Austrian National Tourism Office looks to blockchain to fight ad fraud

The Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO), in collaboration with Ethereum-based ad platform Adbank, is running a blockchain-based digital ad campaign.

ANTO is piloting blockchain technology using Adbank’s Ethereum-based token “ADB”. The project aims to curb ad fraud and reduce fees by ad tech middlemen.

Founded in 2017, Adbank is a Canada-based startup that aims to tackle the $50 billion ad fraud problem. It brings together blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to differentiate between bots and genuine people. In addition, its payment protocol, which was completed in March, provides full transparency of transactions between advertisers and publishers.

“In the pilot with Adbank, one of the more interesting blockchain applications in the advertising sector, we hope to overcome on a global scale various difficulties within classic online advertising,” Michael Scheuch, Head of Brand Management for ANTO.

According to the official release, Red Bull Media House is also participating in the project and will provide inventory on the publisher side via its alpine lifestyle publication Bergwelten.

"It's exciting to see a country like Austria acknowledging the powerful use case that exists for advertising on the blockchain. This level of transparency between advertiser and publisher is unprecedented, especially for an organization like ANTO. For the first time advertisers like them can see where their money is going, rather than going into a 'black box' that shows data we know for a fact is questionable,” Angelo Dodaro, CMO & Co-founder of Adbank, said.