Blockchain will affect the practice of marketing and the media industry in ways not yet entirely obvious but is it over-hyped?

No. It will be both inevitable and transformative. 
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Blockchain has been made possible with the convergence of scaled audiences, connectivity and computation power and provides a new data structure enabling what is known as crypto economic protocols. Blockchain is technology which decentralises the way we do business. Blockchain can create new network designs and supply chains and reduce the friction from many processes.

What this means for media and marketing is the way in which content is distributed and indeed the ownership, management and use of personal information and therefore the ability for marketers to reach consumers as they have done previously will be up-ended. Existing distribution models for both editorial and advertising content will be impacted by disintermediation and many AdTech and MarTech businesses will be under threat.
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Plain and simple; if you're a media middle-man and you've read anything about Blockchain, you're likely to be a little nervous or amidst a period of heavy innovation.

We have reached a time right now where we're questioning how the tech giants ended up with too much power. Blockchain will be their likely usurper and from this, peer-to-peer for everything will become (the most likely) reality. How we never thought of this rather than allowing the rise of large networked empires will amuse future generations.

Blockchain is less about how the technology works itself and more about how it will be utilised and what the implications or impacts are.

As Jeremy Epstein from Never Stop Marketing discusses on the EchoJunction* podcast, with Blockchain we 'now have technology which allows for the transfer of items of value as opposed to simply information (like the internet delivered) without the need for third party intermediaries which add time and risk'. That is, we are seeing the distinction between the internet of 'Information' and the Internet of 'Value'. 

Most significantly,  it allows consensus about the state and ownership of assets at particular times and has strong security guarantees to ensure that 'history' cannot be altered by bad actors. This means this innovation enables or liberates all types of value (including content) as the owners and recipients are protected through verification. 

According to Singtel's APAC Associate Director for Financial Services Industry Innovation, Cindy Nicholson, 2018 will be the breakthrough year for Blockchain and the technology will mature by 2025^.

This is what we will start to see: 

• a rise in marketing tech solutions via Blockchain - AdTech is ripe for disruption. We will see a rise in new businesses in this space but also the revisitation of business models for current tech middle-men (DMPs and SSPs),
• and therefore, changes to the way digital media is traded (including the possibility of greater revenue return back to publishers and better data on campaign performance and user behaviour data)
• increased verifiability of advertising delivery and placement and potentially decrease fraud (though it won't be the answer to all transparency issues given the 'whack-a-mole' nature of new challenges)
• greater sophistication in advertising targeting and customisation to users who opt-in to decentralised ad exchanges
• of course, the same applies with the delivery of content direct to the most relevant audiences (and the reverse - the receipt of relevant and timely content for individuals)
• the creation of micro-economies to support and allow interactions amongst specific or niche communities
• new competitors to take on the tech giants (in social and search) which are likely to return value to users or for the data on users. There's no doubt the tide is turning from the tech giants back to publishers with regard to sentiment and trust, but now technology will also be on the side of publishers.

The most significant change will be in the space where consumers themselves make money from their own data...but more on that later.

Waiting to see how it plays out is likely to see players 'left out' or 'left behind'. Education, preparedness and early experimentation (or partnerships) is key. 


Update (April 10, 2018): Found this explainer on Blockchain which might be useful - A Beginner's Guide to Blockchain - Steve Sammartino

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* The EchoJunction Podcast with Adam Fraser; Jeremy Epstein talks Blockchain
^ AdNews; In Depth - Can blockchain revolutionise how media is traded? and Blockchain Summit 2017