Commerce

Blockchain technology can potentially defeat ad fraud and blocking


Presented by Vreo


The digital advertising and gaming markets are in midst of rapid growth which is expected to continue in the foreseeable future. Namely, as VentureBeat reported in April, the gaming market is expected to hit $180.1 billion in revenues in 2021. Digital ad spending, on the other hand, is expected to hit $427.26 billion in 2022.

That being said, the intersection of those two industries doesn’t imply only synergies. In fact, ads targeting players suffer from several major issues.

First of all, the current in-game ads — especially on mobile — are quite intrusive. A potential solution to this issue is embedding ads in games. For instance, an in-game ad appearing on a virtual screen inside the game, or on a billboard in the virtual world.

Vreo, a blockchain startup based out of Frankfurt, Germany, is trying to do just this. A nice bonus provided by this solution is that the ad delivery mechanism also renders ads that are resistant to ad blockers — ad-blockers are estimated to have been the cause of a global loss in revenue of about $42 billion in 2017.

Advertising fraud

Juniper Research estimated that yearly losses experienced by advertisers due to ad fraud will hit $44 billion by 2022. Vreo attempts to tackle the issue by tracking and evaluating and then writing onto the blockchain ad tracking data. Storing this data on the blockchain is meant to ensure that no manipulation can easily take place.

The ads are served using Hashes and IDs identifying the user, advertisement, advertiser, and game. Such a system renders ad fraud far more difficult than it is with traditional systems.

Developer’s difficulty in obtaining game funding

Funding is a severe issue in the game development space. Difficulty in obtaining funds often limits the creativity of smaller studios and indie teams. According to Vreo, those difficulties are partly caused by a lack of market connections. The company is trying to make funding more accessible with its marketplace, dubbed the “Funding Gateway.”

Funding Gateway is a funding platform where software developers can launch their own (mini-) initial coin offerings (ICOs) through it, using Vreo’s expertise and market intelligence gathered by the company.

The marketplace, which is meant to connect software developers with brands, advertisers, and gamers, will also be moderated. This means that the projects will be selected and a financial forecast will be provided before their listing on the Funding Gateway.

ICO & Partnerships

The public sale will start in February, on Republic and Cobinhood. The total number of MeritCoin (VREO) tokens available are 390 million at a price of $0.05 per token. The accepted cryptocurrency is Ethereum, and the price in ETH will be set in under a day before the ICO begins.

High-profile partnerships have been defined as critical for increasing the credibility of an ICO. This may be the reason why Vreo poses particular emphasis on Iconiq Lab.

Iconiq Lab supports Vreo with tokenization services, legal frameworks for ICOs and its network in the cryptocurrency space. The company also claims partnerships with IBM, which grants Vreo access to its AI services; Cisco, a network infrastructure company; and Wayra Accelerator, an initiative by the telecommunications company Telefonica.

The company also reportedly partnered with game producers TheGameStormStudios and Pixowl, whose games are played by millions of players every month, according to Vreo.

Tokenomics

The project makes use of two different tokens. One — ViewToken (VIT) — is an internal system token that is meant only for internal use and can’t be traded on exchanges. The other one — MeritCoin (VREO) — is a utility token which is supposed to be locked up in a smart contract to get access to some features.

The features that are locking up this token are quite useful ones — for instance lowering the transaction fees, access to market intelligence and voting rights. For this reason, this mechanic should reduce the velocity of this token by quite a lot.


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