The e-commerce giant Amazon is trying to integrate the use of blockchain in advertising. Looking at the professional figures sought by the company, the Seattle giant is looking for a software engineer specialised in blockchain technology.
In detail, the candidate will take part in the Advertising Fintech Team focused on the use of blockchain technology.
This new team, based in Boulder, Colorado, will focus on billing and reconciliation systems to provide greater transparency on cross-border financial data, the job description reads:
“This is an opportunity to define a technology architectural direction of a greenfield area for Amazon’s advertising business using Blockchain technology”.
When asked for more details, an Amazon spokesman reported that the team has nothing else to share at this point in time.
Amazon and advertising data on blockchain
At the moment it is not clear what type of blockchain the company wants to use. Previously, the Amazon Web Services team – the company’s cloud computing section – built a proprietary blockchain called Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB) coupled with the Managed Blockchain service, capable of connecting AWS with the Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric blockchains.
Amazon is working with a number of companies that have repeatedly tried to use the blockchain in advertising. The general idea about the use of this technology in this sector is that a distributed ledger can allow everyone to have a clearer idea about the flow of money generated by advertising platforms so as to avoid discrepancies.
Much like a cryptocurrency blockchain shows which addresses sent or received money, how much money they moved and when they did it, an advertising ledger could keep track of how much advertising was displayed by a particular user (ID), how many banners were placed on a website, how much revenue it generated and so on.
It remains to be seen whether Amazon will introduce such a platform in other sectors of the industry. The company already has several internal development plans for some blockchain-based products that will probably be made available on the market later on.
An example of this is the AWS QLDB, an immutable centrally administered data registry, available as a limited preview for now.
Rahul Pathak, general manager of AWS Managed Blockchain, on the occasion of the 2019 Consensus last May, declared:
“We have a very long and healthy tradition of bringing forward internally developed projects at Amazon”.
After the recent announcement by MasterCard, which unveiled a blockchain-based platform to combat counterfeiting in the fashion industry, Amazon is also ready to take a further step forward in the blockchain space.
