Owning Your Destiny in Technology - Alanna Gombert

TMI with Kevin Ryan

Description: Alanna Gombert joins us to discuss blockchains, one of the most widely spoken and least understood technologies in the universe. Blockchains mean something very specific for advertisers and technology, and there is no one better than Alanna for this subject. As the Global CRO at MetaX, Alanna is at the forefront of bringing in other voices and having everyone take part in the conversation. We also talk with her about hosted advertising and changing the incentive model, the current shift to more transparency, and of course, the bitcoin whales.

Takeaways:

[3:17] Blockchain gets conflated with cryptocurrency. In layperson terms, it is a letter system. What makes it special is it is decentralized, encrypted, immutable, and hard to change. There are public and global blockchains systems and private enterprise versions.

[5:29] Alanna defines tokens and cryptocurrency. Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a paper about bitcoin in 2008 during the housing crisis on decentralized currency.

[6:47] Thinking about currency that could be accessed around the world for those that didn’t have access to banks was a high interest point of bitcoin to Alanna.

[10:11] Alanna shares her journey into the interest of how she got into blockchain, supply chain transparency and the tracking analytic patterns of fake news.

[11:48] Token Curated Registry, or TCR, is data and voting determined by token holders. For example, the token holders would vote on if a publisher is quality for advertising or not. There are two sides: publisher and advertiser.

[16:44] This peer-to-peer method lends credibility to sites and helps the industry self-regulate. There is a lot of bloat in advertising, and Alanna seeks to be part of the movement to help open up the conversation on the implementation process in advertising.

[28:49] Alanna addresses opposition in cryptocurrency and how it can be overcome by education and inclusion in the community.

[43:14] When working with big brands, Alanna finds talking about data and targeting has taken over the conversation. She is on a mission to open up the conversation so individuals can have just as equal a voice as large brands.

[48:24] Alanna goes over terms in the bitcoin community and what they mean in crypto in terms of safety and security.

[59:01] Alanna describes her experience of working at an industry organization.

[67:20] Possible new name: token economy? It’s still a work in progress so stay tuned.

Mentioned in This Episode:

MetaX

@Alannaaroazzi

adToken

ADChain

Quotes

“In some ways, comparing it to a rock in the ground like gold vs. computational power and energy, I think in some ways cryptocurrency could be more valuable.”

“Why get into digital if you can’t make up acronyms?”

“There needs to be a way for all players to communicate together in a safe environment.”