LG and Arbitrum plan blockchain ad network for $679B market

LG Electronics is working with Arbitrum to build a blockchain advertising network that would let advertisers and publishers share ad inventory and record how users interact with ads. The companies are exploring a commercial rollout this year. The system would run on Arbitrum, an Ethereum layer-2 network, and aim to provide a single shared database of inventory and interaction records.

Samuel Byungsun Park, head of LG’s blockchain research lab, described the work as an evaluation of whether a shared, on-chain approach can deliver measurable benefits to advertisers, publishers and audiences. LG Group is headquartered in Seoul.

Arbitrum’s layer-2 technology is designed to lower the technical and cost barriers for processing high volumes of ad transactions on Ethereum. Running inventory and transaction logic on a ledger visible to all participants would reduce some intermediaries and could increase transparency about which accounts and devices saw specific ads.

Global digital ad spending reached an estimated $679 billion in 2025, about 68% of worldwide ad spend, according to Dentsu.

Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder said the approach would allow the market to be run in software with less manual intervention.

News of the collaboration pushed Arbitrum’s native token ARB higher, gaining about 5.44% on Thursday. Arbitrum confirmed details of the work on the social platform X.

LG has explored blockchain and crypto projects for nearly a decade. In 2018 LG CNS launched Monachain, an enterprise blockchain for digital authentication, payments and supply chain management. LG Electronics released the Wallypto decentralized wallet on Hedera Hashgraph to support the LG Art Lab platform for displaying digital artwork on televisions; the marketplace closed in June 2025 and Wallypto was discontinued in September 2025.

Both firms are still assessing technical and commercial feasibility. The current work focuses on whether a shared ledger for ad inventory and interaction data can make ad buys more efficient and provide advertisers clearer information about who their ads reached. Details on product design, participating publishers and advertisers, and an exact launch date have not been disclosed.