Budweiser Maker Counts on Ethereum to Expand Client Base
Brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev is moving to expand its reach and connect with customers in engaging and meaningful ways by stepping up its digital advertising supply chains with the aid of ethereum’s blockchain technology.
The Belgium-based brewing company announced that its partnership with mobile marketing and monetization platform Kiip led to the successful launch of its first-ever blockchain-powered mobile ad campaign.
This campaign, which features several well-known brands including Bud Light, Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Estrella Jalisco, Stella Artois, and Bud Light Lime-a-Rita, uses the blockchain technology come up with a mobile media strategy by monitoring and relying on data to deliver the right content to customers.
It uses Kiip’s new Single Ledger blockchain product allows all players to view and directly audit campaign data, as well as simplify the reconciliation of campaign performance data among all parties. This address major concerns mobile fraudulent reporting by third parties and ad servers, and simplifying an arduous reporting and payment process. Also, it helps AB InBev ensure that each ad dollar is well spent on forming significant connections with consumers.
Various metrics such as engagement, impressions, and price are incorporated on the ethereum blockchain which AB InBev can access at any time, reducing the amount of time the campaign organizers spend in monitoring these metrics. On the other hand, ad buyers can pay only for the ads that fit their standards.
“We’re building a company to last for the next 100 plus years and that can only be done by disrupting existing paradigms through innovation and putting consumers at the heart of everything we do,” Lucas Herscovici, AB InBev’s global marketing vice president of consumer connections, insights and innovation, said.
“As the world’s largest brewer and brand builders, we take our responsibility for the stewardship of the category seriously through our approach to advertising and the ways we create meaningful experiences for consumers with our brand content. This campaign will increase transparency in programmatic ad buying and support the ways our brands earn consumers attention,” Herscovici added.
“When we started digging into the potential of blockchain, we began to realize that if Kiip was started today, it would be built on blockchain technology,” Brian Wong, founder and chief executive officer of Kiip, said.
“Blockchain’s magical impact comes in the form of its immutable and decentralized ledger technology. Data that is stored uniquely in thousands of servers can never be manipulated. We saw this technology’s potential to impact several major areas of the advertising world, including supply-chain transparency, campaign data reconciliation and viewability verification. Single Ledger, quite frankly, is just the beginning for us,” Wong added.
Since its inception in 2008, this initiative marked AB InBev’s latest move into the crypto arena. Earlier, the company participated in a consortium to experiment with blockchain for international shipping uses in March.
This involved using Accenture’s solution for 12 real-world shipments, which were delivered to another jurisdiction that each carried its own specific regulatory requirements. The results “confirmed that blockchain can reduce operating costs and increase supply chain visibility,” Accenture said.
