TD Ameritrade is World’s First Brand to Place an Ad in the Bitcoin Blockchain
TD Ameritrade introduced the first advertisement created in blockchain, highlighting the way how the world is changed by new technologies.
By Julia SakovichUpdated
3 mins readPhoto: TD Ameritrade
TD Ameritrade, a widely-known investing and trading platform, has wowed the trading community becoming the first company to create an advertisement in the blockchain, as it was first reported by MediaPost.
The campaign that was named “Greetings from the Blockchain” is address to the fast growing community of blockchain investors and supporters. And its main aim is to show the role of new technologies in changing consumer behavior, needs, demands and expectations.
TD Ameritrade has always loved innovations and has always been striving for applying them in the company’s activities, trying to find the most creative ways to do it.
On their web site the company’s team proudly wrote: “Through a series of transactions we became the first brand to place an ad in the blockchain. Why? Well, we love finding new ways to use emerging technology. So we decided to have a little fun and plant our flag. Okay—technically, we embedded it”.
The ad is presented in a form of an ASCII flag that the users can view visually only on a landing page. Moreover, there you can find links to data on each bitcoin transaction that was carried out with a view to build the ad.
For creating this digital flag with TD Ameritrade’s logo, it was necessary to send 68 bitcoin transactions. The OP_Return feature in bitcoin’s protocol was used by the company to insert the characters. OP_Return functions like the memo space on a check and gives an opportunity to place simple characters and messages within transactions on the blockchain.
And as a result, these 68 transactions with 80 characters per transaction were created. Nevertheless, all of them were invalid, as it is known, no bitcoins were really transferred through them.
Given the nature and peculiarities of blockchain technology, this TD Ameritrade’s ad in a form of flag will be saved unchanged forever on the cryptocurrency’s ledger.
Chief Marketing Officer of TD Ameritrade Denise Karkos explained the idea of their initiative the following way: “I started in digital advertising in 1995, and I remember at Hill Holliday when the first banner ad came up from AT&T. I have always thought about firsts. With our heritage of firsts as a brand, wouldn’t it be fun to be the first to advertise in the blockchain?”
“All the new technologies are fundamentally changing customer expectations and behaviors. For TD Ameritrade, that’s the core of who we are. Innovation is our legacy”, added she.
Let us also remind that it is not the first move of TD Ameritrade related to blockchain technology. TD Ameritrade became the first brokerage firm that took a decision to provide its customers with an opportunity to trade bitcoin futures.
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