Competitive space
What is the difference between Alkimi $ADS and Adex ADX?
Adex is an advertising network not an advertising exchange. Individual publishers and advertisers must sign up for it and upload their inventory and ads to it. You have to change how you do business and you only have the limited supply of advertisers and publishers who use it to interact with. Alkimi is an ad exchange. It plugs into demand and supply side servers run by advertisers and publishers, that they already use to buy/sell through other exchanges. 95% of all display advertising is sold this way "programmatically". So people can switch to Alkimi easily and it has a potential market that is massive. Adex is limited massively by needing to get new customers on both sides to change how they do business. So it will only be used by small advertisers and publishers.
What is the difference between Alkimi $ADS and Brave $BAT?
BAT is a totally different proposition, it's admirable but was ultimately doomed to failure. They required both consumers and advertisers to change behaviour - switching browser and/or how they buy ads. Only a tiny portion of consumers are concerned enough with monetising their data/attention to to take such a big leap. Alkimi meanwhile requires consumers , publishers and advertisers to essentially keep on with "business as usual". As an advertising exchange Alkimi sit between the supply side servers already run by publishers/sites/apps and the demand side platforms run by advertisers - these parties already connect to other ad exchanges so they just need to switch that out/supplement with Alkimi (i.e. a config change not a code change) and they immediately get a bigger cut of the ad dollar/lower fees respectively.
Does Alkimi have any direct competitors in the decentralised advertising game?
No. There are a small number of other Advertising related projects - these tend to be quite specific solutions to quite specific problems and none have anywhere near the scope and scale of Alkimi. The key to the potential of Alkimi is that it is a direct substitute for existing Ad Exchanges - these exchanges traffic 95% of all digital advertising, a $500+ billion market. By being compliant with industry standards, Alkimi allows existing supply-side servers (run by publishers i.e. websites and apps who have ad space to sell) and buy-side servers (run by advertisers who want to buy these ad spaces) to trade - only it does this much more cheaply and transparently than existing solutions. So both sides get massive gains simply by reconfiguring their servers to point to Alkimi - without needing to actually change how they do business.
How is Alkimi $ADS different from Nyiax?
Nyiax is a quite different proposition. They're basically a market place for advertising. (To be honest an old fashioned "yellow pages" listing places advertisers can buy ads with a bit of digital gimmickry) Buyers and sellers interact directly with their platform and negotiate direct deals. That kind of "direct" buy is rarely done these days as advertisers don't normally want to buy adverts on a whole website, but rather they want to buy specific users that are sometimes on those websites. That latter is how programmatic advertising works - a publishers announces it has a certain user visiting it and then advertisers compete via a bidding process to show them their advert. This allows brands to target users wherever they are. With Nyiax an advertiser would be buying a lot of advertising on a single site irrespective of who is visiting (to simplify). It looks like they're betting cookies being "banned" will bring back a lot more title buying and reduce programmatic. But programmatic is 95% of non-walled garden digital advertising and is only set to grow (cookies will be replaced by some relative equivalent). So Alkimi's approach has a much much larger addressable space. Nyiax's use of the blockchain seems a bit gimmicky as well - essentially they're storing purchase contracts there which isnt really needed when you're negotiating site-wide contracts. So in short, it's got limited appeal to advertisers in its approach and doesnt really compete with Alkimi as such.
How is Alkimi $ADS different from Gener8?
Where Gener8 falls down is that it requires users to make a major change - downloading a new browser. So it's like Brave. Good in theory, but unlikely it will ever generate much traction as so few people will be bothered enough to make a major change. The beauty of Alkimi is it doesn't require consumers to do anything different, and for publishers and advertisers it works with existing demand/supply side servers so they can very easily switch to it with no development. But projects such as Gener8 show there is an appetite for change. Though I wouldn't go as far as "people hate ads"...Alkimi is an advertising exchange, it will still be enabling the distribution of ads - just better and fewer of them. (People, by and large, don't hate them - they understand why they exist and accept the value exchange - their attention for content it funds.)
Do Alkimi compete with Facebook and Google advertising?
Good question - 2 different answers! Facebook is what we call a "walled garden". They act both act as a publisher (publishing other people's content to their friends/fans feeds) and as an advertising platform that sells directly to advertisers. If you want to buy advertising on facebook, you have to (essentially) go direct to them and buy them. So they set the prices (via an auction system of sorts), choose how you can target people, what formats of ads (e.g. videos, carousels, static...) share the data they're willing to, and take whatever cut they want. You have to use their advertising network and play by their rules. Walled Gardens are in a sense inpenetrable. No one else can sell adverts on there but Facebook. Facebook used to have a public ad network, that targeted ads to facebook users on other people's sites but they gave up on this. Now its just on Facebook and Instagram. Alkimi won't compete with them as their ecosystem is closed. But Facebook ad views are still just a minority of all ads seen online.
Google is an even more complicated beast. They have 2 big ad businesses:
They have "google search ads" (nee "adwords") that are vertically integrated and like facebook in the sense that only they can sell adverts against search queries and they choose how it works and how its priced. Its a huge business, but its just text adverts in search results and isn't where Alkimi would be competing.
They have google display ads. Google display was originally a business called DoubleClick that they purchased. They were one of the first businesses that sold "Digital display" advertising across millions of sites. "Digital display" just means any image/video type format that displays on a 3rd party/publisher website. Google let advertisers target ad spots on other peoples sites, giving the site a portion of the advertisers money. But google are dirty about this, and keep like half the money for themselves. And preference some advertisers over others, e.g. ironically they are in trouble for preferencing facebook... This is one of the billion dollar businesses Alkimi can take on, Google run an ad exhange (what alkimi is) but it's costly and not transparent. But the great thing is, competing with Google in this isn't as hard as it sounds. Advertisers, and publishers can just point their servers to Alkimi, rather than Google, and use it as their exchange - without making any real changes - it'll just ensure that more money goes from advertiser to publisher, without getting lost in between.
What is the difference between Alkimi $ADS and Verasity $VRA?
Verasity is solving a totally different problem in a totally different way. It's designed to incentivise people to view videos, specifically eSports - a small portion of the advertising market. That's great, but isn't what the bulk of the $500+ billion dollar programmatic advertising market is. These big brands who spend those billions aren't interested in engagement, they're interested in reach - ensuring as many eyeballs as possible see their brand cues and message as cost effectively as possible. Alkimi solves for this by massively reducing fees and ensuring every dollar spent is done so effectively through transparency and speed on Constellation's network. Alkimi can deliver 100% of programmatic advertising as it's neutral to category, or any other factor and uses standards so it plugs into existing demand and supply side servers that advertisers and publishers already use. It's a plug and play solution. Verasity is a 0.1% play at best. We'd suggest reading the whitepaper and this article Thomas and Emily Scovell wrote from an industry insider pov - link or listen to an Alkimi podcast they did on this topic here
What is the difference between Adshares and Alkimi?
Alkimi is an ad exchange not an ad server. Adshares is the latter - meaning businesses who want to sell ad spaces log into it and list their inventory, and advertisers log into it and buy these (to be reductive). Basically, this is how things worked in the 2000s. This means their scale is limited by people directly accessing the platform and exclusively buying/selling there. That isn't how 95% of the more than $500 billion worth of digital advertising is traded - it's done programmatically through ad exchanges where larger advertisers run their own sell- and demand-side servers that use these exchanges to match bids and asks. The world's advertisers aren't going to stop doing what they're doing and signup for some random ad server whose primary claim (look on their website) is that 1) you can use it if you've been kicked off google 2) gets around some ad blockers! However, they are going to add Alkimi to their own servers setup to trade at much lower fees and with higher transparency, because that's just a simple config change. It's worth noticing that Adshares have recently pivoted to start putting "metaverse" on everything now because it's trendy. But the reality is that Ad exchanges can trade digital ads that get displayed anywhere (mostly web pages and apps currently, but increasingly digital billboards, video games and sure soon dome metaverse locations) and its the ones that work in the way that the world's largest advertisers like Nike, Unilever, P&G work that will win - not ones who sell ads to people that have been kicked off Google. 😉
Can Alkimi's ad exchange work in the Metaverse?
There's nothing particularly special about "the metaverse" as such. Alkimi's ad exchange is built on interoperable standards and connects to demand and supply-side servers to connect advertisers with inventory/publishers. So as more inventory opens up in the metaverse, advertisers will be able to use it to buy this space with the same low fees, transparency, etc that Alkimi will offer the existing $500+ billion digital advertising industry. That's the beauty of an exchange vs. an ad server, it can just plug into new inventory sources as they are developed, giving existing advertisers access to them without them having to change anything (an exchange sits in the middle doing the work connecting the two). So Alkimi will be there onboarding major brands into the metaverse.
What's the difference between Alkimi $ADS and DragonX DAX?
DragonX is an ad network. They work directly with fixed crypto sites/ publishers and then directly sell advertisements to clients via a self service portal. This is a rather old fashioned way of doing things. Their innovation is 1) storing on the blockchain 2) allowing advertisers who are banned on other platforms to advertise. Which is an interesting business but won't scale beyond crypto advertisers advertising on crypto sites.
Alkimi is an advertising exchange. 95% of all digital display advertising is now traded programmatically on and exchanges. Ad exchanges don't sell the ads themselves as such. They plug into supply side platforms (publishers) and demand side platforms (run by advertisers) and match audiences with adverts based on realtime auctions between both parties. They're intermediaries.
Right now existing exchanges lack transparency so you can't audit if you're getting the ad placement you bought or if you're getting the most money for your eyeballs. And consequently 49% of the ad money paid by advertisers is lost to third party costs. Moving this onto the chain with Alkimi will reduce fees to 1.5%. A massive amount for a market that generated $521.02 billion during 2021 and is set to grow by over 68% to $876.1 billion by 2026.
Isn't Alkimi solving a problem that is going away - advertising is dying/being blocked?
You couldn't be more wrong sorry. The digital advertising market is continuing to grow massively and is now bigger than all traditional advertising channels. Just because you and a few of your mates use adblockers in your browser's doesn't reflect the reality of what the general public do or see.
What's the difference between Alkimi $ADS and Pixl coin?
Pixl is just a project that shills other coins. It's marketing for other dodgy tokens. A tiny, and speculative market, at best. Alkimi is a Decentralised Advertising Exchange. It operates in the programmatic space that delivers 95% of all digital advertising which is a $ 500+ billion industry. As a standards-compliant ad exchange Alkimi can be easily used by massive brand advertisers instead of their existing solutions giving them huge fee discounts and complete transparency over their spend. Its potential is literally Google-sized in the market. A somewhat different play to a project like pixl that admits it was born out of a rug pull. 🤐