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I have had a career in Advertising Technology, AdTech as it's otherwise known, starting in the early days of the internet. Digital publishing has been mainly built upon an Advertising revenue model over a subscription based one. Endless free web content all brought to you funded by paying Advertisers.

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Now everyone has the internet in their pocket, the world's information at their fingertips we find consumerism has changed forever. I remember reading a book on e-commerce back in 2000 that exptrapolated that 'one day' Amazon might have a chain of bookstores on the high street. Such linear projections miss the very dimensionality that is akin to Geometric or Exponential growth. How about 'Amazon will be the virtual High Street - an existential threat to the High Street itself! ' ? Nowhere did I read that.

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For most start up businesses that survived, their ethos was about securing a revenue stream first and then carving out their digital vision for the business fueled by rounds of funding. That revenue stream was usually an Advertising one.

 

With the roles that I pursued at many different start ups the vision was always pioneering as we tackled things that had never been done before. The growth of Digital was a fast moving picture that was built to improve consumer choice and brought Advertisers greater targeting capabilities.

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Now a new wave of technology businesses is upon us - Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. One thing it has in common with my AdTech career is a need for translation. What does it all mean in layman's terms. Hence the reason for this blog.