CryptoRTB anti-fraud initiative
April 30, 2021
AdLedger, a non-profit consortium building open standards that leverage blockchain to improve digital advertising, has confirmed what it says is a successful global implementation of open source tool set CryptoRTB with OMD Italy, Italiaonline and MadHive for a Dixan Campaign by Henkel Italy. CryptoRTB uses blockchain and cryptography to improve the integrity of the media ecosystem.
“Cryptography has been keeping sensitive information safe on the Internet for decades, and now, with privacy regulations and third-party cookies taking centre stage, we finally see industry giants understanding its potential for advertising,” said Christiana Cacciapuoti, Executive Director at AdLedger. “This activation at scale proved that cryptography and blockchain can keep up with digital media when architected properly, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what CryptoRTB can enable.”
Italiaonline started by integrating the CryptoRTB service with its ad server, which cryptographically signed outbound bid requests to prove origination, authenticity and provide data integrity. MadHive integrated the CryptoRTB protocol into its DSP technology, allowing them to validate Italiaonline’s signatures in real time before responding to the bid request. OMD trafficked the Dixan campaign in the MadHive DSP as they normally would, monitoring performance of the campaign to ensure KPIs were hit.
The results:
- CryptoRTB verified impressions delivered across mobile and desktop devices with less than one millisecond of added latency.
- 100 per cent of impressions were CryptoRTB verified, ensuring high-impact impressions and privacy compliance.
- 92 per cent Video Completion Rate, compared to the industry average of 80 per cent for mobile phones and 81 per cent for desktops.
“In Europe, privacy regulations have been top of mind for years, and it has become clear that cryptography will play a key role in the future of the media ecosystem,” said Antonio Montesano, Head of Digital at OMD Italy. “Our involvement in AdLedger allows us to ensure our clients are at the forefront of innovation, by leveraging this technology to take a privacy-by-design approach to all facets digital advertising. Our goal is to assess blockchain as a new solution to guarantee delivery and privacy in the new ad landscape we will face in the near future. We’re just starting our journey with AdLedger, and we already have plans to build on this partnership.”
“Implementing CryptoRTB only required a few lines of code, which allowed us to get this campaign up and running almost immediately,” said Carmine Laltrelli, Programmatic Advertising director at Italiaonline. “This campaign represents an important step forward because it allowed us to create technical proof that we are who we say we are in a transaction, ensuring that our most valuable asset – our audience – is not commoditized.”
“CryptoRTB helps us ensure that our media dollars are only going towards premium impressions on premium publishers,” said Matteo Giarrizzo, Head of Media Italy, Greece & Cyprus at Henkel. “This protocol is a huge step in building the next generation of digital advertising, which is based on proof instead of word of mouth. It will be crucial that the rest of the market to adopt this technology, in order to speed up the change and to increase transparency in the entire system”.
The CryptoRTB protocol was developed by the engineers at MadHive and is powered by the MadNetwork blockchain, which serves as a sophisticated and scalable infrastructure for identity validation and information sharing. This marks the third successful implementation of CryptoRTB from AdLedger.
The first centred around CTV and came from members MadHive and Beachfront. The pilot project leveraged digital signatures to completely eliminate domain spoofing, which is a predominant method of fraud contributing to the $23 billion lost to ad fraud last year. Additionally, the application cryptographically sealed data to ensure compliance with GDPR and CCPA, and was found to be 25 times faster and cheaper than solutions such as Ads.cert.
Verizon adopted CryptoRTB protocol to power Full Transparency, a blockchain-based, open-source newsroom product designed to raise the bar for corporate accountability by providing an authoritative record of changes to public communications.