Profila launches DeMar (Part 1)

[IMPACT]

Profila has developed a new customer data, engagement and marketing platform that will be disrupting the trillion-dollar AdTech industry and capture an increasing percentages of global data and advertising revenues (USD 455 billion today and expected to reach USD 982.82 billion by 2025) as brands seek alternatives to tracking centric platforms (Facebook & Google).

Profila is now decentralizing this marketing platform feature by feature in the first ever DeMar or Decentralized Marketing platform (build on Cardano). With Profila's DeMar platform, consumers will have a greater control over their data and the ads they see, and most importantly, they will be able to directly connect with brands that matter to them, without passing by the numerous intermediaries in today's advertising ecosystem. Brands will have a clearer view on who sees their content.

By cutting out the intermediaries and creating a system for privacy-preserving data sharing and anonymous ad-delivery, called "Zero Knowlegde Advertising", each profila user will be able to (i) decide when to see an ad (if any), (ii) which company can send such (paid) content, (iii) whether the company has any info about you (or whether its done in full anonymity). In addition, you get paid to see an ad and (even more) to interact with it as Profila shares 50% of the ad revenue it received directly with the individual who accepted to see the content. Imagine USD 982.82 billion ad revenue being shared with the people targeted by the ads (but instead of targeting, complete user control).

For more information about Profila's zero knowledge advertising research that forms the basis of our DeMar strategy, see the scientific research paper attached to this proposal.

Profila's DeMar platform will provide business (small to large) all over the world with a new privacy-preserving alternative to communicate with and advertise to their customers. Via the brand dashboard of this (De)Mar platform, brands can (i) get anonymous yet accurate, evergreen customer data directly from the customer connected to their brand; (ii) then send personalised offers/Ads to the customer with no data leakage, improving targeting, reducing Ad fraud and adhering to regulations as the customer remains fully anonymous.

With current data collection techniques (e.g., third party cookies) that are found illegal under GDPR (a.o) for lack of transparency & control for users, the current Ad-Tech model is unsustainable and under scrutiny. As brands will have to find alternatives to tracking-centric platforms (Facebook & Google), new AdTech solutions will provide brands with a safe heaver (from regulation) to still delight their customers with the best of their content.

Does this proposal address the B2B and B2C challenge? Yes, this proposal does address the B2B challenge (Profila offering a business marketing tool to companies) as well as the B2C part of the challenge (Businesses who can use the marketing and customer engagement tool to communicate with and advertise to their customers in a privacy-preserving way).

Explainer video (2 min) "Profila for consumers" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt4NUfuWQJ8

Explainer video (3 min) "Profila for brands" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8UczMYWx1U&t=66s

Challenges

1. Scalability and speed of Cardano blockchain for high volume ad serving/audit trail
2. Cost of high volume transaction ledger/record of all Ads served on Cardano
3. Self governance and the privacy/security of peer-to-peer ad serving network incentivised by the community

Risks

1. Cardano blockchain speed and cost might be prohibitive to project success/adoption
2. Peer-to-peer ad serving model has privacy pros and cons (part visibility technically of final ad served to end person), which needs to be assessed in the project, i.e. true zero knowledge advertising or step in right direction. Resolving this risk in the project will help define Digital Identity and Zero Knowledge Proof requirements for true zero knowledge advertising in DeMar ecosystem.
3. Integration into adtech/ad server ecosystems which require high-speed might limit scalability of the solution on Cardano, although the POC will prove viability of the approach

[FEASIBILITY]

1. Week 1: project kick-off with COO, CTO and AdTech advisor, internal dev team discussing technical requirements to be included in the PRD (product requirement document)
2. Week 2-6: Research and system implementation design by AdTech advisor/Guru delivering Ad ecosystem as-is and to-be DeMar roadmap, with a focus on decentralisation of core Ad technologies, i.e ad serving based on profile data. Focus is on replacing the third party cookie requirement, with Profila zero knowledge advertising system, delivering targeting for brands with zero data leakage and full anonymity for users/people
3. Week 7-8: submission of the draft PRD (product requirement document) by the AdTech advisor/Guru to the business team for review, iteration by CTO & zero knowledge advertising researchers implementation planning into the Profila platform.
4. Week 9: final PRD submitted, with project divided into 14 days sprints, with scrum calls and update calls in the calendar of all team members.
5. Week 10: dev sprints start
6. Week 10-18: development, integration and testing
7. Week 19-20: Final end to end testing on live platform, and review by AdTech advisors and researchers to ensure delivers to zero knowledge advertising system design.

1. Research and PRD development - USD25k
2. Business analysis and UX/UI design work - USD10k
3. Development and testing to delivery - USD60k

1. AdTech Guru - Profila & world federation of advertisers advisor and AdTech industry known CTO - Researcher (Mikko Kotila see Linkedin)
2. Profila business process analyst - define PRD
3. Profila designers - design and implement Profila platform UX/UI
4. Profila CTO - Lead engineer
5. Profila - Engineering team/testers - 1-3 devs assigned as per PRD specifications

[AUDITABILITY]

Profila will provide the community with detailed periodical progress for this proposal (once funded) in the following ways:

1. Github repository updated (1x per month, after the initial scrum sessions for creation of the PRD, product requirement document
2. 2-weekly updates to other Cardano proposers via the Catalyst coordinator call
3. 2-weekly updates in our "Cardano projects" newsletter (register via our website https://ico.profila.com)
4. Monthly project process and KPI reports submitted to Catalyst teams and available to the public for verification.
5. Monthly Swarm session office hour (at end of townhall) for a Question and Answer session about our funded projects.
6. Periodical AMAs by the Profila founders to talk about our progress.

Success is a viable prototyped replacement of third party cookies. POC success is a targeted Ad served from the Profila Ad Server, through a mobile peer-to-peer network to an anonymous person in the Profila App, with the Ad server/brand and anonymous persons Ad engagement (impression and Clickthrough) logged onto the blockchain for audit (reducing the chances of Ad fraud).

New project based on the industry leading zero knowledge advertising research and the first in several phases to deliver a DeMar/decentralised marketing roadmap for the future of marketing on blockchain, the first implementation of DeMar globally on Cardano.

SDG Rating

This will help solve the Social Dilemma.