provides an additional revenue stream opportunity for publishers, who can sell ad data in addition to ad space. It also increases advertisers' visibility into the ad ecosystem, and - because of transparent data exchanges that are secured using multi-signature cryptographic keys - it prevents third parties from selling ad data to an advertiser's competitors without the advertiser's knowledge.

Conclusion

The MAD Network is more than an ad exchange. It is a complete ad tech platform built using blockchain technology. Using a decentralized architecture, it ensures transparency and restores fair cost margins for advertisers and publishers - all with the goal to disrupt conventional ad tech.

In a world where online advertising media gets more profitable and substantial, innovation is stifled by those that control access to effective data. This data reveals the true profitability of certain publishers and exposes trends that could save ad purchasers while improving campaign performance. Currently the world of affordable advertising is overrun by a man in the middle syndrome that afflicts both publishers and ad purchasers.

A remedy for this exists in machine learning algorithms services that places ads for the advertiser, but this solution is often more expensive than most campaigns. To be effective and in budget, most campaigns do not utilize this option.

Announced on the first of November, the MAD Network a subsidiary of Madhive in partnership with BTC Labs is utilizing blockchain technology aligned with machine learning technology to provide affordable algorithm based services to advertisers. By doing so, the MAD network believes that it can disrupt the luxury advertising space.

Now, programmatic advertising makes a 33 billion dollar market. It is estimated to 45 billion by 2019. This along with Demand Side Platforms (or DSPs) that essentially bundle advertisement spaces across exchanges which lie in the hands of more intermediaries and social media advertising that creates a substantial market of growth that lies in the hands of a few companies like Google and Facebook.

Essentially the MAD Network believes that this data is the key to unlocking the power from what is called the walled garden, a metaphor for the power platform holders such as Google and Facebook have over advertising purchasers. Since purchasers don’t have access to data, they don’t have much power in the negotiating process. MAD Network wants to create a network that distributes this data to both publisher and advertiser for transparency in the industry.

The MAD Network will run in three components: MADnet Books, MADnet Data, and MADnet Core. MADnet Books will be the decentralized level where transactions are transacted and recorded. MADnet Books will have its own currency, MAD tokens that are used to transact on the platform, providing transparency across the network as to who transacted to whom.

MADnet Data serves as the hub for data for publishers and advertisers alike. Essentially, MADnet has replaced the middleman with a decentralized data distributor that allows for clear informed decisions on prices between parties.

Lastly, MADnet core is the underlying blockchain system that groups advertisers and publishers together using what is called proof of real work. Proof of real work is an algorithm that along with artificial intelligence decentralizes the machine learning service for advertisers by directly matching ads with publishers and providing ad services.

The ERC-20 MAD Token will be available for crowd sale on the fourteenth of this month. With a price of a .25 USD per token, only one hundred million tokens will go on sale making the hard cap $25 million.

Digital technology should make the advertising business more efficient. But it has not — at least not from the perspective of companies that place ads or the content publishers who sell ad space to them. Laden with middlemen and clouded by convoluted, proprietary ad placement platforms, the modern digital advertising industry faces serious challenges.



New York–based MadHive is on a mission to solve them. Using blockchain technology and smart contracts, MadHive is constructing an ad tech platform, called the MAD Network, that reduces the power of the  middlemen in ad tech and brings buyers and sellers closer together.




At the same time, the MAD Network is designed to restore transparency to the ad tech industry. By recording information on the blockchain, encrypting it and making it available to advertisers with the requisite permissions, the MAD Network prevents fraud and ensures that advertisers can trace exactly how their money is being spent. Publishers can also sell data over the blockchain to help advertisers understand consumer behavior and plan ad campaigns more effectively.

The Problems With Advertising Today
Software tools can automate most of the work required to match an advertiser looking to place an ad with a publisher who has ad space to sell. However, the platforms that currently connect advertisers to publishers operate as “walled gardens,” in which only the platform owners — as opposed to advertisers and publishers — can understand how dollars are spent and information is exchanged.


This isn’t a problem that affects only small-time advertisers and publishers. It impacts organizations as large as The Guardian, a major British newspaper that is suing an ad tech company over allegations that the company’s proprietary ad placement service imposed “secret commissions” on the publisher and obscured information that would have helped the newspaper secure a fairer share of profits from advertisers.


Put simply, advertising dollars “disappear” as they flow down the supply chain from advertisers to publishers. Middlemen soak up a majority of the revenue.

How Mad Network Fixes Ad Tech
A better approach to ad tech is possible. MadHive is leading the way by building the MAD Network, a blockchain-based ad tech solution. The MAD Network is a complete ad tech platform that consists of several components, each of which solves an important challenge for advertisers, publishers or both.

MADnet Books
MADnet Books is a blockchain-based payment system. MADnet Books does more than simply enable transactions, however. Because it is built on the blockchain, it facilitates decentralized, transparent revenue streams. Ad tech dollars can’t disappear when they are recorded on the blockchain — nor can advertisers and publishers be misled about the way money is being spent. The transparency that MADnet Books provides is just as important as the core payment functionality.

MADnet Books is powered by MADtoken, the protocol’s native token. The token economy is an important tool in the MADNetwork, which aims to flip the market dynamics for the middle layer. By doing so, MADNetwork will make it more profitable to be in business and serve the interest of buyers and sellers, which is not always the case in today’s supply chain. For the buyer this results in greater reach for the cost, while publishers actually lower the margin compression that currently plagues the digital advertising ecosystem.

MADnet Data
A significant amount of value within the ad tech industry lies in the data that digital ad platforms create. Traditionally, this data has remained in the hands of the middlemen who control the platforms. They don’t typically share it with advertisers; instead, they may sell it to advertisers’ competitors to generate additional revenue.

On the MAD Network, however, data will be shared thanks to MADnet Data, a decentralized data management platform. MADnet Data will enable advertisers and publishers to share data about ad performance and engagement directly with each other, in a secure, peer-to-peer fashion regulated by permissions and access control. Such data sharing can help to generate additional revenue streams for publishers while providing advertisers with deeper insight into the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. Here, again, it all boils down to transparency.

MADnet Core
MADnet Core is the server that matches advertisers to publishers for the purpose of placing ads. This is not just another ad server, however. Like the other parts of the MAD Network, MADnet Core operates in a decentralized fashion, with the network performing the work of finding out which publishers are a good match for which ads.
Because of this decentralized approach, no single party can control or manipulate the way ads are served. The core functionality of ad tech — matching advertisers with publishers — will remain open and transparent.

Token Sale
The MAD Network remains under very active development. MADnet Books is slated to be the first platform component to be completed, followed by MADnet Core and, later, MADnet Data.



To help support development of the MAD Network and offer the [Suspicious link removed]munity an opportunity to invest in a platform that is poised to disrupt the ad tech industry from top to bottom, the MAD Network plans to host a token launch on November 30, 2017.

BTC Media, the largest media group in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, announced the launch of BTC Labs, a venture studio focusing on launching and incubating blockchain applications for the digital media industry on September 25, 2017. 

BTC Labs, in turn, introduced Storyboard Ventures, a venture financing arm of the organization, seeded with $2 million to fund forward-thinking and promising media projects. According to BTC Media, Storyboard Ventures will be vigorously searching for those entrepreneurs who are “building use cases that leverage decentralization to disrupt longstanding inefficiencies” within the digital media industry.

“The internet drastically altered how we consume and distribute information, but the media industry has failed to adapt its underlying business model,” Jeremy Kandah, Storyboard Venture’s Portfolio Manager, said in a statement.

“Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the way that digital information is transacted, creating a host of new monetization models and connecting content creators directly with consumers. Storyboard Ventures will support the projects and pioneers shaping this media landscape of the future.”

On November 1, 2017, BTC Labs announced their second project, the MAD Network, a decentralized ecosystem for the ad tech industry designed to return lost value to advertisers and publishers. The MAD Network will become the programmatic advertising platform within BTC Labs’ decentralized media suite, a collection of blockchain-based tools for the media industry.

BTC Labs is working closely with the MAD Network to develop its technical architecture, as well as advising them on their upcoming token sale, which will take place on November 30th, 2017.

“The MAD Network is one example of the suite of decentralized media applications that BTC Labs will support through research, development and funding,” Tyler Evans, CEO of BTC Labs, said to Bitcoin Magazine. “It is a perfect use case for distributed ledger technology because it takes the value that is traditionally captured by middlemen and brokers in the digital advertising ecosystem and instead, redistributes that value to the stakeholders in the network.”

“BTC Labs has been instrumental in the development of the MAD Network,” Adam Helfgott, Project Lead at the MAD Network, said. “We’ve been able to leverage their breadth of expertise and knowledge in the blockchain space to help formulate our development plan and go-to-market strategy.”

The first project backed by the venture studio was Po.et, a protocol utilizing and implementing blockchain technology and timestamped metadata to accelerate solutions for the publishing industry. BTC Labs developed the core architecture behind Po.et and helped guide the organization through a successful token sale process. As Bitcoin Magazine is a brand of BTC Media, all content of the publication is verified via Po.et.

Blockchain technology has allowed for increased innovation, resulting in more equitable ways of sharing data and exchangin value. These new benefits of blockchain technology can be also implemented within the media industry to tackle numerous issues, including intellectual property registration, content monetization, licensing, ticketing and ad-tech.

BTC Labs will focus on both the blockchain and media industries with an aim to support disruptive, open-sourced and decentralized networks. It recognizes that, in a decentralized network, every stakeholder can retain the fair value of their work. Thus, the innovation studio will develop decentralized networks to empower not just content creators but also brands and consumers

MadHive -- which develops blockchain technology for media and advertising, along with The Mad Foundation -- will generate the sale of "Mad tokens," a cryptocurrency to support an open blockchain network for the advertising industry.

The network’s machine-learning strategy will initially focus on connected TV ad inventory and eventually will move to linear television, beginning with regional and local, and then add other online media, said Adam Helfgott. CEO at MadHive and project lead at the Mad Network. He said the company is in the process of raising $25 million in Bitcoin to fund the development of the Mad Network.

"The currency market cap is about half a trillion dollars," Helfgott said. "It's small in comparison to global finance, but it's still in its early stages."

A blockchain, which acts as a peer-to-peer network, facilitates the exchange of data without the need for third-party verification. The move will give advertisers more opportunities to establish new connections with consumers, and publishers will gain insight to better understand their audiences.

The companies will use the funds to build the blockchain that supports the ad transactions. The network will use Ethereum to secure the financial transactions. 

The company plans to distribute about 220 million tokens.

Helfgott believes this technology will change the media industry. "For every dollar spent on linear television that doesn't go through digital, about 80 cents goes to the publisher," he said. "As soon as I put that show on Hulu or anywhere online, I get 20 cents."

This gives Google and Facebook an incentive to enter the television space, which will create competition. Blockchain technology will help to redefine the economics, Helfgott said.

The Mad Network consists of three businesses: Books, Core, and Data. Books, an automated bookkeeping network, runs on top of Ethereum to house insertion orders. Core is an ad server, and Data supports a data management platform (DMP).

Government regulations could introduce challenges. The United States does not yet have many regulations, but South Korea is implementing new bitcoin guidelines that would prohibit minors from tom investing in cryptocurrencies and possibly taxing capital gains made from bitcoin trades.

South Korea, which banned initial coin offerings in September, is the third-largest market for bitcoin, and the biggest for bitcoin rivals Ethereum and Litecoin. The move follows bitcoin’s debut on a U.S. exchange, according to one report.

NEW YORK, Dec. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MadHive™, a leader in the ad tech space and a developer of blockchain solutions for the media and advertising industry, along with The MAD Foundation, announced today the opening of their Token Generation Event (TGE) to create an open blockchain network, called the MAD Network.

The MAD Network is a decentralized ad tech ecosystem designed to minimize the role of intermediaries and return lost value to both advertisers and publishers. Leveraging MadHive's status as one of the largest OTT ad buyers in the world, the network's strategy focuses on a TV-first rollout, beginning with regional and local advanced television. This is an $18B/yr market, where MadHive has already gained traction through 46 television stations in 38 markets.

With MAD Network, ad transactions are completely open and accessible by all relevant parties. Blockchain technology gives confidence in the veracity of the data and MADtoken is escrowed to activate a payment channel for the accounting, fulfillment, and instant reconciliation of ad delivery.

For advertisers, this will mean more innovative opportunities to engage their data and establish new customer connections, while publishers will be able to grow their brands and better understand their audiences.

"A token economy for the ad industry will flip the market dynamics, making it actually serve the interest of buyers and sellers, which is not always the case in today's supply chain," said Adam Helfgott, CEO of MadHive™. "For the buyer, this results in more working media dollars, while publishers enjoy lower margin compression which currently plagues the digital advertising ecosystem."

The price per MADtoken will begin at 0.25 cents USD. The MAD Network's fundraising goal is to raise $25 million with an implied market capitalization of $55 million. The money raised through the token sale will be initially deployed into MADnet Books, the MAD Network's decentralized payment rail.

There will be a total of 220,000,000 MADtokens which will be distributed as follows:

Community Token Sale (42%)
 
MAD Technologies Foundation (20%)
 
MAD Network Founding Team (10%)
 
MadHive™ Equity (10%)
 
Seed Round (8%)
 
Ecosystem Partners (4%)
 
TGE Expenses (3%)
 
Supervisor Nodes (2%)
 
Advisors (1%)
For more information about the TGE and the MAD Network token sale documentation please go to the MAD Network website and select "Resources" from the menu.

ABOUT MadHive™

MadHive™ is a next generation SSP/DMP that simplifies yield management for sellers by automatically connecting the dots between inventory and data. This layer is 100% transparent on both fees and auction dynamics. MadHive™ gives buyers better quality data and an easy buying interface to achieve media plan goals. MadHive™ uses a blockchain network  to achieve these goals, securely connecting inventory sources, data sources and buyers together - bringing supply and demand closer through a secure cryptographic protocol. MadHive™ is headquartered in New York.

Mad Hive is looking to remove the costly middlemen from the advertising proposition and disrupt what it refers to as Facebook's and Google's "Walled Gardens." They say that a lack of transparency in the ad space allows third parties to get away with unfair behavior such as auction price manipulation in which prices and bids are withheld, something the blockchain startup hopes to change by removing the friction in this market.

The Mad Network is comprised of several moving parts, including MADnet Books, MADnet Core and MADnet data, all of which will be driven by the MADtoken that is sold during the upcoming ICO. MADnet Books is a private chain designed to expose unscrupulous activities in transactions, MADnet Core is a decentralized ad server and exchange and MADnet Data allows the one-time sharing of consumer data. Publishers on the platform decide if they want to be paid in cryptocurrencies or fiat money.

Company Behind Upcoming MADtoken ICO is Cash Flow Positive
While the upcoming MADtoken ICO is not the only advertising startup on the blockchain, there are some features that will resonate with investors. For instance, Mad Hive, the company behind the Mad Network, is operational and cash flow positive, according to executives at the company. Now it's just a matter of convincing those clients that a decentralized ad network on the blockchain will be more beneficial to them than a centralized platform.

MADToken ICO Details
The Mad Network is accepting payment for its tokens in the upcoming ICO in BTC and ETH. They will direct all of the proceeds from the token sale toward the development of the Mad Network across R&D, business development, marketing and upcoming ICO-related expenses. The Mad Network will rely on MADtoken miners for the further generation of its cryptocurrency, details for which are expected to be unveiled in Q1 2018. The upcoming ICO begins on Dec. 14.

Po.et (POE): Recently cryptocurrencies are mostly cornered by the investors. But the price predictions of certain coins were unknown. For longterm investment, it is better to invest in cheap coins which one day will attain a certain growth by its development. In that wat Po.et (POE) is cheap and steadily developing coin.

Po.et has increased gradually in the past week. So in the near future, it is hoped to gain more profit for the investors. Po.et is growing fast in the past two days. Today on December 30, it has raised up to 122.83% at the price of $0.125.

Po.et (POE)

Po.et (POE) Future Predictions
The MAD Network has announced that they have an official partnership with Po.et. together they aimed to build a decentralized infrastructure for a more efficient digital media supply chain. As they have a good partnership, it will definitely reach a good position in the market map and it is better to invest on Po.et (POE) this time which has a huge improvement in 2018.

About Po.et (POE)
Po.et is a blockchain-based platform designed for managing the ownership, attribution and licensing of digital media assets. Po.et (POE) utilizes the blockchain (that’s right, the same old blockchain every other coin is using) to track ownership and attribution of digital assets uploaded by content creators.

Where to buy Po.et (POE)?
Po.et can be traded in popular exchange services like Binace, HitBTC, EtherDelta, OEX, and COSS. The price of Po.et can be followed on the link Po.et (POE) Live Chart.

But tulip mania-like investor fever notwithstanding, Bitcoin is far less interesting than its underlying technology, the blockchain. Blockchain is, essentially, a highly decentralized, fast and relatively secure way to track and transfer any valuable digital thing while preventing it from being duplicated without permission. That latter part is important, because it reasserts the concept of scarcity into the digital chain. To boot, you can attach all kinds of information to the valuable thing and track what happens with that information. Basically, digital money and goods become smart. It also makes possible online commerce for the several billion people who have mobile phones but no bank account.

For entertainment and media, blockchain could help fight piracy, build better customer relationships, create better content, transform marketing and simplify distribution and payments, all while cutting costs.

For example, Mo the Publisher could create cool videos, then sell them directly to customers without needing to pay a credit-card company several percent of his business. Because he would know more about how much and how long his customers are watching his videos, Mo could make more content that they enjoy.

Blockchain could encrypt the videos so they aren’t endlessly copied and pirated. At the same time, a customer could resell a video, if Mo let them, and Mo could also get a piece of the sale. And Mo could cut out middlemen in his ad sales operations, and handle transactions directly with brands, which in turn could better track what’s being seen, and by whom. Already, companies such as Madhive’s MAD Network are popping up to decentralize programmatic advertising and connect brands and publishers.

Also of interest: Initial Coin Offerings, essentially the cryptocurrency equivalent of an initial public offering of stock. Startups are starting to bypass venture capital and public stock markets, selling equity through sales of blockchain-backed “tokens” to a broader class of investors.

ICOs could shift how publishers operate, giving them new ways to fund operations by selling small pieces of their companies to actual customers instead of just moneymen. That could create a very different, much more invested relationship between reader and publisher.

Of course, there’s still plenty of traditional money out there chasing opportunities in online news and entertainment, despite layoffs at Buzzfeed (and ESPN) and Mashable’s sale at a deep discount. Just this week, for instance, Tubefilter reported Group Nine had raised another $40 million to finance still more video.

I talked recently with Mychal Simka, a co-founder of SuperdopeTV.net, an online-video startup using the SEC’s relatively new equity-crowdfunding rules to raise money. The company is selling the equity shares through Microventures, a joint venture of First Democracy VC and crowdfunding site Indiegogo.

“Everything is becoming more accessible. It’s becoming decentralized,” said Simka. His company has already raised about $175,000 on Microventures, more than triple its minimum goal. “Entertainment in general is becoming decentralized but it’s (affecting) every business, every sector. Investing, fundraising, is one field that happens to have a need for it.”

The opportunities are bracing for smart entrepreneurs and creators trying to finance and run digital media companies. But all of this is happening just as Pai’s FCC is trying to repeal net neutrality rules that have kept the Internet largely accessible to even the smallest media companies. Critics rightly worry that repeal would hand control of the Internet to a handful of largely unregulated companies, which then could decide what content and companies will flow through their Internet pipes, and at what price. Those giant Internet players even could use blockchain technologies, including their own cryptocurrency tokens, to further exert control.

In a post-Net neutrality world, Comcast could offer its Internet subscribers a bundle of digital news and information along with all of its NBCUniversal cable, broadcast and digital holdings, and without any bandwidth charges, while turning on the meter for everyone else. Comcast could even discount the bundle’s price for subscribers using its (not-yet-created) “Comcoin” cryptocurrency, while blocking access to competitors.

For the record, Comcast issued a statement this week saying it doesn’t block or disadvantage anyone on the Net. While true now, Comcast (or any other Internet provider) could change its mind and do so with impunity as it seeks to maximize profits with relatively little competition.

We’ve been through fights over net neutrality before, in 2015 and earlier. And even with Net neutrality in place, Web publishing has increasingly been dominated by Facebook and Google, which vacuum up the majority of all ad dollars, and ad growth.

I won’t rehash the pro-neutrality arguments here, but it’s back to the breach for Internet activists. Blockchain could be a wonderful new tool for connecting publishers with audiences and advertisers, but we need to make sure the FCC doesn’t disconnect nearly everyone from a vital, diverse and growing Internet.

The rise (and fall, and rise, etc.) of cryptcurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum brought mainstream attention to blockchain technology. And advertisers and online publishers hope blockchain-based ad buys could expose bad actors in digital media.
Despite the hype, however, the number of advertising dollars transacted through blockchain technology is near zero, and blockchain ad tech startups remain in closed beta and test phases.

Blockchain ad platforms must overcome a number of challenges before mass adoption, like getting conservative global brands to try out cryptocurrency tokens or convincing tech platforms to build for budgets that don’t exist yet.

Supply Chain Hopscotch

Blockchain technology is caught in a digital media paradox: Buyers don’t test platforms without inventory scale and media companies won’t add integrations without seeing demand.

Many blockchain ad startups began with brand deals, in part because brands have other potential use cases for blockchain tech, like tracking inventory from product supply chains.

With a blue-chip client in tow, all its supply chain partners will align for testing, said Will Luttrell, founder and CEO of blockchain ad platform Amino Payments and a co-founder of Integral Ad Science. T-Mobile is Amino’s only public brand partner, for instance, but it can audit all campaign tech and data contributors.

“The current bottleneck is platform integration,” Luttrell said, because exchanges and ad tech companies do most of the heavy lifting on software integrations.

DSPs are particularly difficult to corral because their engineering teams are back-logged and blockchain experimentation isn’t a priority, said Ken Brook, co-founder and CEO of the blockchain ad startup MetaX. “Though that’s shifting as DSPs start to see blockchain as a potential differentiator.”

The ad analytics company Kochava announced the blockchain development platform XCHNG earlier this month, and sees itself in pole position to develop a full-ecosystem blockchain solution because it has existing accounts and ad tech partners, said founder and CEO Charles Manning.

XCHNG won’t go live until late 2018 or even 2019, he said, but blockchain-first startups have “a huge burden even to get into demonstrating proof cycles.” And while scaling inventory is another mountainous task for blockchain startups, XCHNG has lined up Kochava supply partners like AppLift, Chartboost and AerServ (recently acquired by InMobi).

And others see agencies as the quickest route to marketing dollars. For instance, the blockchain platform MadHive has been transacting data for OTT campaigns via a partnership with its main client Tegna, a marketing services company.

Currencies

Blockchain adoption is plagued by daunting jargon – like talk of “decentralized nodes” and “immutable ledgers” – but a bigger challenge is the distrust of cryptocurrencies among potential partners.

Before blockchain growth can really take off, “there’s a major education process that needs to happen around currency,” said Manny Puentes, founder and CEO of blockchain ad tech company Rebel AI. Potential partners respond to the blockchain transparency pitch, he said, but if the discussion is bogged down in cryptocurrency people tend to tune out.

Major holding companies won’t pay for media with any kind of cryptocurrency, at least in the near term, Manning said. Yet, crypto tokens are necessary to execute actions on a blockchain, so vendors have to be able to convert their cryptocurrencies to hard dollars.

Amino has an internal cryptocurrency called Grain, each one-billionth of a penny, but talk with clients is anchored in US dollars.

Kochava’s XCHNG has one confirmed payment partner, Payability, to turn its platform tokens into dollars so clients never have to deal in cryptocurrency.

While most startups bury their internal tokens to avoid discomforting clients, others are eager to force the crypto conversation.

“The only way to change behavior of stakeholders is to change incentives,” said MadHive CEO Adam Helfgott about the decision to hold an initial coin offering and channel partners through its MADToken currency.

Companies trying to force legacy payment models onto a blockchain system are taking the easy route to product inferiority, Brooks said. “You’re not unlocking value if you don’t embrace the key aspects of the technology, and for blockchain you need to have the cryptoeconomics.”

Blockchain technology made big news in December thanks to the bitcoin cryptocurrency surging past $10,000 to a $20,000 peak, the launch of bitcoin futures in major exchanges, and the announcement that the Australian Stock Exchange will use blockchain technology for trade settlement. Blockchain could also start to be implemented in media and entertainment in 2018.

The beauty of blockchain technology is that it enables a digital marketplace that is both decentralized yet tamper-resistant. Transactions are recorded chronologically in a distributed ledger that is transparent to its participants, but encrypted so nobody can cheat by changing or faking transactions. Agreed business rules, logic, and contract terms can also be programmed to automate transactions, known as 'smart contracts'. (For more on how it works, see this Forbes tutorial-style article.)

To envision potential markets that are ripe for disruption in media and entertainment, you have to think of ones where participants would benefit from both security and transparency, like payments, funding, monetization, and contract enforcement.


Royalties

It is difficult to pay fairly for creative work in a digital world where it is easy to share and distribute copies, so royalty payment mechanisms are ripe for disruption. For example, music streaming sites and rights holders struggle to agree on compensation for trillions of song streams, leading to legal fights such as last Friday's $1.6 billion lawsuit against Spotify.

The Open Music Initiative (OMI), composed of 200 members including the three major labels Sony, Music, and Warner, as well as YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and Viacom, seeks to modernize royalty payment mechanisms. OMI revealed last week on CNBC that it's considering blockchain as a foundational technology.

The vision? A transparent blockchain-based ledger that contains music assets and their rights holders. Smart contracts can then automate royalty payments based on a song's consumption, including streaming.

Crowdfunding Of Creative Productions

2017 marked the uprising of blockchain start-ups across industries, often funded with initial coin offerings (ICOs). ICOs use cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to crowdfund new ventures.

Creative productions could also leverage ICOs for crowdfunding. In fact, Indiegogo just launched in mid-December its own ICO platform. So ICOs for films and other creative ventures could ramp up in 2018, contingent on how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) applies and imposes securities laws to ICOs.

A blockchain-based crowdfunding platform can securely record funding transactions that are transparent to all investors, allowing them to know real-time where they stand in the pecking order. Upon sale, licensing, or consumption of a creative asset, smart contracts can then automate payments to both rights holders and investors.

For example, iProdoos is a blockchain platform that launches in 2018 to enable aggregation of talent for premium TV & film production, and crowdfunding with traditional or crypto currency. This allows consumers to generate revenue from the projects they fund.

Digital Advertising

Despite the ability to target and personalize ads, the digital advertising ecosystem is pretty inefficient and opaque, to the extent that 40-70% of ad dollars can go to intermediaries. Developed in partnership with Nasdaq, NYIAX recently deployed a blockchain-based ad exchange platform that allows publishers and advertisers to efficiently trade advertising contracts. Richard Bush, Chief Product and Technology Officer, states: "With valuable experience in capital markets, NYIAX has a long-term vision to create a more financially rigorous model leveraging fin-tech best practices with advertising and media."

Madhive is also deploying an ad exchange targeting digital video content sites. Its CEO, Adam Helfgott, states: "Our platform enables ad-based monetization of video in a secure privacy-compliant way so a viewer's private information is shared only with an artificially-intelligent agent that pulls in relevant ads." This could come handy in the EU market, where new strict privacy laws go into effect in May 2018 that require companies to track and protect consumer data.

Distribution

Piracy is one of the main headaches that digital distribution brought to media and entertainment. Phil Gomes, blockchain thought leader at Edelman, states: "I personally believe that a lot of piracy comes from friction in the legal distribution mechanisms. Blockchain technology can enable more frictionless monetization of content to better compete with pirates." The key is to seamlessly match the legal user with the legally-purchased content, so that the payment mechanism is efficient and it is easier to compete with pirates, which by design don't process payments.

Clearly, from the examples above, blockchain is not just about digital currencies. And whether it's these or other ventures that succeed, all experts I talked to agree that 2018 will be a big year for blockchain in media and entertainment. Gomes stated: "2017 was full of corporate pilot projects to test applications of blockchain technology; 2018 will be the year when many of these will be deployed at scale."

We are entering a hype period for blockchain technology reminiscent of the Internet bubble, so it will be hard to distinguish between hype and true potential. So how to know where the real opportunities are?

Keith Montgomery, Vice-Chairman at CyberOi, a consultancy that guides iProdoos and other blockchain ventures like QuantM.one and Cryptowork, states:  "While in 2017 there were plenty of hype and ICOs, 2018 will be when the first business disruptions happen. The winners will focus on solving real business problems and use media effectively to create communities of mass adoption."

So stay tuned. If you are in media and entertainment, 2018 will be a year to closely monitor and possibly experiment or invest in blockchain innovation, if you haven't done so yet. Otherwise, you could be left behind.

Dr. Granados is the Director of the Institute for Entertainment, Media, and Culture at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. Follow him on Twitter, Forbes.

The digital advertising space is one that was meant to revolutionise advertising away from the smoke filled offices of the 1950s, but instead it has become a breeding ground for greedy middlemen.

Advertisers and content publishers face a quagmire of convoluted proprietary placement platforms that are easily manipulated and inefficient. However, Blockchain technology is aiming disrupt this industry as it has many others.

Making the MAD network
MadHive has set its sights on trying to clean up the advertising space, eliminating all the inefficiencies and money-drains that hang out between the content publishers and advertisers. Within the MAD Network, there is no need for intermediaries, and no need for their easily swayed proprietary ad placement services.

Advertising technology hit a ceiling soon after it became popularized, once middle men had found their way to drain the advertising dollars between an ad’s conception and publication. Now, the MAD Network aims to change all this by providing a complete platform, broken up into different components, each of which serves to replace existing legacy systems within the ad tech supply chain

Walled gardens
One of the biggest issues in digital advertising is the software that automates the matching of advertisements with open publisher inventory. This is not as fair and equal as it sounds because these platforms, as they stand, operate in somewhat of a walled garden. Platform owners, as opposed to content publishers or even advertisers, have full control over all of the data and value being exchanged throughout the advertising supply chain.

Breakdown of the MAD network
Inside the MAD Network, solutions exist for payments, ad serving, ad exchanges and data management.

MADnet Books: The Blockchain-based payment rail that allows network participants to exchange value within the network is MADnet Books. It is not just for transactions, it adds in a high level of transparency, enables decentralization, and keeps a record of where all the dollars are being spent. The MAD Network will have its own token to facilitate this process, MADtoken, which forms an economy integral to the new advertising platform network.

MADnet Data: Within digital advertising there is a large amount of data that is transmitted and exchanged within an ad network. Formerly, this content would also have been snapped up and owned by the platforms, but these middlemen disappear with the entrance of a Blockchain. This important and valuable data now becomes a usable commodity rather than a valuable by product that is siphoned off by the owners.

Within the MAD Network, MADnet Data will enable advertisers and publishers to share data about ad performance and engagement directly with each other, in a secure, peer-to-peer fashion regulated by permissions and access control.

MADnet Core: Finally, there needs to be some matching of advertisers and publishers when it comes to getting advertisements in front of targeted audiences. MADnet Core is a new proof-of-real-work Blockchain that will decentralize both the ad serving and ad matching functions. This Blockchain layer will aim to provide complete transparency for ad matching events within the network.

Great video diving deeper into the future of tv advertising combined with blockchain technology.

This project is going to be disruptive to the advertising world!

Adam Helgott CEO of Madhive is in the video!

and Konstantin Richter - Block Daemon

What makes their platform disruptive is other advertising companies are jamming a blockchain on top of the existing business model to shine a light on fraud.  Mad simply has a new business model that only blockchains can support.

Youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61d2VuwILM

Website:https://madnetwork.io/
             https://madhive.com/

They raised $7 million in the Phase 1 of their crowdsale for their tokens in 36 hrs. Find out when they announce Phase 3 of the crowdsale in their telegram group!

 Telegram:https://t.me/joinchat/GKMQ1hEqhtQDst2cdiiwUw