Mediaocean, the foundational software provider of the advertising world, and IBM iX, one of the world’s largest digital agencies and global business design partners, announced the launch of a blockchain consortium for the digital media supply chain. Bringing together some of the world’s largest advertisers, agencies and publishers, including Kellogg, Kimberly-Clark, Pfizer, Unilever and IBM Watson Advertising, the solution aims to provide transparency and build trust and accountability in the advertising ecosystem.

The new Mediaocean and IBM blockchain solution, powered by the IBM Blockchain platform, the leader in enterprise blockchain, will provide a comprehensive, timely and actionable view of the supply chain. It will tackle supply chain opacity from the rapid proliferation of intermediaries, which makes it difficult for advertisers and agencies to identify exactly how much spend is going towards “working media.”

“We must innovate our approach to the market by looking for new technologies like blockchain to help solve complex business challenges,” said Mukund Kaushik, VP Digital Capabilities and Innovation for Kimberly-Clark. “In this partnership with IBM and Mediaocean, as well as other leaders in the media industry, we are on an exciting journey to use blockchain to solve the challenges of media spend transparency and assurance.”

Built on top of Mediaocean’s end-to-end campaign management platform, which today processes over $140 billion in ad spend and is trusted by all agency holding companies, the Mediaocean and IBM blockchain solution aims to provide visibility into the entire lifecycle of an advertiser’s media dollar flow. From issuing of the purchase order, to the execution of media and payment – a blockchain is used to record all media transactions in a secure, immutable, standardized and comprehensive manner. The program will launch in July.

“For over 50 years, Mediaocean has been the system of record for the advertising industry,” says Bill Wise, CEO, Mediaocean. “We have done so by providing reliable, neutral, and integrated systems for brands, agencies and suppliers to execute media, globally. In recent years, however, the industry has been plagued with unsustainable economics and transparency issues that hinder progress – particularly around intermediary fees and non-working media. By partnering with IBM, we’re able to launch the first advertising blockchain solution that will improve spend transparency – at scale. This will help us come together as an industry under a single source of truth and rebuild trust to push us into a new era of advertising transformation.”

“Blockchain is creating new ways of doing business across industries, particularly where greater trust and transparency is required. As it relates to media, we expect blockchain to be able to provide a single source of truth to any given media buy, eliminating the doubt and uncertainty that is common today,” said Babs Rangaiah, Executive Partner, Global Marketing, IBM iX. “Measurement and transparency require new solutions across the programmatic supply chain and blockchain is a technology strategically used to create an environment of trust. It will bring tremendous benefits to media buying, especially with industry leaders like Mediaocean leading the charge.”

“Marketers today have to deal with a whole host of issues in the digital ad environment from quality control and security to financial transparency. What this pilot has shown us is the potential blockchain has to help us drive more quality into the digital ecosystem and get to one source of the truth for our digital investment,” said Rob Master, VP Global Media, Unilever.

Risa Wexler, VP, Media, Digital Chops & Innovation, Pfizer Inc., added, “Digital advertising can be tremendously valuable for companies and customers alike; but in any advertising medium, transparency, trust and simplicity are central. A blockchain solution has extraordinary potential to bring all three to the ecosystem.”

During the initial build phase, Mediaocean utilized the IBM Blockchain Platform Starter Plan, designed to help organizations quickly and cost effectively build blockchain proof of concepts and test networks using blockchain.