Unlike its streaming service rivals Netflix and Amazon Video, Hulu has to worry about the advertising experience.
As Hulu$5.99 at Hulu has grown its subscriber base and moved to a multi-tier pricing model with different plans for live streaming and premium experiences, the streaming platform is now serving more ads in different ways. The company is thinking about potential ways to improve brand trust and transparency across the media supply chain, and one of the technologies it's exploring is blockchain.
PCMag sat down with Adam Moser, Head of Ad Tech and Platform Operations at Hulu, at the CDX Blockchain Brand Innovation Summit at Columbia University, where he appeared on a panel discussing what blockchain means for the advertising industry as a whole. Moser stressed that Hulu isn't currently applying blockchain, but keeping a close eye on what it could mean for the ad industry.
The conversation ranged from smart contracts and data transparency to the challenges of scaling blockchain tech to the whole ecosystem of over-the-top (OTT) streaming devices, from TVs in a living room to tablets in your hand.
"Blockchain is interesting to use because trust, transparency, all of those things matter to marketers. They're critical from our standpoint not just as Hulu as a brand, but also Hulu as a media publisher," said Moser. "So when we meet with companies that are talking about blockchain solutions, I think the promise of what they can bring to the landscape, specifically regarding transparency and the ability to be able to track transactional details in an open and decentralized way, is something we're in support of for the industry."
For Hulu, applying blockchain is particularly complex because of all the OTT devices Hulu supports. Because blockchain technology is largely still in the proof-of-concept phase outside of enterprise use cases, the streaming company is hesitant to put all its eggs in one basket.
"Every time we talk to these companies and they ask if we want to run a test, we take a wait-and-see approach. We want to test-drive the car when it's been built, not as it's being built," he said. "The way we integrate our service onto gaming platforms, smart TVs, etc., it requires a different approach. If a solution comes to us and says it may work on Xbox and Playstation but not on Roku or Apple TV, it doesn't work for Hulu."
That said, Moser believes blockchain is a great technical solution that has the promise of solving a lot of problems around brand safety and marketing budgets. Moser contributed to a white paper published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) called "Blockchain for Video Advertising," which explores how blockchain and smart contracts could be applied to digital video and OTT advertising.
For the industry the biggest potential for blockchain right now is around using smart contracts to streamline terms and conditions across multiple media buys for advertisers. There needs to be standardization between how the buy side and sell side of the video advertising market would utilize it, he said.
"Blockchain [shows] a decentralized and open way that marketers can understand how their inventory is being bought and how they're being charged," he said.
Right now, Hulu is simply looking at ways blockchain could give its advertising and marketing network more transparency. It's the promise of an immutable ledger recording exactly what advertisers are being charged for, what fees are attributed to, and knowing that data marketers are purchasing matches the target audience they're interested in.
Ultimately, there's a lot of hype right now for a still-nascent industry and technology.
"Everyone is talking about how blockchain is going to solve for smart contracts, for transparency, for streamlining data targeting...those are three very different avenues. I think this is a potential path forward to solve challenges within our industry, but we have to decide which challenge we want to solve for," Moser said.
"It feels like we're in a crawl, walk, run type of approach with blockchain. If you use that metaphor, right now we're at the stage where you're just figuring out how to wiggle your toes."
