On March 26th, AdWeek reported that The Hershey Company has joined the AdLedger, a blockchain-based association. This marks the first time that the American chocolate giant joins a blockchain form of advertising. MadHive started as a blockchain company and eventually joined Tegna and IBM to found AdLedger. The blockchain consortium is nonprofit and focuses on developing shared technologies to aid the digitalized advertising market. AdLedger was founded in 2018 and has recently added three new additions to their team. In addition to Hershey, GABBON and Publicis Media also joined the group.
Hershey has decided to join this association for many different reasons. First and foremost, AdLedger can help the chocolate giant with diversifying their advertising strategies. Hershey will also be deploying blockchain technology throughout their company to help in the overall operation of their factories. This technology has the ability to track cacao from the beginning as a bean to its final stages in a candy bar. Vinny Rinaldi works for The Hershey Company as the head of addressable technology and media. Rinaldi is excited about the implementation of blockchain technology and is convinced that this integration will have a massive impact on the way the company operates. Last August, Cointelegraph reported that normal advertising isn't able to provide a transparent view of overall process and data. Blockchain technology has the ability to address these concerns. This technology ensures that enough information and data is available to the individuals involved in the company's operations. Blockchain technology can inform about how publishers determine the validity of traffic and the different processes that ad companies use to find publishers with this verified traffic. Salon Media and IBM piloted a new blockchain product that has been called "The Campaign Reconciliation Project". The proof-of-concept product was created and designed by AdLedger. It is designed to help companies avoid the risks that are inherent when dealing with an intermediary between advertisers and consumers. Many companies have been scammed by domain spoofing and bot fraud. Toyota recently became partners with blockchain analytics company Lucidity to help decrease their chance of being scammed when purchasing online ads.