From social networks with billions of followers to website hosting services, our data and online activities rest in the hands of a few, large companies. These multinational conglomerates control vast parts of the Internet – giving them increasing power over what users see and do online.
Marketers, of course, are no exception to this. They tailor their online promotions to play to the algorithms of big tech and make decisions based on data from proprietary and elusive algorithms. Whole marketing domains – such as search engine optimisation, organic social media and paid promotions – have emerged and evolved thanks to a few dominant players in the marketing industry.
While most marketers wilfully play along in the ‘growth game’ of gigantic digital services companies, some are waking up to the risks of a quasi-monopoly in digital marketing.
Risks of quasi-monopolies in digital marketing
The digital marketing landscape is home to a few dominant players such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. These companies control a significant share of the search, advertising, social media, e-commerce and cloud market.
Many marketers have come to rely on the advertising and promotional services of these companies, with whole marketing strategies developed around the availability of such platforms.
The reliance on these quasi-monopolies and their services comes with specific risks including financial dependence, censorship, central data storage, unfavourable contracts and the exploitation of uneven power dynamics.
Risk 1: Financial dependence
Many companies depend on a single platform or channel to generate leads or attract prospective customers. This makes them vulnerable to changes to that platform, such as algorithm updates, sudden restrictions in availability, fee hikes and censorship among others.
For example, the 2023 search algorithm update penalised a large number of website owners, while Google nudges marketers to spend more and more on ads to rank at the top of search results – often at the expense of the company’s budgets.
While using the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft is fine in a free market, it becomes problematic when a businesses’ financial success depends on the goodwill of quasi-monopolies.
Risk 2: Censorship and restriction of influence
Another risk of centralisation, as evidenced by policies like the Digital Services Act (DSA), is censorship. Large multinational platforms are required by law to identify and restrict the dissemination of misleading or deceptive content, including disinformation. This can include taking down advertisements and demonetising or restricting the reach of specific content or accounts.
Attempts to restrict the spread of misinformation can adversely impact any business – even if that business itself isn’t spreading any such content – as digital service providers rely on AI and user feedback to flag ‘harmful content’. These systems are prone to errors and abuse, as AI is not without flaws, and people can use the system to report competitors or damage specific businesses for personal, political or other motives.
Even if no deliberate harm to a business was intended, the restriction of advertisements, demonetisation and deletion of information can limit the ability of a business to connect with or acquire new customers – thereby creating considerable economic damage.
Risk 3: Centralised data storage
Storing marketing data in one central place is convenient, as it allows businesses to seamlessly gain insights for customer acquisition. However, centralised data storage with a large, multinational player also comes with certain cybersecurity risks, including:
- Deletion of data through system failures, hackers, malware, government requests, etc.
- Leak and resale of sensitive information as well as privacy violations, due to mismanagement, cyberattacks, and so on
- Profiteering and targeted advertising by the data host
While any form of data storage can come with similar risks, in a decentralised network where data is spread out, only a fraction of the data may be compromised at any one time.
Additionally, a smaller marketing service provider may be targeted less frequently by cyberattacks, as the potential upside for cybercriminals is smaller in comparison.
Risk 4: Unfavourable contract terms and exploitation of power dynamics
In quasi-monopolies, large companies can yield their market position and power to enforce and systematically implement policies, contract terms or pricing that disproportionately benefits them at the expense of the customer.
For example, marketers may find that social media companies force customers to start paying for services that were previously free, and that they might widen the scope of their terms and conditions to get rid of companies that they consider to be a business risk.
While such strategies are by no means limited to large marketing service providers, they can be particularly detrimental when a business does not have sufficient leverage to renegotiate fair and favourable terms with the company in question.
Risk 5: High cost of switching
A strong reliance on one system or company can lead to a phenomenon known as vendor lock-in, whereby a company is forced to keep using the product range from a single service provider so as to ensure seamless functioning or avoid high costs.
For example, marketers who wish to reap the full benefits of Google Ads may find that they must also use Google Analytics to gather all desired insights on advertising campaign performance.
Similarly, marketers who choose to host their customer data with a specific provider may find that the provider uses proprietary standards and file formats to increase the cost and difficulty of switching to a competitor.
They might also train their entire team to work with specific technologies, thereby incurring additional expenses when deciding to accept a competing product or offer.
Therefore, reliance on quasi-monopolistic players can also lead to high switching costs. One way to avoid this – and the other risks – involves decentralising your marketing set-up from the get go.
Is decentralised marketing a suitable alternative?
Decentralising your marketing set-up can involve spreading out channels, data and storage, and your overall marketing strategy to avoid dependence on a single marketing service provider or quasi-monopoly.
There are two different strategies to decentralise your marketing: the variety buffet and the path of the devoted decentralist.
The variety buffet
The variety buffet is a strategy where the volume of channels and service providers used makes you decentralised.
For example, instead of publishing short text-based messages only on Twitter, you also cross-publish to lesser-known competitors, such as Mastodon, Bluesky, GETTR, Nostr, and so on.
Or instead of using data storage from a single company, you use a different hosting and data warehousing solution for different parts of your marketing.
The benefit of the variety buffet is that it is incredibly hard for an outside party to shut down your full marketing operations, and if a single company or marketing channel fails you, you instantly have a suitable alternative at your disposal.
You can even continue to use quasi-monopolistic service providers, but you won’t rely on them nearly as much as you would if they were your only option.
The main drawback of the multi-option approach is how expensive and time-consuming it is to maintain on an ongoing basis. Not only are you less likely to benefit from favourable pricing and economies of scale, but you also introduce friction and complexity into everyday marketing activities.
The path of the devoted decentralist
Unlike the variety buffet, which achieves decentralisation through multiple different options, the devoted decentralist chooses to work with marketing channels and IT solutions that are decentralised by design. This means that quasi-monopolistic, centralist platforms are abandoned or deprioritised in favour of decentralised digital networks.
A marketer who is a devoted decentralist might therefore opt to work with decentralised social media platforms such as Mastodon and Nostr in favour of social networks controlled by a single enterprise or authority.
They might also prefer to implement a decentralised data network, in which marketing and customer data is stored in separate places and only combined for analysis and interpretation in a central location via an API with read-only permission.
The benefits of the devoted decentralist approach are that there may not be a single point of failure and that opportunities for censorship, government restrictions or exploitation by malicious players are minimised at the network level.
However, the devoted decentralist may find it more challenging to reach their target audience through decentralised marketing channels, as many methods of digital outreach and marketing communications are highly centralised today.
In practice, most marketers will probably benefit from opting for a mix of the devoted decentralist and variety buffet philosophies when decentralising their marketing set-up.
What might a decentralised marketing set-up look like?
In order to decentralise your digital marketing, you will need consider all aspects of your current marketing set-up, ranging from your corporate website to advertising and analytics.
In this section, we’ll look at some of the most common tools and technologies used in marketing teams. These include:
- Data storage
- Website: from hosting to CMS to analytics
- Social media
- Digital advertising
- Payment gateways / payment networks
Data storage
The first key part of a decentralised marketing is data storage. Whether you’re creating posts for social media, editing videos or writing articles for a local magazine, you will need a way to securely store your files. You may also want to have extra storage space to back up particularly important marketing and customer data.
What storage options are available to you may depend in part on the size of your business, the complexity of your marketing and the amount of money you can allocate to keep your data safe.
If you run a small business, you may be able to run your own small server in the office and store back-up tapes in another location to keep them safe. This set-up gives you full control over your data, but also full responsibility when the server crashes, overheats, or back-ups fail.
Larger companies meanwhile, may prefer to run a network of servers with off-premise back-ups to another company-owned server location, or pay a hosting company that gives them root access to their own private server.
But which storage option is best for you?
If you consider your storage to be sufficiently decentralised when spreading it out over multiple providers, you have two main options for storing your marketing files. The first involves splitting your data into several chunks or parts, and storing each part with a separate cloud provider or server. The second option is to have one central form of storage, with a decentralised set-up to enable full data recovery.
Option 1: Partitioned data storage across multiple cloud providers / servers
If you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, but generally trust your own servers or those of cloud providers, you can simply split your data into multiple chunks or parts. Each part can then be stored on its own server, or with a different cloud provider.
If things go wrong, you can rely on server backups that you did yourself or that you paid for as part of the data hosting with your cloud provider.
The benefit of this approach is that your data is not stored in a central location, meaning that you will probably never have a full data loss. In the case of server (and back-up failure), you will still have access to all the other data stored on different servers or with a different cloud provider.
The main drawback is that splitting your data into different parts can be cumbersome and more challenging to work with day-to-day.
Option 2: Central data storage with multiple, full back-ups
If you prefer to have all your data in a single space, you can also use a central storage location, such as a server, server rack or network of servers. You can either buy and manage these servers yourself or entrust a third-party to manage the servers for you.
To decentralise your data, you then create regular, full-data back-ups that you store in another location. These back-ups can protect your files against corruption, malware, and direct damage to the server.
For example, you might insert data tapes into your server to back up all the files in your office and then store those tapes off-premise. Some cloud providers also allow you to request data back-ups to be made in another location or to synchronise your data with another cloud provider at specified intervals.
While using multiple cloud providers in different territories can safeguard your data against theft and government censorship, you are still trusting the individual companies to keep your data safe and encrypted and not pry around in your files.
If that is a concern, you may prefer to run and host your own server or server network, or consider decentralised storage networks.
Option 3: Decentralised storage networks
In a secure, decentralised storage network, files are encrypted on your computer or server environment. They are then split into different parts and these parts are sent to individual nodes of a decentralised network for storage. Each part is stored multiple times (usually on at least 3 different nodes) to prevent data loss. There are also regular checks to ensure that the encrypted parts are still stored and available to use.
Decentralised storage networks are relatively new, and only a handful of commercial solutions exist. These include Storj, OORT, Zus and platforms such as Fileverse or Deupload, which are built on the Interplanetary File System (IFPS).
Website: from hosting and content management to analytics
Domain names
Currently, all websites are registered with a central authority called ICANN, which keeps track of websites’ IP addresses and their easy-to-remember to domain names (such as aquarianmarketing.com) on a set of master servers.
The technical structure is a bit more complex than that, but essentially ICANN has a monopoly on the naming of domain name servers (DNS) and is part of the infrastructure that matches up IP addresses with the text we type in a browser address bar.
At present, domain names are not an area where a marketer can achieve a decentralised set-up, owing in large part to the global monopoly of ICANN and its list of servers.
To compete with ICANN, another organisation would first have to compile a list of all servers with information for the routing of domains and domain names, and subsequently convince internet service providers and companies to use this alternate list.
While this has not happened (at a large scale) thus far, the monopoly ICANN has on domain name management is limited to identifying and accrediting domain extensions such as .com, .org and .de and others.
This means that any marketer or company can (in theory) register a new website address with a different domain extension if the organisation managing their current domain extension were to be excluded from the list of root domain name servers managed by ICANN.
Website hosting
As with your other marketing data, you can choose to store (and host) your website on your own server (with decentralised back-ups), a third-party server (with decentralised back-ups) or a decentralised server network.
Hosting your website on your server
To self-host your website, you will need to set-up and run your own server. This means you need to:
- Buy a physical server
- Install a server operating system
- Install web server software (such as Apache or NGINX)
- Configure your server and connect it to the Internet (through ports)
- Protect the server from attacks
- Upload your website files to the server
- Connect your domain name to the server
Third-party website hosting
A third-party hosting company will often set-up and manage a server for you, especially if you choose a company that specialises in website hosting, such as Siteground, IONOS, A2 hosting or one of the many hundred others of commercial providers.
To decentralise your website hosting with a third-party hosting company, you would need to choose a provider that:
- has a distributed server network (ideally across different countries)
- stores back-ups in another physical location than the original server
- and allows you to fully export all your data (including databases) in an open format that you can use and transfer elsewhere
It also makes sense to look at the legal jurisdiction of the hosting company and the countries in which they run their servers. This is because hosting companies are usually bound by the laws of countries in which they operate, and governments can request the deletion or taking down of websites that violate their laws.
Note: Some hosting companies rent cloud storage from large multinational data warehousing companies such as Google Cloud rather than running their own servers.
Decentralised web hosting via IPFS or Arweave
The third way to you can host a website is through a decentralised network such as Arweave or the Interplanetary File System (IFPS). A handful of commercial providers including Fleek allow you to host your website via IFPS, but they require considerable technical understanding.
Therefore, I would only recommend decentralised web hosting to those with a strong background in information technology or a strong need to avoid censorship.
NOTE: When deciding how to host your website, you may want to read through the data storage section again, as much of that information applies here as well.
Content management system (CMS)
A content management system allows you to manage websites and their content more efficiently.
Content management systems make it easy to add new pages or change the design of your website without actually touching the code on which the website runs. They can also include or be connected to tools that optimise a website for SEO and give you insights into website visitors.
To decentralise a content management system (CMS), it should be installed directly on the server(s) hosting your website, rather than in a third-party cloud. As a marketer, this means you will want to avoid website builders like WordPress.com, Wix or Squarespace.
Instead, you will want to opt for a self-hosted, open-source CMS like WordPress.org, TYPO3, Drupal or Joomla. The benefit of an open-source system is that it is independent of a single company or legal entity and can be developed and modified (usually) without paying licence fees.
Decentralised website SEO and analytics
In addition to the standard features of content management systems (CMS), you may want to extend your website with a range of tools that improve site performance, SEO and analytics.
A common way to achieve this is by integrating third-party plugins into your website – for example through the WordPress or Joomla store. Other content management systems like Ghost allow you to add and run your own code that connects with the CMS through a webhook or API.
Either set-up can work: third-party plugins may be a higher security risk (if not vetted properly), while APIs are typically more expensive to run and maintain.
The benefit of APIs over plugins is that you can directly interact with your chosen SEO or analytics software that is stored in another location. A plugin, meanwhile, lives within the scope of your CMS which leads to more centralised data storage than an API.
However, plugins are often self-hosted, meaning that the data will be stored on your chosen server or web hosting set-up. In contrast, the software that you are connecting to through an API could be hosted either in your storage location or in the software providers cloud environment, which may come with certain restrictions.
Self-hosted analytics solutions
There are a range of analytics solutions that you can host yourself – either directly on your server – or through your content management system.
One of these options is the on-premise version of Matomo Analytics, which is free to use and can run on most modern web servers or be integrated directly into a content management system like WordPress or Drupal.
For smaller WordPress websites with limited data needs, the plugin Independent Analytics might also be worth looking into. Unlike the self-hosted Matomo version, Independent Analytics stores views directly in your websites’ database, while providing a simple and straightforward dashboard of your website traffic.
SEO tools for your CMS
Some content management systems such as Ghost have in-built SEO tools that will generate a sitemap and allow you to add meta titles and descriptions for each page that you post.
If your content management system does not have in-built SEO functionality, you can install a plugin like Yoast SEO or the SEO framework (WordPress only), to help you. Alternatively, you can also create a sitemap yourself and manually add meta titles and descriptions to the code on each page.
Decentralised social media
When decentralising your social media, the main question is: which game do you want to play?
Do you want to decentralise through a range of platforms or do you want to only choose platforms that are decentralised by design?
If you are a devoted decentralist, you will want to choose platforms whose architecture and operations are distributed across a decentralised network. For this reason, we will first look at some widely used, decentralised social networks and what they offer to marketers and business owners.
After that, we will also list some lesser-known alternatives to mainstream social media networks, for those who want to hedge themselves the risks of relying of a few large platforms
Decentralised social media sites (and what they offer)
Mastodon
Mastodon is a free, open-source platform that runs on a network of distributed servers. It allows users to post short texts, images and videos, making it similar to microblogging platform Twitter. Each server operator can set their own rules, and servers interact with each other using the AcitvityPub protocol.
Number of users: around 1 million active users, approximately 10 million users total (August 2024)
Types of content supported: short posts (max. 500 characters) with text, image and video
What makes the platform decentralised: Users join Mastodon by signing up to a specific server, rather than joining a centralised website. Mastodon’s servers are connected as nodes in a network, and each server can set its own rules and privileges. Users can migrate their account from one server to another, if they export their data and import it to their new server location. Mastodon is built on the ActivityPub protocol.
Recommended reading:
- Danielle Navarro’s blog: What I know about Mastodon
- Noelle’s introduction to Mastodon: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon/
- Mastodon’s official documentation: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/
Misskey
Misskey is an open-source microblogging platform that runs on a network of distributed servers. It allows users to post short posts (max. 500 characters) with images and videos.
Similar to: Twitter, Facebook,
Number of users: around 800,000 users
Audience: large Japanese user base
Types of content supported: microblogging posts (max. 500 characters) with text, image and video
What makes the platform decentralised: Users join Misskey by signing up to a specific server rather than a centralised website. Misskey is based on the ActivityPub protocol to share content between servers, though the bulk of its users are concentrated on a single server.
Nostr
Nostr is an open-source protocol designed for decentralised, and censorship-resistant communications. Users can create an account on this protocol and share content via relays (or nodes) on the network.
Similar to: Twitter, Facebook
Number of users: around 40,000 active users (per week), 7 million total
Audience: highly technical, mainly developers including blockchain enthusiasts
Types of content supported: posts consisting in text and images mainly
What makes the platform decentralised: Users create a public and private key pair. That key pair allows them to publish and interact with events on the Nostr protocol through any Nostr client. A Nostrclient is like a web app that fetches data from relays, which are essentially back-end servers on which all Nostr activity is registered. This means user identities are not attached to a single server or organisation and cannot be controlled by a third-party.
Matrix (Element)
Matrix is an open-source protocol for decentralised communication, with a focus on 1:1 messaging and voice-over-IP. It supports end-to-end encrypted communication across servers.
Similar to: Whatsapp, Telegram
Number of users: over 250,000 daily active users
Type of content supported: instant messaging, voice-over-IP calls
What makes the platform decentralised: Each user connects to a single server and can engage with users on other servers, as servers exchange data through an API. Individual users can also choose to host their own server, to fit their needs and maintain full control over their data.
Pixelfed
Pixelfed is a free, open-source platform for sharing images and illustrations. As part of the Fediverse, it also relies on the ActivityPub protocol to share date between servers.
Similar to: Instagram
Number of users: 250,000 total, around 20,000 monthly active users (August 2024)
Type of content supported: Photo-sharing
What makes the platform decentralised: Users join Pixelfed by signing up to a specific server, rather than joining a centralised website. Pixelfed’s servers are connected as nodes in a network, and each server can set its own rules and privileges. Users can migrate their account from one server to another, if they export their data and import it to their new server location.
PeerTube
PeerTube is an open-source, video hosting platform that allows users to create and manage their own video sites. Video sites can be connected to others on the network, allowing users to search for videos across PeerTube servers (using Sepiasearch)
Similar to: YouTube
Number of users: around 10.000 daily active users, 225.000 total
Type of content supported: Videos
What makes the platform decentralised: PeerTube allows users to create their own video platform and connect platforms to one another. Platforms can be connected via the ActivityPub protocol, while the storage of videos remains decentralised through a federation of over 1000 hosting providers.
Bastyon
Bastyon is a blockchain-based social media platform that allows to share posts, images, videos and longer articles, without requiring any personally identifiable information to create an account on the platform.
Similar to: Facebook, Twitter
Number of users: around 100,000 active users
Type of content supported: short and long text, images, videos
What makes the platform decentralised: Each piece of Bastyon content (including posts, videos and comments) is published to a blockchain, that runs on a network of user nodes.
Overview of alternative social media networks
In addition to the decentralised platforms introduced above, there are a number of other social media platforms. These platforms may be interesting for marketers who wish to decentralise their social media presence by spreading their communications across multiple channels.
Take a look at the image below to identify platforms that might be a good fit for your business.
Note: These platforms tend to be owned by individuals or businesses who may have certain commercial, social and political interests.For this reason,they may attract specific audiences over others, and be skewed towards the viewpoints and perspectives of their respective owners.
Decentralised email solutions
E-mail is not just a key tool for business correspondence – but often, one of the most effective marketing channels for nurturing leads and moving them closer to purchase. Before we can explore decentralised email solutions, it makes sense to take a quick look at how e-mail actually works.
How email works
Basically, you need three components to send and receive email:
- an email client and/or management software
- an email server and
- a DNS server.
The email client is the software you use to read incoming mail and type and send messages to other users.
The email server works in the background to make sure that outgoing mail is sent to the right address and incoming mail is delivered to your email client. To do this, it requests IP addresses from a DNS server. A DNS server is like a big database that holds domain names and their corresponding IP addresses (or the equivalent of a phone book for email).
Want to know more? Watch this video for a more detailed, technical explanation.
Where does email management software fit in?
E-mail management software usually connects with an email server via the SMTP protocol to initiate the sending of emails. The email server then transmits the emails to the recipients’ email server, which in turn presents the emails in the recipients’ email client.
E-mail management software can also come with many other useful marketing functions, such as:
- Contact list management
- Visual editors and email template builders
- Autoresponders
- Lead tracking and scoring
- etc.
What can a decentralised email marketing set-up look like?
There are different ways that an email marketing set-up can look – depending on how far you want to take the decentralisation philosophy.
You could, for example, decide to set up your own mail server and e-mail management software on-premise, or run your own email management software but use a third-party mail server for sending and receiving e-mail.
Running your own mail server vs. using a third-party mail server
A mail server manages the technical side of sending, receiving and validating e-mails. In most companies, the mail server processes both the regular e-mails (sent and received by individual employees) and the e-mails that are part of a marketing campaign.
With an on-premise email server, you have complete control over your data since it is hosted within your organization’s physical infrastructure.
However, the decision to run a bespoke mail server or use a third-party provider is often made at the company level rather than by the marketing team. Setting up and self-hosting a mail server also requires considerable technical expertise, so – if this is to be implemented – it helps to have an experienced system administrator on the team.
Decentralised email management software
If you want to decentralise your e-mail marketing set-up, the more impactful decision a marketer can make is arguably, which email management software you want to use.
After all, the email management software will hold sensitive personal data – such as contacts and email subscribers – as well as statistics around the performance of email marketing campaigns.
You can choose to store this data on your own server (with an on-premise email marketing software) or entrust a third-party to make the software and any data you input available to you (through a cloud-based application).
A core risk of third-party owned cloud applications is that cloud provider can limit your ability to use their software if you do not comply with their terms and conditions. These terms and conditions may change at short notice, leaving you in a difficult spot if unfavourable changes are made.
Meanwhile, most (but not all) on-premise email marketing software grants you a perpetual right to use the software and cannot be retroactively revoked by the vendor. You also retain full control over (and responsibility for) your data.
That said, cloud-based email marketing software can be cheaper to set-up and users often benefit from more advanced features. From a decentralisation perspective, it only makes sense to use cloud-based email marketing software when you retain full control over your data (e.g. through exports/back-ups to your IT infrastructure) and the cloud provider stores multiple copies in different server locations.
| On-premise email marketing software | Cloud-based email marketing software |
| Data hosted by you | Data hosted by cloud provider |
| One-time purchase | Subscription with recurring payments |
| Less prone to vendor lock-in | Prone to vendor lock-in |
| Full responsibility for updates and maintenance | Cloud provider manages updates and maintenance |
| Ensure a decentralised data storage set-up | Look for distributed storage facilities (e.g. backups in multiple warehouses) or full data export |
Comparison of on-premise vs. cloud-based email marketing software, for more details visit https://www.interspire.com/hosted-vs-download/
On-premise email marketing software: which options are there?
There are a few email marketing solutions that you can install directly on your company’s servers. These include free, open-source solutions such as sendportal.io and paid software including Octeth and MailWizz.
Which cloud-based email marketing software supports decentralised storage?
Cloud-based email marketing software can support decentralised storage in two ways:
- Backing up your data across different geographic server locations and
- Allowing you to export all data to your own servers / data storage
Most cloud-based email marketing providers only support one of these options, or charge you extra money for back-ups and data migration.
For example, Zoho Campaigns, lets you export all email campaigns and reports, as well as all e-mail contacts in your account, but back-ups are stored in the same data centre and same location as the original data.
Similarly, Brevo, which backs up all email campaign data across three distinct locations, only allows you to export contacts in bulk, while requiring manual export of campaigns and analytics reports.
For this reason (and because of lower long-term costs), I would recommend using an on-premise email marketing solution where possible. If you prefer a cloud-based application, I recommend choosing one that allows you to export all data to your own servers and storage anytime to minimise business risk.
Decentralised digital advertising
Digital advertising is a subset of online marketing that includes all types of paid promotional activities. It Is commonly a key focus for businesses that want to drive traffic and achieve conversions in the short term.
Digital advertising can take many different forms, including text and banner ads on search engines and websites, as well as paid-for links, sponsorships and brand deals.
The digital advertising market is in large part controlled by global advertising networks such as Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Amazon Ads.
While advertising through any of these networks allows marketers to benefit from the reach and scalability of the providers, it also means they give up some (creative) control to near-monopolies and have to pay steep campaign prices.
In contrast, a decentralised digital advertising strategy can provide more flexibility and be adapted to meet the unique customer acquisition standards of a business.
Decentralised advertising on the blockchain
One way in which marketers can decentralise their digital advertising is by serving ads through decentralised networks. These networks are commonly built on a blockchain through which transactions for advertising can be settled.
Decentralised advertising is a relatively new field – and so there are only a handful of companies that have developed advertising networks on the blockchain (with varying levels of decentralisation).
Basic attention token (BAT) / Brave Ads
Basic attention token (BAT) is a token that has been integrated into Brave Browser to create one of the most widely known blockchain-based advertising networks.
Marketers who wish to advertise with Brave can choose buy advertising space using the Ethereum-compatible BAT token. This gives them the opportunity to create different types of ads, such as search ads, promotional notifications and new tab takeovers.
Ads will run in the Brave browser in the regions that the marketer selected. They will only be shown to users who have opted in to advertising, and users who view the ads receive some of the BAT that the advertiser pays.
How decentralised are Brave Ads?
The basic attention token (BAT) is decentralised by design and lives on the Ethereum blockchain. That said, the platform through which Brave Ads are served is owned by Brave and advertisers are required to go through an approval process before launching their campaign.
Brave also still uses custodial services to pay users and allow them to withdraw BAT. The company is currently rolling out Solana wallets to allow non-custodial, non-KYC withdrawals, but the core advertising platform is not fully decentralised as of now (August 2024).
Further reading: https://brave.com/transparency/
Adshares / Web3Ads
AdShares is a blockchain-based advertising network through which marketers can buy ad space on third-party websites and in the metaverse. To use Adshares, marketers can join an existing ad server and purchase ad space with the native ADS coin or one of many other cryptocurrencies supported by the platform.
Advertisers can create campaigns consisting in pop-up or pop-under advertisements and optionally target specific groups of users based on their region and interests. They can also check how the advertisements perform once their campaign is live.
How decentralised is Adshares?
AdShares is decentralised in that advertisers and publishers can interact directly without intermediaries. Instead, they rely on ad servers to provide the interface for managing ad space and campaigns. All transactions are settled through the platforms’ own blockchain that works with a delegated proof of stake consensus mechanism.
While anyone can set up and run an ad server, there are only a handful of servers available today, limiting marketers’ options and somewhat defeating the decentralised nature of the Adshares protocol.
The Adshares team also directly and indirectly holds a sizeable share of the native ADS token, meaning that they can effectively control the Adshares network through their financial stake and power. This limits the level of decentralisation of the Adshares network.
Further reading: https://docs.adshares.net/
Decentralised digital advertising outside the crypto world
Decentralised search advertising
Search advertising refers to the practice of placing ads in search engines, typically before or in between search results.
There are a handful of companies that dominate the search engine market, with a single entity, Google Search, accounting for over 80% of all search engine traffic. Other major players include Bing, Yandex and Baidu, with maybe a dozen smaller providers competing for market share.
As a result, the opportunities for advertising in search engines are heavily skewed towards two companies: Google and Microsoft. Both Google and Microsoft run ad networks that other search engines use to generate operating revenue from advertising.
While this duopoly gives Google and Microsoft a lot of power, you can still (somewhat) decentralise your search engine advertising by not relying on a single ad network. In practice, you may be able to achieve a higher level of decentralisation by distributing your advertising budget been multiple search ad networks, such as:
- Google Ads (for Google, Ecosia, DuckduckGo)
- Microsoft Ads (for Bing, AOL, Yahoo, Ecosia, Qwant and Swisscows)
- Brave Ads (for Brave search)
- Yandex Ads (for Yandex)
- Baidu Ads (for Baidu)
- Mojeek Ads (for Mojeek)
Decentralised display advertising (WITH INDIVIDUAL PARTNERSHIPS)
Display advertisements include banners, text and videos on third-party websites that aim to drive traffic to the advertiser’s site. Most display advertisements are bought through ad networks.
An ad network is a platform that brings together publishers and advertisers and packages unsold ad space into ‘audiences’ that the marketer can target through their ads.
Much like the search market, display ad networks are run by a handful of tech conglomerates, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and more.
But what options do you have if you want to set up and run display ads in a decentralised way? Well, you can sign direct deals with publishers and/or tap into niche ad networks.
Direct deals with publishers
The classic way to decentralise your display ads is to sign contracts with individual companies that will let you run advertisements directly on their website. This is how display ads worked before major ad networks entered the market, and it can still be a beneficial way to run display ads today.
In fact, direct deals allow you to negotiate more favourable, long-term rates, because you are cutting out the ad network as the middle man. You can also be much more selective of which companies and websites you work with. That said, direct deals can be more time-consuming to set up and maintain and the success will depend largely on the quality of your ads and whether you reach the right audience.
Niche ad networks
Niche ad networks specialise in facilitating display advertising between publishers and marketers in a specific industry or area. They can make it easier for marketers to find relevant publishers, but of course, ad networks are more centralised by design than direct 1:1 relationships.
Decentralised affiliate marketing
In addition to search and display advertising, you can also use affiliate marketing to promote and sell products.
Setting up your own affiliate marketing program allows individual businesses, influencers or media companies to include promotional links in their messaging and earn a commission from you for every sale made through their referrals.
Requirements for decentralised affiliate marketing
From a technical perspective, the minimum requirements for an affiliate marketing program are:
- A way to generate and manage affiliate links and
- A tool that can track clicks, purchases, etc. from those links
Tracking affiliate links with tag manager
If you only have a small number of affiliate partners, you can just use a spreadsheet or database to store affiliate links and any associated information.
You can then use a tag manager to track clicks, purchases and other relevant events from affiliate links. The decentralised approach would involve using a self-hosted solution such as the free and open-source Matomo tag manager.
A drawback of using tag managers for affiliate link tracking is that they usually require Javascript to run and may be disabled by browser extensions. Tag managers also do not usually offer advanced features such as fraud detection, commission calculation or multi-channel attribution.
Tracking affiliate links with custom code
If you need to manage a larger affiliate program, you can of course, either opt for a commercial affiliate tracking solution (e.g. AffiliateWP, Rewardful, etc.). Alternatively, you can hire a developer to set up a basic affiliate management tool for you in a matter of days.
The benefit of hiring a developer is that they can write custom code that integrates with your existing marketing tech stack, whereas commercial solutions often require you to use specific software for their tools to work out of the box. A developer can also adapt the affiliate tracking solution to match your exact business and tracking needs.
Decentralised payment networks
A decentralised payment network allows companies to accept payments without relying on a third-party payment processing company such as Stripe, PayPal and others. As such, there is no intermediary who can block money or transactions based on suspicions of fraud, legal requirements, or violations against their terms and conditions.
For this reason, decentralised payment networks can be attractive for marketers who sell products through an online shop, while being at risk of having their revenue stream cut off. However, decentralised payment networks also come with greater responsibility for documenting, managing and protecting financial transactions on part of the company.
Currently, the only secure, trust-less decentralised payment networks that support cross-border transactions work with cryptocurrencies. This is because the blockchain provides an immutable ledger and thereby records all transactions as validated by independent nodes on the network.
Self-hosted, non-custodial crypto payment processors
There are a number of payment processors that you can run on your own (virtual) server, to accept e-commerce payments and/or donations from customers. Out of these self-hosted solutions, the payment processors that are relatively user-friendly are BTCPay Server and Bitcart.
BTCPay Server
If you only want to accept payments in bitcoin, you can install BTCPay Server to generate invoices and process transactions with bitcoin and bitcoin lighting networks. BTCPay Server can be integrated in most content management systems (CMS), offers a point-of-sale interface for physical stores and embed codes for websites.
You can also optionally add integrations for Dash, Litecoin and Monero, but the main focus remains on BTC.
Further reading: https://btcpayserver.org/
BitCart
While BTC Pay server only supports classical blockchains, you may also want to receive cryptocurrency via smart contract and token platforms such as Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain.
In that case, you may prefer to install BitCart, which can also be integrated with most content management systems and online stores, and has a point-of-sale interface for physical locations.
Further reading: https://bitcart.ai/
With the tools and strategies introduced in this article, you should be able to decentralise a large part of your (company’s) digital marketing. If you would like me to consider decentralised alternatives for any other common marketing tools, please let me know in the comments.
Full disclosure: All the strategies and tools mentioned in the article are based on my independent research. This research takes time and effort to conduct, so if you find the articles valuable, please consider supporting Aquarian Marketing. I am not affiliated with any of the companies or organisations in question and do not receive any benefits (financial or otherwise) from them. I have tested and used some – but not all – of the services and platforms.
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