Dive Brief:

• Comcast used the Cannes Lions advertising festival to announce the development of a Blockchain Insights Platform for television ad buying, according to a company news release. Comcast's Advanced Advertising Group is collaborating with a coalition including NBCUniversal, Disney, Altice USA, Channel 4, Cox Communications, Mediaset Italia and TF1 Group on the initiative.
• The platform would allow for video ad buying in broadcast and streaming TV using blockchain. Marketers would be able to match their data sets, target audiences across pay TV and streaming device users and have access to reporting and attribution metrics by leveraging the technology. 
• The encryption element of blockchain gives the platform an inherent consumer privacy element, Comcast said, as well as allowing each participant in the chain more control over their own data.

Dive Insight:

With its data privacy and security elements, Comcast's proposed blockchain-based platform represents a new evolution in bringing data-driven marketing to the formerly rigid TV advertising space. It's also another sign of how digital video advertising — on streaming services, social media and more – and traditional TV advertising are converging into a single marketing piece.

A major indicator of this trend is TV advertising bringing in targeting and measurement on the level marketers have become accustomed to with digital video ads via ad technologies like programmatic. Blockchain tech is far more early days, usually associated with Bitcoin, and yet to reach critical mass adoption with consumers.

However, blockchain's encrypted and highly-controlled structure might be valued by marketers for its potential to increase transparency across the digital media supply chain, ultimately helping address a top concern in the industry.