Blis, the global pioneer in advanced location data technology, backed by Unilever, Endeit and Beringea, today announced a pilot platform to add transparency across the data ecosystem.
Digital advertising commonly relies on disparate data sets to help identify audiences likely to buy products and services. Marketers increasingly face pressures to comply with data privacy regulations, understand where it came from, and to account for the performance of data relative to its costs.
The platform is in response to these increased industry challenges around transparency and verification of data, including location and demographic data, and will run on the IBM Blockchain Platform.
Geographical data enables digital advertisers to create more targeted ads by identifying specific demographics and better understand consumer behavior. With this new platform, the source of the geographical data is written to the blockchain, providing advertisers and data providers with greater confidence in the provenance of the data, by giving them access to a transparent blockchain that is immutable and verified.
The pilot partner on the platform, Unilever, will help evaluate and refine the service Blis can provide to advertisers and data providers moving forward.
“Unilever are committed to partnering with organisations which create better digital infrastructure. This new capability is an important step towards transparency and clarity in data provenance and compliance across our global activity,” said Luis Di Como, Executive VP, Global Media, Unilever Group.
“We’ve taken an innovative approach to tracking geographical data for digital advertising to solve a critical problem. Combining our deep expertise with blockchain technology will allow us to deliver a new solution that will address the growing trust, accountability and transparency needs that are pressing the advertising industry,” said Greg Isbister, CEO at Blis.
Clients will benefit from the new capability as they can transparently validate data provenance and understand individual providers GDPR compliance. Brands can analyse the data they are using by accessing the platform, which provides access to all data transactions, from individual apps to Wi-Fi data.
Blis has been exploring a blockchain integration since last year to demonstrate their commitment to transparency. Coming off the heels of GDPR going into effect late last month, this integration addresses some of the concerns that companies have around compliance with data regulations globally.
