Blockchain for Advertising

The advertising industry is constantly searching for new ways to innovate and improve. Blockchain technology has the potential to bring a new level of trust and transparency to the advertising ecosystem by improving the efficiency of digital advertising campaigns, providing more transparency in the supply chain, and increasing trust among advertisers, publishers, and users, especially when trust is unlikely. However, the use of blockchain in the advertising industry also raises concerns around privacy and data protection. The targeted nature of ads can reveal personal interests and characteristics of individuals, and recording ad deliveries on-chain may conflict with privacy policies. It is important to consider the potential risks and benefits of blockchain in advertising to ensure that the technology is used in an ethical and responsible manner. The proposed Research Topic aims to fill this gap by focusing on identifying and evaluating advertising-focused distributed ledger technologies in the advertising markets.

The goal of this Special Issue is to investigate the potential of blockchain (or other distributed ledger) technology in the advertising market, with a specific focus on emphasizing, evaluating, and contraposing use cases where blockchain can bring value. We aim to examine the potential privacy concerns and scalability issues associated with the use of blockchain in the advertising industry. We invite both academic contributions that conceptualize the application of blockchain in the advertising industry, as well as technical papers that outline the challenges and benefits of real-world implementation, including recent advances such as zero knowledge proof and layer-2 technologies.

The eligible research may build on the recommendations made by Joo et al. (2022), consider the findings on use cases of Stallone et al. (2023, forthcoming), and explore potential solutions for privacy concerns (Marthews and Tucker (2022)) and scalability (Cong et al. (2023)) of using blockchain in the marketing function. The goal is to provide insights to stakeholders of the digital advertising ecosystem and to academic scholars into the future of advertising-focused distributed ledger technologies and how they can be utilized to improve the transparency and trust within the advertising ecosystem, while addressing potential privacy concerns and scalability issues.

The scope of this Research Topic is to explore the potential of blockchain technology in the advertising market and identify specific use cases where it can bring value. The research should also emphasize, evaluate, and contrapose technological and managerial benefits and challenges of implementing blockchain in the advertising industry, including privacy concerns related to it. The contributions should provide insights into the possible future of the advertising-focused distributed ledger technologies.

We welcome submissions of original research articles, review articles, case studies, and opinion pieces that address one or more of the following themes:

1. Use cases of blockchain technology in the advertising market
2. Benefits and challenges of implementing blockchain in the advertising industry, including privacy concerns
3. Technical and managerial aspects of implementing blockchain in the advertising industry
4. Scalability of existing pilot projects in the advertising market
5. Future of advertising-focused distributed ledger technologies

Keywords: Advertising Markets, Blockchain, Distributed Ledgers, Advertising Technology, Advertising Innovation, Advertising Ecosystem, Advertising-focused Distributed Ledger Technologies

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.