South Korean tech giant LG Electronics is working with the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum to build a blockchain-based advertising network aimed at serving the digital ad industry. 

Arbitrum would give advertisers and publishers a shared database of ad inventory and track how customers interact with advertisements, with the company exploring how to bring the service to market this year, Fortune reported on Thursday.

“We are evaluating whether this approach can deliver meaningful value to advertisers, publishers and audiences,” said Samuel Byungsun Park, the head of LG Electronics’ blockchain research lab. 

LG Group’s headquarters is in Seoul, South Korea. Source: Seoul Institute

Digital ad spend is estimated to have reached $679 billion in 2025, making up 68% of worldwide ad spend, according to global advertising giant Dentsu. 

Traditional ad networks require costly intermediaries to automate and manage the buying and selling of ad space between advertisers and publishers.

A blockchain-based ad network would cut out intermediaries, aiming to make ad buys more efficient and provide transparency to advertisers about who their ads have reached. 

“It means that you can basically run the market in an automated way in software,” Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder told Fortune. “You don’t need manual intervention.”

The price of Arbitrum (ARB) gained 5.44% on Thursday on news of the new layer-2 blockchain, which Arbitrum confirmed on X. 

Cointelegraph contacted Arbitrum and LG Electronics for comment. 

Related: Citi launches blockchain marketplace for private companies’ shares: Report

LG has been exploring opportunities in crypto for nearly a decade. 

In 2018, LG CNS, a subsidiary of the LG Corporation, launched an in-house blockchain called “Monachain” aimed at businesses that could be used for digital authentication, payments and supply chain management. 

LG Electronics developed a decentralized crypto wallet called Wallypto using the Hedera Hashgraph network at the height of the 2022 NFT boom. It served as a companion wallet for the LG Art Lab, an NFT platform that allowed users to display digital artwork on their TVs. 

The NFT platform was shut down in June 2025, adding to a wave of NFT marketplace closures that year, while LG Electronics terminated Wallypto a few months later in September. 

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