Blockchain Meets Digital Advertising: 3 Projects Looking to Dethrone the Kings

coincentral.com

The Digital Advertising Revolution

In 2017, Google and Facebook captured nearly 73% of digital advertising revenue in the United States, with the remainder up for grabs for competitors such as Amazon and Snapchat. Digital advertising spending is estimated to be near $270 billion in 2018, and only keeps growing every following year.

With nearly $2 trillion in market cap between just the above four companies, the current digital advertising oligarchy trumps even the (currently) $250 billion market cap of the entire cryptocurrency industry.

The following cryptocurrency projects resemble little more than cockroaches scurrying around trying to build homes and avoid being intentionally or inadvertently stepped on by the Titans wrestling at the top.

So, what happens when Alphabet Inc. (Google), a near trillion dollar company that earns around 84% of its total revenue, sees a threat? What happens when Facebook and Twitter wake up with night-sweats from the distant possibility that some scrappy young company could destroy their business model with a new and unpredictable technology?

They take action where it needs to be taken. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the blanket ban on cryptocurrency advertising on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and even Mailchimp wasn’t at least a convenient maneuver to stifle competition.

With 8x the market cap of the entire cryptocurrency market, thousands of employees, some of the brightest talent from all over the world, and access to additional capital essentially at will, the old guard has thousand-foot high walls protecting it’s kingdom.

It’s highly unlikely Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter are even slightly unaware of any of the following projects. Buying and/or destroying at will isn’t so far out of their repertoire, either. They’re even building in-house blockchain-based solutions to improve various parts of their businesses and potentially further shield themselves from any external threats.

Search for the Holy Grail: Data

When Yahoo (1995), Ask Jeeves (1996), and Google (1998) popularized the world of Internet search for the average person, the digital ecosystem was still in its nascent stages. Not only were there very few companies attempting to use the Internet as a platform to sell products and services, few people even own computers.

Early search engine AskJeeves

These were the days that digital audience targeting to the extent of AdWords and Facebook Ad Manager was the stuff of marketing nerd science fiction.

As the Internet evolved, amazing features such as the ability to look anything up at any time and connecting with friends all over the world appeared to be gifts from the tech gods. The vast majority of people didn’t (and still don’t) understand how platforms such as Google and Facebook were free.

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal of March 2018 was one of the first instances where the general public was exposed to the concept of personal data on the Internet and the impact it can have. In short, Cambridge Analytica is a political data firm that was hired by Trump’s 2016 election campaign that gained access to the private data of over 50 million Facebook users. This firm utilized a variety of strategies, one of which was those stupid Facebook quizzes that probably went something like “Find out which Harry Potter house you should be in!” or “Find out what you’d look like as the opposite gender!” These quizzes were used to identify personalities of American voters and potentially influence their behavior.

Now, this wasn’t by any means a hack or security problem, it’s just that users were haplessly ignoring Facebook’s terms and conditions they agreed to, as well as the alert notifications when they took the quizzes.

Ok, circling back to the role of data. Your data serves as a primary identifier for you and people just like you for thousands of advertisers and companies.

How? Let’s say you have $1,000,000 in advertising budget you want to spend in an attempt to sell as many widgets as possible. Would you rather target everyone in the world, everyone who has the money to buy, or everyone who has the money to buy and is willing to buy? With the right sort of data, you’ll be able to target everyone who can and is highly likely to purchase your product. This means less ad spend going to waste, and ultimately more revenue.

As you can imagine, the right sort of data is worth a lot of money to the right advertiser.

For users, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have provided a “free” service where users themselves become the products and are harvested for data. This leads to two major issues for users: they don’t want their data being shared (especially with the wrong people) and they don’t want to be bombarded with ads that are unrelated to them.

For advertisers, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have created platforms to help collect and refine data, as well as launch highly targeted advertisements while taking a sizeable cut of ad spend. This leads to two major issues for advertisers: they don’t want to rely on platforms that could change their algorithms overnight and undermine entire weeks/months worth of strategy, and they don’t want to cut into their profit margins if they don’t have to.

So, now that we’ve gone over the digital advertising landscape and the role of data at a high level, let’s jump into the cryptocurrency seeking to exploit the 4 major issues of the current model to potentially change the digital landscape forever.

Bitclave

Bitclave is one of the front-runners in the race to dethroning the tech oligarchy and “taking the Internet back” and bringing it to the people.

It aims to do this through its decentralized search engine that eliminates all third-party advertising intermediaries in order to create a stronger and more efficient relationship between consumers and businesses.

BitClave would use a form of incentivized search, where it would only show ads to people who have stated an interest in seeing them. This not only makes the user experience much better, it also qualifies leads for businesses, meaning less ad money goes to waste. This ad money can be used to lower the price of the product or create other forms of value for the user.

Users searching on the BitClave platform would see curated advertisements, while also earning the native BitClave token CAT when engaging with those ads.

In March 2018, Bitclave launched the first iteration of their search engine at https://desearch.com/ and it focuses primarily on cryptocurrency searches.

Basic Attention Token

Basic Attention Token (BAT) is the blockchain-based digital advertising token that powers the Brave browser. The Brave browser is an open-source web browser that automatically blocks trackers and intrusive ads.

Via smart contracts, BAT enables advertisers to send ads with a token payment in a locked state to users. The token payment can be unlocked when users view an ad. The remainder of the payment is sent to the Brave browser and the publisher that hosted the ad.

Users are capable of spending their BAT on anything from premium articles and products, high-resolution photos, data services, or donate to content providers.

BAT’s value proposition is allowing users to safely and privately surf the Internet while simultaneously monetizing their attention. Publishers additionally receive more revenue that would have otherwise been lost to intermediaries and bots. Advertisers get better data in their campaigns and can create better-targeted messages.

AdEx

AdEx (ADX), or “advertising exchange” is offering a decentralized platform where online publishers and advertisers can negotiate advertising contracts. The platform is completely transparent, has no fees, and provides unrestricted access.

AdEx also has a user portal for Internet users to select the types of ads they would like to see, manage their privacy, and control who sees their data.

The native token ADX facilitates the exchange, and AdEx plans to implement a direct fiat gateway in the future.

A key component of the AdEx platform for advertisers is that advertisers will be able to take advantage of a high level of customizability and audience targeting, leading to a higher ROI. AdEx also plans to implement an impression and click verification program that will reduce and potentially eliminate all fraudulent activity.

Final Thoughts

One common theme arises when studying the business models of dozens of cryptocurrency projects: traditional third-party intermediaries across the board are becoming targets for scrappy, young blockchain-based projects seeking to directly undercut the “middleman” business model.

Three projects listed above are by no means the only competitive players in the hunt for the digital advertising market. Projects like Qchain, Adchain, and KindAds aim to accomplish similar goals through marginally different strategies.

Online advertising accounts for nearly 40% of all ad spending, up from 30% in 2015. Regardless of what motivates these projects, whether that be money, power, or a genuine desire to decentralize a near $270 billion/year industry, the opportunity is there. Blockchain has given hundreds of projects the silver bullet to take down the reigning intermediaries – the question is if they have what it takes to build the gun and actually shoot it.

“This article was originally published at CoinCentral.com”: https://coincentral.com/digital-advertising-blockchain-projects/

12 marketing insights from a Pokemon Go addict

thedrum.com

My name is Omaid and I’m a Pokaholic

Pokemon Go, with well over 750 million downloads, $1.2Bbn revenue and 65 million active users, is still very much alive and kicking – even though it’s fashionable to say it’s last summer’s game. One of those players is me.

If you don’t know the app, it’s a map based game where you walk around the world catching strange creatures called Pokemon (pocket monster) which appear randomly and then disappear after a while. You’re their Trainer – you teach them skills and set them in duels with each other in Gyms. You can also collect various goodies by visiting PokeStops. Gyms and PokeStops are located around points of interest like a landmark, a building or an interesting piece of street art.

So far I’ve walked 4,427.9 Km playing the game, collected 47,643 creatures, visited 53,681 PokeStops and battled 5,993 times in Gyms. I’m proudly a Level 40 Trainer now – the highest level.

There are numerous currencies in the game – XP (total points), Stardust (used to upgrade monsters), Levels (unlock game features – a function of XP, and each level is exponentially more points than the previous), coins to buy items (earn in the game and purchase in-app), candy for evolving and upgrading monsters.

Why do I play it? It’s perhaps the best example of gamification of any digital experience I’ve come across, and I apply insights I learn from it to create habit every day in the work I do as a digital strategist. Equally I might just be hopelessly addicted. Anyway here’s a summary of what I think marketers need to know – a “12 Steps” programme for creating habit with digital experiences…

12 steps to creating habit

Be contextual

PokemonGo is based on Google Maps – and as such makes the place you are into it’s game space. While the game happens in your location, the nature of the place influences which Pokemons appear (fish usually near water, for example). It also pulls in weather data and the game uses that in interesting ways. For example one of the creatures, the Castform, has four versions to collect which spawn in distinct weather conditions – and I’m still wishing for snow to get that one!

Connect culturally

While the company behind the game developed much of the game mechanics on a previous game (called Ingress), this remained a niche game. It was the addition of the loveable characters that directly targeted a generation of Millienials who grew up with them. The next big game from Niantic will use Harry Potter characters, so will engage Millennials, Gen Z and a broad church of wizard fans.

Give people something to collect

“Gotta get em all” – the bedrock of gamification is to collect all of the Pokemon characters in each Generation (they’ve released three of seven Generations so far…) Quite a few are locked to regions so to collect them all, you’ll have to travel around the whole world – and people do. Humans are hardwired to want to collect and complete things, and will go to extraordinary lengths for only digital rewards.

Use the senses to reinforce habit

At key moments of surprise and delight, Pokemon Go uses touch, vision and sound to deepen the experience and embed the memories. This could be a screen or light flash, the phone buzzing, a whizzy visual sequence or push notifications. They each become more and more familiar to you and man they feel good.

Celebrate cultural occasions with events

Pokemon Go makes the most of when players are celebrating monthly or annual occasions (like Thanksgiving or Easter) – Extras like double points (both XP and Stardust) are available and certain Pokemons appear more frequently. One of the best was Valentine’s Day when we had a lot of pink monsters – especially the highly desirable Blissy. After the fun of the event, this creates the anticipation and excitement for what the next one will be. Events can also be location based – in a specific city or park, in a particular country or around a gaming conference – and create quite a buzz in social channels.

Make it team based

Pokemon Go has three teams – Mystic (the best), Instinct (they’re OK suppose) and Valour (nasty bunch – avoid). Teams work together to attack Gyms and then fill the gym with their Pokemons and are the source of a lot of banter. Gyms are where you train your monsters – where they learn to fight each other. Gyms are also where you can earn your daily 50 coins – serious stuff. If your Gym is under attack you can feed your team’s monsters raspberries and they’ll resist longer. Over time I’ve noticed people make friends with those they meet and chat to on Messenger, WhatsApp and on Reddit, and I’ve even heard of PokeDates happening.

Give people patterns to learn

While it’s seemingly random when and where Pokemons appear, there are patterns that you notice over time. Players learn these patterns, build expectations and turn up to collect a Pokemon they want – but the patterns change every two weeks – making the process into another game and creating expectation around what the next pattern will offer.

Offer time limited special editions

People like specials built around occasions or moments. For instance Pikachu appears in a regular, Christmas, Halloween, Party Hat and Ash Hat (wearing Ash Ketchum's trademark cap) versions. You got to get it while it’s there – or it’s gone!

Tease with super rare limited editions

Scarcity mixed with randomness creates a real rush – and Pokemon Go achieves this with ‘shiny’ editions of the monsters (based on Panini sticker books from the nineties). These are identical but with different colours to the originals and are completely random – with a frequency one in thousands. There are also the mythical Unowns – almost impossible to find, and when they appear people break speed limits to get them. Add the fact that there are 26 variants to collect and you’ll see why people share their Shinies and Unowns on social when they find them!

Make it hackable

Letting people bend the rules (a bit) helps keeping them engaged. The game includes a scanner which gives you an idea of which Pokemons are near, but there are also a world of third party Pokemon Go specific map apps which scan the region you are in (how else would you find that Unown at midnight in a forest in Sussex?). There are also devices which automatically play the game as you walk – all you do is press a button on your wrist (like a caged rat in an experiment?) and the ultimate GPS ‘Spoofing’ – hacked versions of the game which allow you to place yourself in any location without getting off your sofa. Spoofers are hated by players on foot – but also are key when your team has low numbers on the ground – and in that instance are referred to as ‘air cover’.

Bring everyone together with a common goal

Legendary Raids when a very powerful Legendary Pokemon takes over a Gym and up to 20 players attack it for a chance to catch that monster. While the teams get an advantage if they’re in the majority, what’s most important is numbers, so in most instances team rivalry melts and sworn enemies work together against a common goal.

Invitation-only events

Trainers occasionally receive invitations to Exclusive Raids for the very best Pokemons (currently the Mewtwo). The invitation is for a fixed place and time – and if you don’t turn up, you miss it. I received one for London when I was in Melbourne on holiday and I did research flights back.. Needless to say people share their invitations and the

As you can see the even gamification itself is gamified – the game uses more habit creating techniques than I have found in any digital experience. Hang on a second, there’s a Shiny Pikachu across the road, gotta go.

Appsflyer: Mobile app fraud hit $800 million in Q1, up 30%

venturebeat.com

Above: AppsFlyer has measured the changing face of fraud in mobile apps.

Mobile tracking and marketing firm AppsFlyer said in a new study that mobile app marketers were exposed to $700 million to $800 million in ad fraud in the first quarter of 2018, up 30 percent compared to the quarterly average for 2017.

Shopping, gaming, finance, and travel apps are the hardest hit. The share of fraudulent app installs has grown by 15 percent, tainting 11.5 percent of all marketing-driven installs. Today, AppsFlyer launched a new annual initiative it calls #FoolsNoMore. The #FoolsNoMore initiative includes a series of educational resources for marketers (including this report) that the company hopes will increase fraud awareness.

The company said that fraud comes in waves.

“When new protective measures are introduced, fraudsters adapt, which leads to new measures, and the cycle continues,” AppsFlyer said. “Fraud has become a high stakes arms race, as both sides are becoming increasingly sophisticated.”

Above: AppsFlyer has chronicled fraud in mobile app ads.

Image Credit: AppsFlyer

AppsFlyer said that bots are now the most dangerous threat.

“In September, we saw new kinds of bots emerge. By February, bots replaced device farms as the most popular form of attack — responsible for over 30 percent of fraudulent installs,” the company said.

Many apps are exposed, and fraud is not just about a few large apps targeted by advanced attacks. In fact, AppsFlyer found that 22 percent of apps have over 10 percent fraudulent installs, while no less than 12 percent are significantly exposed with at least 30 percent fraudulent installs.

Shopping apps, with their high costs per install (CPI) and huge scale are the most heavily hit sector, with $275 million exposed in the first quarter of 2018.

Android is more vulnerable to fraud, but iOS is also a target. With greater difficulty perpetrating device fraud on iOS, fraudsters resort mainly to click flood techniques, where iOS is well ahead of Android.

Above: AppsFlyer’s solution for mobile app ad fraud.

Image Credit: AppsFlyer

In click flooding, fraudsters send a “flood” of false click reports from, or on behalf of, real devices. When the actual device downloads the app, the sub-publisher is falsely credited with the install.

In all other types of fraud, Android rates are much higher. AppsFlyer found that fraud targeting mobile app marketers is evolving faster than ever. What once took fraudsters six months to develop can now take weeks or even days.

“The bad guys have gotten smarter, adapting much faster to anti-fraud measures,” the report said. “What’s more, we see a significant increase in the rate of fraud and level of financial exposure.”

Phil Crosby, chief product officer at Liftoff, said in a statement, “When it comes to mobile fraud, no advertiser, app exchange, or network is immune, the company said. This includes the largest, most trusted suppliers. Everyone in the industry is dealing with click spam, hyperactive devices, and other forms of fraud. Rather than blacklisting large groups of apps or entire networks, and potentially damaging the broader ecosystem, advertisers are better served to identify fraudulent bid requests upfront, before spending a dime, and avoid bidding on these fake bid requests in the first place. This approach alone would save advertisers billions of dollars in wasted marketing budget, which can be better spent marketing to real users.”

Above: Ad fraud toll in various sectors.

Image Credit: AppsFlyer

AppsFlyer launched its Protect360 platform in the fall, and that drove fraudsters to change their install patterns and invest in new forms of attack, such as click floods.

The U.S. tops the financial exposure list because of both high payouts and massive scale, even though the fraud rate in the U.S. is still lower than the global average. Overall, AppsFlyer found that the fraud rate in the U.S. has increased by 30 percent compared to its previous study.

When it comes to gaming, AppsFlyer found the sector had the highest number of fraudulent installs from click flood attacks, the second-highest number of fraudulent installs from install hijacking attacks, and was No. 5 in highest number of fraudulent installs from bot attacks.

Preventing App Uninstallation

trendintech.com

Anyone in the world of app development and marketing knows user retention can be a struggle. This often isn’t a result of an inherent flaw in a product, but rather customer expectations or lack of attention.

The uninstall numbers are actually pretty incredible. On average, apps lose almost 80 percent of daily active users after just three days. This grows to an alarming 95 percent after 90 days. This shows why it’s not good enough to measure success based on installs alone. Here are a few methods for preventing app uninstallation.

Market to the Right People

One way to lower the number of times your app gets uninstalled is to initially market to a stronger user pool. For most apps, it doesn’t make sense to market to a general audience. And even massive apps like Instagram and Spotify want to attract new users through niche marketing techniques. You should take the time to develop marketing campaigns that accurately reflect your app while appealing to specific user niches. This will attract higher quality users as opposed to aiming for quantity. People within these niches will also be more likely to engage with your targeted ads.

Improve User Interface

The user interface and user experience of your app can play a huge role in its uninstall rate. Few people want to interact with an app that doesn’t work well or isn’t visually stimulating. At some point in the past, this might have been acceptable. However, the majority of successful apps today incorporate optimized design and functionality elements. This is simply something that users now expect from their mobile experience. People will just uninstall your app and use another if you can’t cut it on the UI and UX fronts.

Retarget Users

Retargeting users is another way to lower your app uninstall rates. Retargeting entails advertising to people who have already installed your app but need a reminder to re-engage. Since these people have already shown an interest in it, they will be more likely to return than a random mobile user will be to try your app for the first time. This makes retargeting an effective marketing strategy.

In the app world, it’s essential to stay top of mind, even with consumers who have already installed your app. After all, they may have deleted it or forgotten about it since. Dynamic product retargeting is a new form of retargeting that’s especially effective for driving conversions. This strategy shows mobile users personalized ads featuring specific products depending on where they left off in the sales funnel. So, mobile users end up seeing the very products they previously browsed or left in their shopping cart. This strategy is particularly useful in e-commerce and travel app categories.

Fix Bugs Quickly

Do you know that feeling of frustration when you want something to work so badly, but it just won’t? Imagine how your app’s users feel when they can’t use it because of a major bug. They will quickly lose interest in your product and uninstall if you can’t troubleshoot the issue quickly. People barely have the patience to wait for a fully functional app. You can’t expect them to engage with yours if it experiences downtime or glitches.

Identify Uninstall Points

It’s extremely important that you keep an eye on places people stall out while using your app. This might be the sign-up process. It might be during checkout. Or, it could be something completely different. Whatever it is, you need to take note of those specific problem areas. It’s possible that something about those steps is influencing people to uninstall your app. Tweaking certain elements to improve user-friendliness can make these uninstall points a non-factor. This will immediately lower your uninstall rates.

It’s tough to keep people engaged with your app when they have so much choice. Case in point: There are projected to be about five million apps in the App Store by 2020. Consider these tips in order to keep people from uninstalling yours.

Inventor of BitTorrent Now Working on a Green Crypto Project

coincentral.com

Bram Cohen, best known as the creator of BitTorrent, is now working on a new cryptocurrency project called Chia. At its core, Chia plans to provide a green alternative to current mining practices, one that decreases the chance of centralization through mining practices.

Green Technology

Bitcoin and many other Proof of Work cryptocurrencies require energy-intensive mining operations to reach distributed consensus. Since mining farms use large amounts of electricity, miners generally have to be located in places where energy prices are low enough to remain profitable. Miners also typically need access to cold air in order to keep mining rigs running at cooler temperatures. These factors have lead miners to congregate in mining-friendly locations, creating a geographic disparities in the global concentration of mining power. In turn, these disparities have lead to a centralization of mining and its block rewards based on geographic location.

Chia hopes to solve this problem by getting rid of traditional PoW systems by  making use of unused file storage space on computers. This could drastically change the way that mining pools operate by creating a trustless, decentralized system where no one has to worry about fellow miners stealing block rewards.

Fundraising Structure

Most cryptocurrency projects rely on ICOs to raise money for project development. However, with a lack of legal framework in place, some cryptocurrency projects have abused this fundraising method. As it stands, projects face no legal responsibility for managing funds transparently.

Chia hopes to change this by utilizing a different fundraising structure. Instead of an ICO, it will offer a “mini-IPO,” which will show investors that it is committed (and legally obligated) to manage funds responsibly according to existing regulations.

Chia is planning a pre-mine of its currency; however, the project will initially retain ownership of 100 percent of its coins. While ICOs generally have a set price per coin, Chia hopes to raise $50 million by doing an auction-style bidding process. If the minimum price per coin investors are willing to pay rises, Chia will be able to hold on to more of the project’s equity. 

According to the project website, Chia will be available for the public to bid on sometime during this summer.

Solid Technology/Concrete Plans

This project is already investing heavily in hiring engineers well in advance of the mini-IPO. Chia has already established itself far beyond the theoretical foundation which most projects rely upon for convincing investors to participate in fundraising events.

As Cohen has stated, Chia doesn’t have a whitepaper and doesn’t necessarily need one. Instead, Cohen has stated that the project is well past the basic technical ideation phase. In fact, Chia actually has technical papers published in Asiacrypt’s refereed cryptography journal. This will help give the project much-needed legitimacy and help it win the approval of cryptography industry experts.

Conclusion

Many cryptocurrency projects are currently focused on increasing decentralization and security; however, few are tackling the issue of  PoW’s high energy consumption. If Chia is able to offer a greener solution to cryptocurrency mining that is also more transparent for investors, it could quickly establish a popular model for more projects in the future.

“This article was originally published at CoinCentral.com”: https://coincentral.com/inventor-of-bittorrent-now-working-on-a-green-crypto-project/

Can a Decentralized Sharing Economy Resolve Itself?

cryptoninjas.net

For nearly two decades, technology’s rise proceeded unfettered, and it led to tremendous growth for the economy and the tangible ways we live our lives. This phenomenon gave rise to things like chord cutting, social media, automation, and the sharing economy. In many ways, the growth of technology changed our lives for the better by making things cheaper, more convenient, and more progressive.

However, a series of missteps are causing many to question this presumption. For example, Facebook is mired in a seemingly endless string of scandals involving user privacy, data manipulation, and propaganda. This week, Arizona suspended Uber’s testing of its driverless car initiative after a pedestrian was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle.

At least week’s SXSW festival, London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, spoke about the sharing economy and its responsibility to develop more than just market share. Addressing the crowd, Khan said, “Without prudent oversight this new way of working risks being used as a cover to break up decades of hard-won rights.”

Khan is expressing the growing concern that new technology and new services are emerging so rapidly that we barely have time to adjust before the next one rises to prominence. It’s growth without care, and that’s concerning.

He later added, “We can’t confuse matters by thinking that because a business is smart, disruptive, popular even – and has a really neat app – it somehow has a right to have a different regulatory status.”

For the sharing economy, this is especially important. It’s possible that favorite companies like Uber, Airbnb, or Lyft could merely become technologically fascinating versions of existing platforms. It’s not hard to imagine Uber as a taxi company that has an enthralling app and worse working conditions for its drivers.

For many, the answer to these concerns is government regulation. While this will undoubtedly play an essential role in shaping the sharing economy, it’s not the only option. Competitive markets and informed consumers will also make a significant impact on this as well.

Regulation or Decentralization?

In its current form, the sharing economy exists as dozens or even hundreds of disparate platforms that are similar in their underlying ethos that values mobile technology and individual autonomy. There is no central marketplace for these apps or services. Instead, they are all served a la carte, so it’s difficult to compare services and make informed decisions.

Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain can help with this. Digital currencies, as their name suggests, are particularly adept at facilitating digital payments in a mobile environment. What’s more, platforms can build upon the blockchain to create better services for promoting the sharing economy.

For example, ShareRing is a blockchain-based marketplace for the sharing economy that brings together the many different services that comprise this market and makes them all accessible from a single app. Users can pay for services using a native digital currency that is transferable to other services or can be converted into fiat money.

In addition to making the sharing economy more user-friendly, platforms like ShareRing represent an opportunity for self-regulation. Much like Amazon provides a single marketplace for a plethora of tangible goods, ShareRing present sharing services in a single marketplace. Amazon compares products by several different quantifiers including price, customer reviews, and availability. similarly, a sharing economy marketplace can compare services so that customers can make the most informed decisions and so that everyone can more fully understand the different functions, their strengths, and limitations.

Unifying the sharing economy into a single marketplace can effectively regulate the market by adding transparency and opportunity. In this way, a decentralized economy has the chance to self-regulate, which would allow the best ideas the thrive in an open environment while also encouraging the best products and plans to come to market quickly. The blockchain is built on the premise of transparency, auditability, and security, and these features can define the sharing economy as well. By bringing them together, companies like ShareRing may bring the self-regulation that the industry needs to succeed

How to Ride the Mobile AR Wave in 2018

forbes.com

We’re now well into 2018, and a trend that started last year is now in full swing: the next platform war is being fought over mobile augmented reality or AR.  Pokemon Go showed us how mobile phone based AR could transform the real world into a game space, and launched millions of scavenger hunts for cartoon monsters. Then Snapchat, with its lenses and filters, let us turn ourselves into cartoons. Last year at F8, Facebook introduced its Camera Effects platform, an AR app development tool. Not to be outdone, Apple followed up soon with its own version, called ARKit. Just last month, Google announced the wide release of their AR toolkit, ARCore.

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Mobile Augmented Reality

The reason for the excitement in this space is simple. Unlike VR (or Magic Leap), mobile AR has a massive installed hardware base. Apple estimates that 200 million existing phones (iPhone 6 and up/iOS 11) can run ARKit apps, and Google says at least 100 million can run ARCore today.  While Facebook is looking to leverage the camera-based sharing of AR content among its billion plus users, Apple is once again banking on leveraging its best in class hardware/software integration to give ARKit developers an advantage in building premium apps.

It’s still early days: no one has reproduced the massive success of Pokemon Go.  But in addition to games, mobile AR has the potential to transform utility apps as well as to usher in new forms of mobile advertising. It can give traditional brands new ways to engage customers and can bridge the gap between digital shopping and real-world retail. Looking down the road, AR could even potentially supplant chat as a primary interface for an entire ecosystem of contextual, real-time service based applications. There are so many potential use cases we have yet to imagine, but let’s think about some of the most promising ones.

Furniture giant IKEA built IKEA Place, an ARKit app where customers can place virtual furniture in their own home through the window of their phone or tablet.  They can choose a couch or table, see how it will look in a given room, and then order it on the spot. Pretty cool! Now imagine you could do the same thing with clothes. With the ability to create a high fidelity 3D personal avatar, you could pick out a dress, try it on, and get a 360 degree view of what it looks like. We’ve already seen the success of 2D “magic mirror” cosmetic try-on apps; an AR version for clothes could be a killer app for mobile apparel shopping.

Does this mean AR will be the death of brick and mortar retail? Interestingly, it could be the opposite. Imagine how AR could transform in-store experiences.  Walking down an aisle of a grocery store, your phone could show you overlays with product information such as calorie count or grams of protein. Maybe you could see only the items that are allowed on a specific diet, like Keto or LCHF.  Or special loyalty promotions can be delivered as virtual coupons to users of the AR app. Past shopping behavior can be accessed to provide personalized assistance in real time.

What about mobile advertising?  Here AR can potentially elevate a still-emergent mobile ad genre: playable or interactive ads. Playable or interactive ads are primarily used by game developers as way to get users to “try before they buy.”  Playable ads for games have proven to have higher download rates over static ads as well as increased long-term retention rates. AR can take this interactive/immersive ad format beyond games to branded experiences.

Snapchat partnered with BMW to use its 3D World Lens to create an AR version of their new X2 model, enabling 360 degree views and color customization. Not to be outdone, Porsche has developed a similar AR app using Google’s ARCore.  Seeing a Porsche sitting in your own driveway an imagining hopping in the driver’s seat – that’s an experience that could get your heart racing. These examples are still pretty basic. For most brands, getting the most out of AR will require a more creative “AR First” approach to ad conception and design.

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AR Goggles

Perhaps one of the most interesting ways mobile AR could evolve is as an app portal or primary interface. Similar to how “super apps” like WeChat use a chat app as an interface to a universe of service applications, combining location and contextual awareness of mobile with AR can drive app interactions.  For example, imagine that based on tracked movement and location, your phone learns the average time of day you usually take your lunch (actually you don’t have to imagine it, as we at Appnext are already doing it). Some 15 minutes beforehand, an AR app will show you a menu of virtual dishes from nearby restaurants sitting on your desk in front of you. You can then trigger a delivery and payment for that item with one click. Or imagine a real world version of Tinder, where singles in social situations can scan the room and choose which people they fancy.  They can then indicate on the app with whom they’d like to interact, triggering a real-time ice breaker. The same type of application could be used to overlay professional information and act as a filter as well as connection trigger for people at business networking events. An AR networking app like this could increase the amount of valuable connections made at a given event.

Such concepts point the way for intrepid developers on how to think organically about AR apps. Particularly for AR as an immersive/interactive ad format, the richest rewards will come to those who can find ways to drive engagement with brands with uses cases less obvious than “try it before you buy it” product interaction.  Gamification is one way to think about how to do it, and personalization via avatars is another. At the same time, using AR as a platform for personal utility/services is another area with great promise. Now that the basic development tools are in place and the installed device base is in the hundreds of millions, the time is ripe for app developers to jump into mobile AR with both feet.