Comcast’s Freewheel ad server business has been developing a blockchain-based data onboarding service called Blockgraph since December 2018.
Blockgraph general manager Jason Manningham said the system is finally ready for a broader push into the TV advertising industry.
Last year, Blockgraph ran the first campaign to directly match marketers’ first-party CRM data with TV distributors’ targetable data, without a third-party on-border.
Blockgraph’s current challenge is to allow multiple potential broadcasters to pool their audience data to target a single advertiser.
The company’s business has shifted somewhat to keep up with broader trends in the market. When Blockgraph was founded in 2018 at the height of the blockchain business boom, the company was marketed as a blockchain-based product. Now, Blockgraph is positioned as a data onboarding and clean room technology, similar to how platforms like Google and Amazon consolidate audience data with marketing segments.
AdExchanger spoke with Manningham about Blockgraph's future plans.
AdExchanger: Where is Blockgraph at right now in terms of launching a full commercial product?
Jason Manningham: Over the past year, we have been focused on moving from the proof-of-concept stage to the early stages of platform adoption, having completed a series of successful pilot projects.
Our priority right now is to establish a critical deterministic identity layer that will underpin our platform and the activities we need, and that is when we can demonstrate how to reach the right audience while respecting privacy. This is a two-way system where we add identity and delivery partners, which allows us to build advanced advertising capabilities.
Advanced advertising features?
Some of the basic ones include targeting and frequency capping.
The first pilot was data matching on a peer-to-peer basis, meaning advertisers matched their customer data with MVPDs. [cable or satellite service providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Cox] You can measure the size of your target audience and optimize it for linear or addressable video environments.
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This year's pilot, now that several distributors are involved, has put a lot of emphasis on cross-platform functionality – taking specific audience segments, matching them across distributors and then passing that data to an ad management platform like FreeWheel to optimize campaigns across platforms, rather than necessarily doing one-to-one ad deals between buyers and broadcasters.
What kind of partner do you need right now?
I can't name names right now, but the types of companies we're talking about here are doing distribution on television, and by that, of course, I mean MVPDs. [Charter, ViacomCBS and Comcast sibling company NBCUniversal are Blockgraph’s public partners.]
Additionally, there are other distributors in the broader video ecosystem, such as OTT services and smart TV manufacturers themselves, and perhaps publishers will launch their own consumer-facing video apps.
The key is to add partners who can authenticate users or viewers and households.
Are “identity” and “distribution” effectively the same, or might a given partner provide one but not the other?
Some companies in the ecosystem may provide audience segments or inventory — these are trusted third-party services — but we're focused on distributors in the TV space in terms of being able to establish the foundation for the identity layer.
The distributor controls the activation of when and where the ads are delivered, but they also have the infrastructure in place to use viewer data, so in that sense identity and distribution are inextricably linked in the form of cable subscriptions and direct relationships with households.
What is your revenue model?
We are a subscription-based business and there are software license fees to join the network. These costs vary depending on the type and size of your company's data.
Our goal is to make it very economical: as we grow the value and use cases, we want to keep the price low and fixed, meaning as we scale, it becomes cheaper and more effective compared to current providers who charge a percentage of media or per impression.
So you're like a data onboarding company?
This is a peer-to-peer version of data onboarding, meaning that in the case of a company like LiveRamp, both parties onboard their data and audience files to the third-party company, which then sends back a synthetic ID that works with both parties.
Blockgraph replicates that, but instead of sending the data to a trusted third party, they run our software within their systems to anonymize the audience records. From there, the data is collated and shared across our common ID layer.
Another key difference is that we provide a household-based identity. Most digital identities are person-based, but TV and streaming video media still transact at the household level.
Is “blockchain” still part of your selling point?
That's a valid question.
The name “Blockgraph” comes from the idea of building identity for each block. There has been some confusion about this. However, much of the technology we use is inspired by decentralized blockchain-based systems. Because we use a decentralized database and encryption, the identity layer is spread throughout the system, but data is not visible to other parties without the owner's permission.
One reason we couldn’t rely on blockchain is that we need to be able to identify individuals and the data and impressions attached to them, because there are “right to be forgotten” laws if people want to be removed from the system.
This is a common problem with TV industry collaborative initiatives, but why should any company other than Comcast be involved in the network?
The answer is twofold: first, our system is decentralized and can be hosted by any distributor. We don't see the data; distributors run the software on their own systems with full transparency. This is something you don't get in the world of black box algorithms and platforms.
Comcast also has a vested interest in ensuring that the TV industry grows and thrives based on data-driven advertising. Comcast is a leader in the FreeWheel and addressability initiatives.
Television is currently being redefined and what we want to do is apply the benefits of traditional TV’s reach and frequency management combined with the best of digital, which means ROI metrics and optimization.
