If you regularly follow financial news, you might have heard of bitcoin — the decentralized virtual currency that soared in value beyond $10,000 in November 2017. You might have also heard about the blockchain, the decentralized ledger behind bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The blockchain isn’t just for bitcoin, however. It is also being used in industries ranging from retailers to government agencies. Let’s take a look at what the blockchain is and key ways it can improve your digital signage.

What is the blockchain?

The blockchain is essentially a decentralized immutable database that contains records of every transaction.

“A full copy of a currency’s blockchain contains every transaction ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address at any point in history,” according to the bitcoin wiki.

This is especially useful to ensure users do not double spend(try to spend their bitcoin in two different places at the same time). Many industries, such as the banking, are realizing that the blockchain has more uses than just registering bitcoin transactions. For example, many banks are using the Ethereum blockchain to power smart contracts.

For the digital signage industry, the possible uses cover trading, advertising and decentralized content production.

Trading

For the DOOH industry, the blockchain can provide a wide range of tools. For example, the blockchain can help create a more secure and stable trading platform, because of its immutable nature. It can also use more advanced techniques such as registering documents and fingerprinting to help with user verification.

It can also enable users to trade directly among each other. Due to the peer to peer nature of the blockchain, it works well with DOOH platforms that allow users to easily trade advertising space on digital billboards.

For example, users could receive a small amount of virtual currency when they purchase advertising space that identifies that particular space, which they could then send to someone else.

Advertising

On a broader level, the blockchain can help improve advertising with digital signage. For example, MetaX, an adtech company, launched a tool called adchain, which allows users to tag a particular advertisement to track it.

Customers can use the adchain to discover where an advertisement ran, who saw it, how much of the budget it used and conversion rates. It essentially uses the blockchain as a tracker to see where an advertisement goes.

If you are using digital signage, the blockchain could be a key tool to help you get a clearer idea of the effectiveness of your advertisements online versus digital signage.

Decentralized content production

Producing and managing quality digital signage content is a difficult task for both vendors and end users alike. The blockchain can help make this process a little easier by facilitating content trading platforms.

A company could, for example, launch a decentralized trading platform for digital signage content, where end users can more easily search for what they need. An artist could also register their content on the blockchain so that when a company uses it, it is always identified as their work.

By using a decentralized network, an end user doesn’t have to just work with one company. Instead, it can engage with a whole host of different content creators to get just the right materials they need to make their digital signage a success.

A little perspective

It is important to note that the blockchain, while exciting, is still in its early stages. We are only just beginning to see a few solutions emerge, as innovators experiment with the technology.

It is key to start investigating the blockchain now, however, before it hits every single market. You don’t want to be left behind while everyone else is making use of a disruptive technology.