Web3 CMO Stories

Inside the World of Blockchain Advertising with Benjamin Dunkel: From Cryptocurrency Investments to Web3 Innovations | S3 E14

September 08, 2023 Joeri Billast & Benjamin Dunkel Season 3
Inside the World of Blockchain Advertising with Benjamin Dunkel: From Cryptocurrency Investments to Web3 Innovations | S3 E14
Web3 CMO Stories
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Web3 CMO Stories
Inside the World of Blockchain Advertising with Benjamin Dunkel: From Cryptocurrency Investments to Web3 Innovations | S3 E14
Sep 08, 2023 Season 3
Joeri Billast & Benjamin Dunkel

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Have you ever wondered how blockchain and cryptocurrency could revolutionize your world? Dive deep into these mysteries with our distinguished guest, Benjamin Dunkel, the innovative founder of How to Begin Crypto Com and  VP at  Alkimi Exchange. Transitioning from a thriving career in e-commerce and SaaS, Benjamin became a self-taught blockchain enthusiast and truly represents the essence of a groundbreaking pioneer. His remarkable journey, characterized by an audacious leap into the volatile domain of cryptocurrency during a global pandemic, ignited a passion leading him to establish an online training program. This program guides individuals on the safe investment pathways within the enchanting universe of cryptocurrency.

In this riveting conversation, we uncover the marvels of Alkimi, the pioneering blockchain startup where Benjamin is blazing a trail. The brilliance of Alkimi doesn't merely lie in its decentralized ad exchange set to reshape advertising. It's also committed to addressing the triad of challenges haunting the advertising sector: exorbitant fees, dubious data, and escalating carbon emissions. Benjamin provides insights into how Alkimi's revolutionary decentralized infrastructure seeks to counter these concerns while delivering an unmatched advertising experience.

Yet, every trailblazing venture faces its own set of challenges. With candidness, Benjamin delves into the highs and lows of marketing and promoting Alkimi's ad exchange. He celebrates the team's technical acumen, which empowered them to devise the exchange in under two years. Additionally, he unveils the strategic tactics employed to boost the project's adoption amidst a bearish blockchain climate. Offering an eye-opening case study of their debut test client, Benjamin emphasizes the unparalleled transparency achieved through blockchain and hashing mechanisms. As a cherry on top, we explore the untapped horizons of Web3 and its potential to launch businesses into unparalleled success. Join us on this exhilarating journey through blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and the transformative essence of Web3 with the incomparable Benjamin Dunkel.

This episode was recorded through a StreamYard call on July 27, 2023. Read the blog article here:  https://webdrie.net/inside-the-world-of-blockchain-advertising-with-benjamin-dunkel-from-cryptocurrency-investments-to-web3-innovations/


 

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Send us a Text Message.

Have you ever wondered how blockchain and cryptocurrency could revolutionize your world? Dive deep into these mysteries with our distinguished guest, Benjamin Dunkel, the innovative founder of How to Begin Crypto Com and  VP at  Alkimi Exchange. Transitioning from a thriving career in e-commerce and SaaS, Benjamin became a self-taught blockchain enthusiast and truly represents the essence of a groundbreaking pioneer. His remarkable journey, characterized by an audacious leap into the volatile domain of cryptocurrency during a global pandemic, ignited a passion leading him to establish an online training program. This program guides individuals on the safe investment pathways within the enchanting universe of cryptocurrency.

In this riveting conversation, we uncover the marvels of Alkimi, the pioneering blockchain startup where Benjamin is blazing a trail. The brilliance of Alkimi doesn't merely lie in its decentralized ad exchange set to reshape advertising. It's also committed to addressing the triad of challenges haunting the advertising sector: exorbitant fees, dubious data, and escalating carbon emissions. Benjamin provides insights into how Alkimi's revolutionary decentralized infrastructure seeks to counter these concerns while delivering an unmatched advertising experience.

Yet, every trailblazing venture faces its own set of challenges. With candidness, Benjamin delves into the highs and lows of marketing and promoting Alkimi's ad exchange. He celebrates the team's technical acumen, which empowered them to devise the exchange in under two years. Additionally, he unveils the strategic tactics employed to boost the project's adoption amidst a bearish blockchain climate. Offering an eye-opening case study of their debut test client, Benjamin emphasizes the unparalleled transparency achieved through blockchain and hashing mechanisms. As a cherry on top, we explore the untapped horizons of Web3 and its potential to launch businesses into unparalleled success. Join us on this exhilarating journey through blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and the transformative essence of Web3 with the incomparable Benjamin Dunkel.

This episode was recorded through a StreamYard call on July 27, 2023. Read the blog article here:  https://webdrie.net/inside-the-world-of-blockchain-advertising-with-benjamin-dunkel-from-cryptocurrency-investments-to-web3-innovations/


 

Benjamin:

Yeah, as you just read, you know I've spent a lot of time in technology and software overall. That's something that has fascinated me ever since I had my first computer way, way back then, and I came across blockchain as a concept in 2017. There was this big run-up of Hookcoin 2017 and then the big crash soon after, so I wasn't at all invested. I was literally reading up on the technology because, working in software, I was always interested in what was next and what I needed to keep an eye on.

Joeri:

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast, season 3, episode 14. My name is Joeri Billast, and I'm your podcast host. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Benjamin Slam" Dunkel. Hi Benjamin, how are you? Or should I say, Benjamin?

Benjamin:

Benjamin is the original. I'm from Germany originally, but Benjamin or Benjamin in French, where I live in Paris now.

Joeri:

So either way, it's like with my name, Benjamin, it's Yuri, but you know, depending on who you talk to, it's Joeri or Joeri, or it can be everything, but you know, I know that they are talking to me, so no problem.

Joeri:

So, guys, if you don't know Benjamin, Benjamin has more than 10 years of experience in e-commerce and SaaS, with a focus on team management, solution consulting, and project delivery. Prior to joining Alchemy, Benjamin was a part of the EMEA leadership team at Bazaar Voice, where he managed a team of solution consultants based in London, Paris, and Munich, and he advised many of the leading brands and retailers across EMEA and the US. Benjamin is fluent in German, English, and French and has been a self-taught blockchain enthusiast since 2017. In 2020, he founded How to Begin Crypto Come, now part of Alchemy, a successful online training and coaching business that teaches people how to safely get started in their journey as a blockchain and cryptocurrency investor. Interesting bio, Benjamin, but you know what I always like to know.

Benjamin:

Yeah, as you just read, you know I've spent a lot of time in technology and software overall. That's something that has fascinated me ever since I had my first computer way, way back then, and I came across blockchain as a concept in 2017. There was this big one-up of Bitcoin 2017 and then the big crash soon after, so I wasn't at all invested. I was literally just reading up on the technology because, working in software, I was always interested in what was next and what I needed to keep an eye on. I was more an intellectual interest and then, you know, just kept up with how things were evolving and it started for me in terms of investing and trying to get more involved and so on. Going beyond the intellectual interest. In 2020, when Covid hit because I was traveling a lot less, I had more time on my hands and I needed something to focus on that was not as negative as the pandemic, so I decided to use the additional time to dive into what it is, what it means, what the opportunities are and how to get started. When I tried to start investing in cryptocurrencies in particular, I very quickly realized that the information that was out there was either super generic, as in it's future, you have to get involved, but nobody told you how, or it was e-talk, where you have to get a degree in computer science to understand the first paragraph essentially. And so my background is for the last decade.

Benjamin:

Before then I had worked in software and I was running a team of solution consultants, a pre-sales team, which are the product experts that work very closely with the sales team. So I was always wearing two hats technology, understand what the product does, but then explain it in simple terms and the why behind it, why it's important, and why it's beneficial. And so I used that experience to read up on all the technology for myself, understand what it means, what the opportunities are, and then translate that into okay, these are projects, these are criteria I will use personally to start investing. because I see that as an opportunity. And then it became quite evident that once I started talking about it to friends and so on, everybody started asking questions because everybody wanted to get involved and start investing themselves. And so it became my COVID lockdown project to create a training program that I would have wished to find myself when I started, and that's how tobegincrypto. com was born. So I developed an online training tutorial for people to start investing.

Benjamin:

That literally is a step-by-step guide for anybody who wants to get started on what is blockchain. Why is it important? Why do I think it's such a big opportunity? If you want to get involved, here are some criteria you can use to select projects. Here's where you can go and buy them safely, this is how you store them on a cold wallet, and so on and so forth.

Benjamin:

So literally like a step-by-step guide. I started that as a side hustle, essentially next to my main job, went quite successfully just selling the course online, then started coaching people personally as well Mostly other professionals like lawyers, tax advisors, and so on who received more and more clients and said hey, I invested a bit of money, how do I do this now with taxes and so on, and that ob led me deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of crypto blockchain. I got involved in more and more projects, one of them being Alchemy, which then at some point made me an offer I couldn't refuse, where I put an end to my life in the software world and decided to join Alchemy as a blockchain startup full-time.

Joeri:

Wow, that's an inspiring story. Life can change and you get these opportunities that present themselves that you cannot refuse. I guess now it's also a good moment with the bear market for people to think of that and maybe have a look at your course, which is still available.

Benjamin:

It's still available. Yes, it's now. As you read in the bio, it's now part of what we call Alchemy Academy. That is something we're building at the moment at Alchemy, but the course will be integrated into that. The idea is that we build a bigger platform for people to get educated in all things Blockchain and cryptocurrencies and so on what it is, and my course will be part of that, but it is still available at the moment as a standalone. So if you go to howtobegincrypto. com, you know, read up on it, send me an email if you have any questions, and so on, reach out. No problem at all and, as you said, I think it's.

Benjamin:

I was lucky enough in that sense. You know, timing is everything, and looking back, you always feel very smart. But, you know, 2020 was when the last bull run essentially started slowly to build up, and so it was very good timing for me to get involved. You know, play it safe. Don't just go all in. It's not a casino, it's not poker, it's not like win it or lose it. It's there are ways to get involved safely and, you know, mutually and not risk at all.

Benjamin:

But it's by far the only sector and investment category I've found where things can evolve that quickly in both directions, I have to say, because it's very fun when all goes up and you feel like the smartest investor in the world, and then you feel very stupid when you wake up and everything is down 50%. But that's why it's very important that you know, you understand what it is and when you start investing, you literally be strict with yourself, you know, be disciplined and set up a strategy where you set different exit points as well. If you do that, you know it's a very good moment to get involved, especially with the market kind of just slowly starting to wake up again. You know it's not a bad time to start looking at that.

Joeri:

It's interesting because I have a background. I had an investment club for years. But you are investing in the traditional stocks, the stock market, of course, and then of course there are a lot of strategies. It's important to understand fundamentally what's happening, but also from a technical perspective. But now you are a vice president of ecosystem growth at Alchemy. I guess also there are some challenges or opportunities that you have encountered. I'm curious to hear about that.

Benjamin:

Yeah. So my role at Alchemy is I like to think of this in two buckets. One is internally, so making sure that all the processes internally are aligned, as you can imagine, you know there are a lot of technical things that we need to do to build the advertising exchange. Maybe I'll touch a little bit on Alchemy in a bit as well, just to make sure people understand what we're actually building. But there are a lot of internal processes, making sure that people understand, and that's going back to my previous role. Essentially, you know, wearing both the technical and the sales- related hat, you need to be able to make sure that the tech team knows what the business team needs and that the business team understands what the tech team actually built. So just overall process internally. And then the second piece is the ecosystem part, where I'm trying to use my network and my way of explaining things to just make people aware of what we're building and how it fits into the overall advertising landscape.

Benjamin:

Because one thing I always like to say it's for me it's never been Web 3 is the new great thing and it's going to kill Web 2, and the Internet is dead and it's going to go away like I've never believed in that. For me, it's just a natural evolution of technology and what we call Web 3 and blockchain and so on. It's just a new way, new technical possibilities to solve problems for businesses all over the world. So it's not an either, you're in or you're out. People need to understand that. A lot of good things happen in Web 2 and the Internet and, as we know, it is great. It's very often compared. Web 3 always gets compared to the dot com bubble and so on. Back in the day when Internet first started, there are similarities but at the end of the day, the internet didn't kill commerce and retailers and people. As we know it, it became an additional way for them to do business, and blockchain is just the next evolution of that.

Joeri:

Exactly. I like your viewpoint about that, but you mentioned indeed, explain a bit more about Alchemy and maybe explain what is exactly the centralized ad exchange and why it is transformative for advertising.

Benjamin:

Yeah, so in a nutshell I'll try to be brief because it's a rather complex system when you dig into it. But I was very new to the advertising world per se from how it actually works behind the scenes when I joined. So the bottom line is you can think of an ad exchange, almost like eBay for advertising. On the one hand, you have, let's say, websites or games or the metaverse in the future, anywhere where you can show an ad and people try to use that to monetize the website. Right, CNN, New UK, or a major website that has a lot of traffic. Typically you see ad banners on that site and those publishers get paid by the brands to display their ads because the brands want exposure to that audience. Right, so you have a seller or an ad slot and you have a buyer, which is typically the brand that wants to advertise To that audience. In the middle of that. you have what's called an ad exchange. Today is, for the most part, Google and some other major players, but the kind of the 500- pound gorilla is Google that runs that and what we have done is we've replicated that system to solve a variety of problems because today the advertising world if you want to stick to.

Benjamin:

The three most important problems that both publishers and advertisers have is a fee. There's a huge amount of unnecessary fees or inflated fees, because the entire system today, the entire supply chain from a brand wanting to show on ad on a publisher site is completely opaque. There's very little visibility as to who gets involved, what it does, who pays how much, who takes their margin, and so on. There's a huge amount of fraud and 17 percent of the entire ad budget spent globally is just unaccounted for. Like nobody knows where it goes and people just accept that it's like. Right now it's a $776 billion market per year and there are double digit percentage numbers of that that just disappear and nobody knows where and people accept it. So fees are a major problem. The second piece is that it's very difficult for publishers and advertisers to actually understand what happens with their ad campaigns because people like Google or the agencies in the middle and so on, everybody operate in their own little black box and hardly anybody shares the real data of what's going on because everybody's kind of creaming the margins, topping up a little bit and making a good amount of money.

Benjamin:

The Alchemy team was at the Ken Lyons Festival last month in the south of France. That's one of the major kind of advertising world conferences, and when you see the amount of money sloshing around and any kind of mid-sized agency renting out a yacht for the week to impress clients, you understand how much money is being made by these middlemen, right? So that is the second problem. It's very difficult for somebody who spends, let's say, 100,000 euros in ad budget to understand where that money actually goes, how much reaches the publisher, and so on. And then the third part is which is becoming increasingly important for the advertising world is right now, the advertising world generates more carbon emissions than the aviation industry, which is kind of crazy to think about. You think of big planes flying across the globe, and that's one of the main targets. To say this is polluting the planet. When you stack up the numbers, online advertising creates more pollution than aviation, which is crazy. And so we think that we have found a way to address these three major problems because we use a decentralized architecture, meaning we don't have to have a major alchemy warehouse with huge servers and to run everything ourselves. We decentralize the ad auctions, so we have people that operate blockchain nodes for us and run the auctions, so we have much lower infrastructure costs that we can then pass on to the clients, so our fees are significantly lower than the traditional ad exchanges.

Benjamin:

The second piece about the data. Well, that's where blockchain shines. All the ad auctions that we do, the results of those, we store on a blockchain ledger where our clients can see them. So we're giving complete, transparent access to our clients. They know exactly where their money goes, where it was spent. If it's a campaign that runs for several weeks, for example, they can even log in and optimize the campaign in real time because they see which publisher gives them the most impressions, and so on and so forth. And because we're creating this kind of single source of truth for the data, everybody can refer to this ledger that we have. With the real ad auction data, there's no need for middleman to go and say, well, okay, we got this set of data from somebody that might be right, let's run our own analysis, and then the next one runs their own feature set, and so on. So we're trying to reduce the number of middleman and the number of processes you need, and by that we're reducing the carbon footprint of that supply chain.

Joeri:

Well, you were just talking. Before we started the recording you mentioned the word generative economics in the context of Alchemy. Maybe you can talk a bit about that too.

Benjamin:

Yeah, it's a concept that comes up in our white paper, that we refer to in the white paper from two years ago. It's essentially generative economics is a concept that believes in the fact, where it explains the fact that there can be a way to have an economy where every participant actually benefits the rest of the ecosystem right. So it's almost like this image of if you say a rising tide raises all boats, the more people participate, the more everybody wins. And we think we can apply this to the different stakeholders in the advertising ecosystem. Because if you think back to the very beginning of advertising, there are three participants. Right, you have the publisher, so somebody that can show and add somewhere Today that's mostly internet websites, but it could be a billboard, could be a prospect, it could be anything. The second participant is obviously the brand that wants to advertise to the audience that the publisher has access to. And the third participant is the actual user you, me, anybody actually seeing the ad right Now, today, this kind of value exchange that you have there.

Benjamin:

Publisher earns some money for showing an ad to a user that hopefully finds this ad interesting, discovers a new product, goes and buys it. So the brand benefits. So this virtuous circle of everybody wins has been disrupted today, because today you and me and anybody using a computer has become kind of a data farm. So we are being harvested for our data. There's cookies everywhere. Any website you go to, there's like 15 banners of we use cookies to just serve you better. But what's happening in the background? That everything we do is tracked, everything we do is analyzed and then the data is sold on. So it's mostly a game between publishers and advertisers today, with the big ad exchanges in the middle just making the most of that data to sell it on. So, as users, we have been kind of turned into the cash cow for the ecosystem and we believe that there's a way to bring the user back into that value exchange. Because, if we can, blockchain is very often described as technology that allows everybody to take back ownership of their data. Right, we all know cookies. There's a lot of talk industry today about even Google will block third party cookies that track you and so on. In the next well, years 2024, 2025, that's going to pose a problem. So we believe that with blockchain, it's going to be possible for people to actually own their data.

Benjamin:

You can actively opt in to say, okay, I'm willing to share my preferences, but I should be rewarded for doing so, right? If I really like a brand, if I really like a newspaper website where I get my information from, maybe I'm willing to let them know that I'm interested in topic one, two, three. It's not that trying to find out in the background. I'm openly sharing that. These are my areas of interest, but maybe in exchange for that I get a micro payment and cryptocurrency. Or maybe if I click on X amount of ads per month, then I get free access to their premium content.

Benjamin:

So there's many different ways we can think of that. One of the options for users is obviously to get involved with Alchemy as a project itself, because we have our own token that people can go and buy. And if you have tokens, there's various ways of participating in the Alchemy ecosystem. You can participate in liquidity pool. If you have enough tokens, you can collateralize and actually run a note. So there's many different ways you can be rewarded for participating in that revolution we're trying to bring to the advertising industry.

Joeri:

Well, actually, I like the way I explain everything by having it for an audience that's a bit mixed. For my show, people are already looking at WebT or are already in there. You have your course also, and I guess you are used to speaking to people that don't know WebTree yet. But also for your business, you speak to people who are already in the Web3 space. So how do you approach that? Do you have a different technique to talk to people that are already in there or not yet in there, or? I see that it's sometimes a challenge to make people understand.

Benjamin:

It's definitely a challenge, but it's probably one of the most interesting aspects of the work because, as you say, you get to talk to very different personas, and that's even on company level. When it comes to marketing and the campaigns we do, we need to cater to two audiences. We have the real world, traditional advertising world, where you have some of the publishers we're in discussions with now. They're still in the newspaper business. So you come around with blockchain. They go like whoa, whoa, whoa. That's way too modern. What are you talking about? I always like to think of it. As I said in the beginning, for me, the technology is just a means to an ad. What does it do? How does it work? Give me the features and the bells and whistles. Explain to me what it does. What's much more important is the why should you care right? And so for both these areas the traditional clients that don't necessarily understand blockchain we always lead with the value that they will get from this. So if you go back to lower fees and better data and a reduced carbon footprint, people don't need to know how that happens, but they will very much want to know if they can get involved, because those are three different areas they're trying to address in their business daily. Right, if you have lower fees, the brand and the publisher win, because if you spend a hundred thousand dollars as a brand on advertising today, the Google ad exchange, they take 20% period, like that's the base fee. Our fees started 3%, so that's a huge reduction in fees, which means that as a brand, you're not paying any more money but you get a lot more impressions for that same budget. Same for the publisher. You know, if the publisher pays less fees to the ad exchange, well, that means that they will get more revenue and so maybe they can, instead of having 10 ad banners on their page, which is a bad user experience, they can cut that down to six, because with those six banners that are better paid, they reach the same revenue goal and they improve in the customer experience, right, so it's a win-win and so we always lead with the value.

Benjamin:

Obviously, we have some clients that have, especially the big publishers. They have, like innovation units and you know they have teams looking at blockchain. Any serious business today has some kind of Web3 unit. Team explorers that you know try to see how blockchain and Web3 can benefit and be applied to their business. So we are obviously talking to those people and what typically happens is that the wider business, so the stakeholders that have the budgets and that just see lower fees, better data, reduce carbon footprint they say, okay, let's test it Right.

Benjamin:

And that's where we have a huge advantage because, as you can imagine, these ad auctions that happen when somebody goes to a website and the website pings and ad exchange says hey, I have Yuri coming to my website. I don't know it's Yuri, but I know based on the cookie data I have and the browsing history. This profile is typically interested in ABC who wants to show an ad. Well, brand ABCD might say well, that's my target profile, so I'm willing to pay three, five, seven, 10 cents, right, and the highest bidder wins. All that obviously has to happen within the time that it takes for you to load the page, which is super fast. So we typically have less than a second, mostly like 200 milliseconds, for that entire process, meaning it's impossible to have that process run by human beings.

Benjamin:

Everything is automated already today and that means there are certain standards already of what is the format that the publishers use to send the request to the ad exchange, what is the format that the brands use to respond to that request. That is already kind of pre-formatted, and there are standards in place, like pre-bit, that we have adopted. So we can go to any business and we say we do the same thing that these traditional ad exchanges do, but we do it for less money. All you have to do is take 10, 5, 1% of your monthly budget, unplug that over here and plug it into Alchemy, and so it's a seamless process. It's as if they were integrating just another ad exchange that they have done already, but it just under the hood. We've completely switched out the pipes and the system is completely different, which gives them all these benefits, and so I think speaking to that audience becomes very much about. This is the business benefit.

Benjamin:

We have clients testing the exchange today, where the decision makers don't even know that we use blockchain because they don't need to know. Right, Like all they see is I'm paying less, I'm getting higher conversion rates, I like it, great. Then we have the other extreme, so to say, of the spectrum, where we have our crypto community, who are the token holders, even the project, and for them, the let's say the pitch or why they believe in the project, is essentially because we are in the process of onboarding this massive, massive Web2 budget. We're providing a way to unramp that onto blockchain. As I said earlier, this year I believe it's $776 billion that are spent globally online advertising. If we just capture 1% of that, we're in a very good position, right? So token holders are rewarded for being part of this ecosystem.

Benjamin:

As with most cryptocurrencies, the total supply of the tokens that we have is limited, meaning that at some point, the more people want to use the exchange, the more we need token holders to get involved.

Benjamin:

There's a certain way we reward people for operating a node or for providing liquidity in the pool and, most importantly, the fees that we generate from our clients that pay us in dollars or pounds or euros. We use those fees to buy back our token, to reward our ecosystem participants, and so you can see that almost like a flywheel starting to spin, we've kind of cracked the code on how to have a constant inflow of new buyers. Because we are the buyer, using the fees that we generate to then fuel into our token to say, well, we need to buy back our own token to pay it out to our token holders, and because the supply is limited, well, at some point, you know it's the very ancient balance of supply and demand. You know there's a limited supply, there's more and more and more and more demand. So typically, normally, if all goes well, knock on wood, you know, the token price should follow suit. And so it's how you speak to these two audiences and try to help both understand the benefit of the other side. It's very, very interesting.

Joeri:

Yeah, it makes sense when you explain it like that. The question that I'm asking myself is also how do these two audiences only know that you exist? Because once I get you get them on the table and you get to explain everything, I think it's a no- brainer, but they need to know that you exist. Is there some marketing initiative or something that you can talk about, because that's also interesting to me, of course.

Benjamin:

Yeah, well, obviously, you know, podcasts, you know, speaking to people in the space and so on is a great way. I'm not a marketer myself, as we discussed, you know, before I came on and so on, but we do have. We have a great marketing team. We have our head of marketing, millie, who does a fantastic job in kind of balancing that act of you know, creating great content for audience A and audience B. But obviously, yes, there is, you know, for us the biggest, the biggest part right now is we have been able to actually build the ad exchange in under two years, which is already, you know, very, very impressive from a technical perspective. So you would shout out to our technical team and our CTO who made that happen. Now the ad exchange has been live since February, and so we're now in this typical startup phase of we have the product, we know there is a great market fit because we have very positive feedback and great results from our first test lines. Now it's all about how do we get adoption Right, and that's that is both for the ad exchange. So how can we get in front of those audiences that have ad spend, that spend money on advertising that could benefit from everything I explained, and how do we at the same time, make more and more people aware of the project as a great crypto use case? Because there's thousands of projects out there and you know the kind of the happy days where it was enough to have a telegram channel and a Twitter account and a white paper and then overnight you made 200 million. Those days are over. You know, like sorry to say, but you know the bear market. In a way, it's good because it feels like a cleanse. It's, like, you know, purifying a little bit the blockchain space because it goes back to really the basics is do you have a product? Is there a market fit? Are there clients that you can serve with your product? That would benefit without you having to lean on. We have a token. We're great, like does your product solve an actual real world problem Period, you know, and then we happen to use blockchain to do that and that's great. That gives us this, you know, exposure to the crypto world.

Benjamin:

But we're driving two strategies. Milly is doing a great job in providing good content that's very business focused, kpis, results driven. Here is the impact that we have. We're about to release a case study with one of our first test clients you know who've run campaigns with us for several months now. They are one of can't name the name yet because we're waiting for legal approval for the press release but it's one of the major agencies in the UK that work with a lot of brands and they have because they're a massive, massive agency. They have one of these kind of called it Center of Excellence. You know, these innovation units internally that we ended up speaking to you know we implemented the added exchange, we connected, they ran a few tests and they were so impressed with the results that they created their own case study internally and pushed that to all the departments to say, like we just tested new tech. This is great. Here are the results.

Benjamin:

Go talk to these guys because it's a no brainer, right, and so that is the traditional going back to the web, to world, if you like. It doesn't have to be crypto based, it's just real value to real businesses. Talk to us and then, at the same time, you know we focus on building our community, getting people involved, giving people real value for being token holders. As I said, it's not just get some tokens, put them in your wallet and hope that one day, you know, the token price goes up. There's real ways for people to get involved. We have built a portal on our website called labselkamiorg where you can go and you can actually see the add exchange in action because, as I mentioned earlier, the results of the add auctions are stored on a ledger, so we are showing that via an explorer.

Benjamin:

Obviously, we're not telling you that this was a bid request from this publisher. And then these are the three brands that are willing to pay five, six or 10 cents. We store that. We give you the auction data. So we saw there was a publisher and then there were three brands that were willing to bid with the prices, but we hash the names so they're not in the clear name. We give you a hash, but that hash at the same time is stored in our internal database where we have access to the real names, which is a guarantee to our clients that the data that we have on that we can't temper with it's blockchain, so we can't change it, and the hash that we store on that blockchain ledger in our internal database is the same. So if we ever try to falsify the data, the hash would break. So it's a guarantee for our clients that these are the real ad auction results. This is really what they paid. This is really how much money they made as a publisher. So there's complete transparency and that's completely new.

Joeri:

Well, I love that. It's fascinating to hear everything that you're building, what is possible, all the advantages that you offer with the way of working, the benefits, and how you use Web3. If people want to know more about Alchemy if they want to connect with you, where would you like to send them?

Benjamin:

So the easiest is to go to alchemy. org. That's our website where you find information. If it's more getting involved in the community, I would invite you to go to labs. That's our portal, where you can see the data, create an account, sign up, and so on. If you have any questions, obviously, feel free to reach out over LinkedIn to me, or you will find links on our website to our Telegram channel, where we have great community admins who are working with us. If you are willing to answer any questions, please head over there, join the channel, join the discussion, ask any questions you like. Advertising is a rather complex ecosystem, as I now know. Before I joined, it was where there were some banners on the internet and that looked great, so it's very normal for people to have questions and try to understand. But yeah, head over to the website, come into our Telegram channel, and feel free to reach out over LinkedIn if you have any questions. Great.

Joeri:

Well, as for every podcast episode, there will be show notes related to this audio podcast. There will also be a blog article so people can find it, and can find all the links over there. So thank you again, Benjamin. It was an awesome podcast episode. Yeah, thank you very much for having me. So, guys, again, I hope you learned something. I did so.

Joeri:

If you like this podcast episode and you think this can really be useful for people around me other entrepreneurs, people in Web3 or not in Web3 that have a business or they are working at a big company, they can be interested in this. Well for sure, share this episode with them. If you're not yet subscribed, this is a good moment to do this and, of course, I would like to see you back for the next episode. Take care, bye. Thank you, bye. Web3 can take your best to new heights and you're ready to harness its power, but feeling lost and overwhelmed. Therefore, join my W3X Web3 mastermind. Send me a personal message for more info. You can find me everywhere on social media. There's only one person with my name, Joeri Billast. Talk soon.

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As Vice President of Ecosystem Growth at Alkimi, what challenges and opportunities have you encountered in your role?
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