G-Man’s blockchain venture rolls out first digital marketing products

Aqilliz, the blockchain solutions provider spearheaded by former WPP exec Gowthaman ‘G-Man’ Ragothaman, has unveiled its first enterprise products aimed at bringing greater trust, transparency and efficiency to the digital marketing industry.

The company has revealed three tools—Proton, Neutron and Electron—that it says target key pain points in digital marketing.

Proton is aimed at optimising processes across the digital supply chain, specifically in the areas of source attestation, transaction verification, and dispute resolution. Focusing on how value is exchanged as well as where and when it takes place, Proton will aim to provide a common administrative layer relying on automated processes as enabled by smart contracts.

Neutron aims to ensure that identities are secured in a decentralised data marketplace. Neutron also verifies and authenticates the identities of all transacting parties, addressing who is exchanging what value at a given time.

Electron focuses on automating settlements, mitigating risks and reducing costs in order to improve customer outcomes. Applicable to customer loyalty programmes, Electron claims it will allow for a "faster, cheaper, and more secure settlement of value" by providing increased liquidity.

“Today, numerous technologies continue to focus on siloed solutions that have led to a largely fragmented martech ecosystem, resulting in a very bloated administrative layer,” said Ragothaman, speaking at ad:tech London conference.

“These existing solutions have thus far only addressed some parts of the problem, but fail to address them holistically. This has resulted in poor price discovery and liquidity along with a lack of trust across the marketplace. Brands, platforms, and consumers all are at the heart of Aqilliz and our mission is to restore balance, liquidity, and authentic value to this flawed system.”

Aqilliz was created in collaboration with Singapore-based blockchain developer Zilliqa (note the mirror-image company names).

The high-throughput blockchain platform founded Project Proton in 2017, a programmatic advertising alliance with WPP’s Mindshare, and successfully conducted a blockchain-based campaign for FMCG giant PepsiCo in May 2019.

Ragothaman played in a pivotal role in launching the blockchain pilot for PepsiCo—which claimed it reduced cost per viewable impressions by 28%—in his former role as global blockchain solutions lead at GroupM.

Ragothaman, who was also WPP global client lead, announced the launch of Aqilliz in July following his January departure from WPP after 20 years with the holding group.

Aqilliz will be announcing several key hires to its leadership team in the coming months and is expected to onboard clients by the end of 2019.