Jointly Evaluating Advertising Data

Sector: Tertiary sector · Industry: Broadcasting and television · Organisation: Comcast, Blockgraph · Maturity level: Pilot

Comcast, together with industry partners, developed the peer-to-peer platform Blockgraph to analyse viewer data for addressable television advertising in a privacy-compliant manner. The participating media companies and distributors can match target group profiles without sensitive raw data having to be centrally exchanged or disclosed. Following initial announcements in 2017, an industry pilot was launched at the end of 2018, although long-term performance and cost-effectiveness data are not documented in the sources.

Documentation status

Description

Comcast initiated the Blockgraph venture to enable television broadcasters and cable network operators to collaborate on planning TV advertising campaigns in a privacy-oriented manner. Rather than transmitting customer data sets to central marketers or data brokers, the raw data remains entirely under the control of the respective media companies. Using cryptographic queries and distributed nodes, overlaps in target audiences can be identified, enabling addressable advertising formats to be realised without compromising privacy.

The Blockgraph project was conceived by Comcast's Advanced Advertising Group to counter the growing fragmentation in the television advertising market. Media companies face the challenge of precisely targeting advertising-relevant audiences across different channels and distribution platforms without violating data protection regulations. The platform uses peer-to-peer technology and distributed ledger concepts to link data holdings in a decentralised and encrypted manner. At the end of 2018, the initiators presented the industry pilot together with leading partners from the broadcasting and cable industry to evaluate the system under real market conditions. Although the venture represents an important step towards establishing secure data spaces in the TV sector, the available primary sources lack evidence of widespread production operation or quantified business success.

Perspectives

B2B — organisations perspective

Broadcasters, cable network operators and advertising clients can plan campaign reach across channels and match target groups. The decentralised architecture prevents proprietary subscriber information from flowing to competitors or central intermediaries.

B2C — consumers perspective

For end consumers and television viewers, the approach offers better protection of personal viewing habits from commercial exploitation by unauthorised third parties. Viewers do not interact directly with the platform but benefit from advertising placements that are delivered without central profile building.

Employees perspective

Staff in advertising scheduling and campaign analysis access standardised data interfaces instead of performing manual data cleansing. This changes operational processes in campaign coordination, while also requiring familiarity with cryptographic query protocols.

Benefits

General

B2B — organisations

B2C — consumers

Employees

Challenges

General

B2B — organisations

Employees

Technology foundation

The platform relies on a distributed peer-to-peer architecture with cryptographic query protocols. This enables multiple parties to compute data overlaps without needing to centralise raw data.

Implementation examples

Blockgraph Platform for Addressable TV Advertising

Fragmented viewer data and strict data protection requirements made it difficult for TV broadcasters and distributors to offer competitive, precisely targeted advertising formats. Previous methods often required the risky transfer of customer data to external service providers.

Comcast, together with industry partners, developed the peer-to-peer software Blockgraph for the privacy-compliant consolidation of television advertising data. The platform was presented at the end of 2018 in an expanded phase as an industry pilot for addressable TV advertising.

In 2017, Comcast's Advanced Advertising Group announced the development of blockchain-based technology for the TV advertising industry. At the end of 2018, the platform was piloted under the name Blockgraph as peer-to-peer software with industry partners to securely link customer data. The aim was to enable media companies to plan addressable advertising without having to centralise customer data. The documented sources confirm the conception and launch of this pilot phase but do not show any lasting performance or revenue figures.

The system addresses the conflict between precise target group addressing and the protection of confidential subscriber data from competitors. It also reduces dependence on central intermediaries in the advertising market.

Tags

TV advertising, Data protection, Peer-to-peer, Data collaboration, Addressable advertising

Sources

  1. Comcast Collaborates with Industry Partners on Blockgraph
  2. Comcast Unveils Its Blockchain-Powered Data-Sharing Solution

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