“WE HEARD THREE THINGS: THERE’S A LACK OF TRANSPARENCY IN THE AD BID PROCESS, BILLING CYCLES TAKE TOO LONG TO CLOSE, AND AD FRAUD IS A HUGE PROBLEM. “

Coinist was recently fortunate enough to chat with the folks at Benja. Benja offers and innovative advertising platform which is described as the “tinder for deals”. They have thought about the advertising process the way it should have been thought about in the first place, by thinking about the user experience first and working backwards from there. Benja first asked “what types of ads do web audiences want to see” and they built their platform around the answer to that question. So let’s jump into the interview.

First, thanks for chatting with us today. Begin by telling us a little bit about what Benja does. What types of vendors and niches do you target and why do vendors go to Benja vs more traditional advertising platforms?

Benja is a merchandise ad platform that works with top-tier brands like Patagonia, the National Football League, and Nike to sell their excess inventory. We do this by offering a number of unique e-commerce user-experiences, including our Tinder-meets-deals mobile app and our interactive online display ad format. Vendors appreciate our conversion rates, which are higher than industry average thanks to the user experiences we provide, and our business model. Rather than charging a 20-60% commission or fee, Benja charges by the impression which protects vendor profit margin – they appreciate this, especially since excess inventory is often already discounted.

Explain the phrase “tinder for deals” for me.

That’s our mobile app, benjamin: sixty second deals, which offers the end-user one product at a time, and sixty seconds to decide whether to buy or pass. We found inspiration in the Tinder swipe-based interface, and we’ve found that users enjoy swiping on deals just as they do on dating profiles.

You’ve decided to conduct an ICO. Can you tell me the reasons why you felt an ICO would be the right decision for Beja moving forward?

As we looked toward our next phase of growth, we spoke with our vendors about what features we felt are lacking in our platform and in the ad industry more generally. We heard three things: there’s a lack of transparency in the ad bid process, billing cycles take too long to close, and ad fraud is a huge problem. As crypto nerds, we know that all three can ultimately be solved with blockchain — at least the first two initially and the third in time.

You’re planning on using blockchain technology to solve some big problems in the display advertising industry. Can you explain to me how a switch from traditional ad technology to blockchain technology will solve some of these problems? For example, let’s look at how blockchain technology solves four of the problems you listed on your website.

Billing
With a token-based ad marketplace, we’ll offer same-day settlement for ad buys, as opposed to the traditional invoice-based system that can take 120-150 days to close.

Transparency
By enabling the token-based ad marketplace, we’ll be able to provide complete transparency into who is paying what for what. This means that we won’t be able to play the pricing games that Google and Facebook do, and both parties will be sure that they’re getting a fair shake.

False (bot) traffic
This is a move that will make sense in time. At present, there would be too many latency concerns with running each impression to blockchain and back for validation. In time, I believe that we’ll be at the forefront of bringing this to fruition.

Ad blockers
This is less of a blockchain thing, more of a Benja thing. We focus on a quality ad experience, which is our way of keeping the end-user from being so turned off by advertising that they seek ad blockers.

In your whitepaper you mention that “The BenjaCoin will serve as a revenue-generating mechanism for the Benja merchandise ad network”. Can you tell me more about how BenjaCoin works? What are the token’s functions and uses within your network?

We will have our top-tier vendors come to our ad marketplace website, purchase BenjaCoin, and then use those BenjaCoin token to purchase traffic on our publisher sites. Upon bid acceptance, our publishers will receive the token as compensation for their traffic.

It’s a rather simple solution, but an important one that will allow us to provide all of our partners with insight into pricing.

Thank you for speaking with us today. To our readers, if you want to learn more about Benja Coin you can do so by visiting https://www.benjacoin.com/