From ad overload to sustainability, blockchain is changing the marketing game [Podcast]

By 2026, global digital advertising spending is projected to reach $1 trillion, reflecting the significant transformation that marketing has undergone throughout its history.

From traditional television commercials to modern social media campaigns, the marketing industry has relentlessly sought to discover new ways to connect with its intended audience.

Today, the advent of blockchain technology has revolutionized the marketing arena and has brought with it a number of groundbreaking opportunities. With blockchain, marketers can create personalized and targeted campaigns while increasing the transparency and reliability of the marketing process. But that’s not where the benefits end.

By tackling the long-overlooked but critical issue of sustainability, it paves the way for environmentally friendly marketing practices.

Tough competition in the attention economy

Despite its importance, competition for buyer attention and brand awareness has reached unprecedented levels. On average, people are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day, a number that many find mentally overwhelming.

Jason Sibley, founder and CEO of Cleo highlights how the costs associated with marketing are constantly increasing. “Take for example Meta’s CPM, which has seen a 61 percent increase year-over-year, averaging $17.60/CPM, or Google’s programmatic display CPM, which has increased 75 percent year-over-year. These increases in advertising costs present serious challenges to marketers in justifying their spending as they vie for people’s valuable attention.”

Also, consumers are increasingly tired of the traditional marketing approach, which often involves bombarding them with repetitive or irrelevant ads. As a result, they have begun to develop ad blindness, and many have even turned to ad blocking tools for relief.

In fact, a report suggests that 42.7 percent of internet users worldwide between the ages of 16 and 64 use ad blockers at least once a month. AdBlock, one of the most popular blocking extensions, has reported over 65 million users.

Marketers are trying to find new ways to connect with their target audience and create personalized campaigns that are actually relevant, and even better, rewarding for the consumer.

The central role of “Marketing for Good”

As consumer values ​​shift towards sustainability and social responsibility, a new generation of younger shoppers is emerging and increasingly conscious of the impact their purchases have on the world. And this requires a different approach to marketing and engagement with this youthful generation.

Cleo, a highly scalable marketing platform powered by the Polygon blockchain, has taken a new approach to the challenge. By optimizing campaigns with engaging content that delivers a lower cost per acquisition, it allows brands to build stronger connections with their target audience while having a positive environmental impact.

“By engaging in a brand’s marketing campaign, the ‘marketing for good’ platform enables users, especially the new generation, to earn NFT rewards in return for supporting campaigns that promote sustainability and social responsibility.“ Instead of bombarding users with ads, the platform rewards consumers for their time and attention, fostering a more positive relationship.

For example, brands can generate high-quality leads who will be more interested in a newly launched product. Instead of the traditional advertising route, targeted consumers can choose to watch the product video as part of the “marketing for good” campaign. The ad spend funded by the brand is used to generate leads at a cheaper cost, as well as funding global sustainable practices such as purchasing carbon credits to help the brands become carbon neutral.

Brands can then meet internal as well as industry-wide ESG initiatives while generating qualified leads at a lower cost – all with the help of blockchain traceability and transparency working in the background.

On the Cleo platform, users receive NFTs as a reward for engaging with branded content. These NFTs are digital certificates that serve as proof of the user’s positive impact on the environment. Users can display these NFT certificates in their digital wallet, which is integrated into the app as social proof of contributing to sustainable causes.

With the rate of deforestation estimated at 15 billion trees per year, Cleo has partnered with Eden Reforestation to plant trees and combat the harmful effects of deforestation.

By partnering with Second Life, the world’s first Verra-certified ocean plastic recovery and recycling project, Cleo’s is helping to solve the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans. With up to 12.7 million tons of plastic entering our oceans annually, and an estimated 150 million tons of plastic polluting them, Cleo’s involvement in Second Life highlights the different ways sustainable marketing and blockchain go hand in hand.

With the Polygon blockchain as its foundation, Cleo ensures secure, transparent and controllable transactions. It helps combat greenwashing, which is the practice of companies making false claims about their environmental impact to trick consumers into thinking they are more environmentally friendly than they actually are.

“Blockchain transparency allows businesses to demonstrate their sustainability efforts in a verifiable way that is essential to ESG standards. Meanwhile, consumers can verify that the marketing campaigns they engage in are truly contributing to positive change, where the marketing funds are actually being sent to legitimate ESG organizations,” says Sibley .

A new era in marketing?

Cleo’s approach to sustainable marketing is a model for companies to harness technology for a more environmentally friendly future. It gives brands confidence that their marketing campaigns are contributing to positive change while users receive quality recognition and rewards for their efforts.

The integration of blockchain technology with marketing represents a significant development in the industry, especially in the context of “marketing for good”. Driven by the growing importance of sustainable development goals, this movement has plenty of room to gain momentum.

The man and the machine the podcast is dedicated to informing and demystifying the crypto, DeFi, GameFi, NFTs and blockchain industries for the average person.

Tlahui is a man in love with words and blockchain. His storytelling and passion for communication led him to co-host The Human & Machine, a podcast and YouTube channel. In which he rightfully plays the role of an average human trying to understand and explain in layman’s terms, the language and complexities thrown at him by The Machine, his heartless yet brilliant co-host.

Hikaru is a blockchain lover with a weakness for cooking. His unparalleled understanding and experience in blockchain technologies, plus his inhuman work ethic, have earned him the nickname The Machine. In the show, he plays the role of a hybrid omniscient robot who goes out of his way to explain blockchain concepts to The Human while trying not to lose faith in humanity.

Kenny Au, aka The Brain, is a #Web3.0 #FutureofWork #DistributedOrganizations Outerspace AND. His brain works in spacetime. Plus his innate visions and strategies in Web 3.0 have earned him the nickname The Brain.

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