Author: dev.samal84 (Telegram: @devsamal84)

Wallet: 0x8785165e9E489357014E4275Fb3502e76E97935A

Disclaimer : Please note that we are not associated with the ICO nor are paid for this review. This is our personal opinion and contributors are advised to do their due diligence before contributing to the ICO.

Ubex is a global, decentralized advertising exchange based on Neural Networks and operated by Smart Contracts. The very reason for us to analyse this project is on account to its key value proposition, which aims at creating a global advertising ecosystem with a high level of mutual trust and maximum efficiency.  

We have analysed the ICO based on the below parameters: 

1. Necessity or problem statement (12%)

2. White paper (9%)

3. Product Status (10%)

4. Team (10%)

5. ICO Pricing (7%)

6. Business Model/Revenue Source (15%)

7. Token Value Increment Options (15%)

8. Social Media Presence/Hype (10%)

9. Competitors (12%)

Below is the score we have given for each parameter and overall rating of the ICO.

Please continue reading for detailed analysis. 

1. Necessity or Problem Statement (12%)

The digital advertisement industry has been on the rise for the past few years now. Its size has now exceeded the size of the television segment. Despite the growth, the digital advertisement market also has its share of problems that includes advertisers overpaying for the client, publishers receiving lesser rewards and consumers of advertising being dissatisfied with its quality. The following are the specific problems faced by the various stakeholders of the digital advertising market

Users

• Irrelevant and annoying advertisements being displayed
• Overpayment for products / services, due to multiple intermediaries
• High risks due to scammers’ use of coercive and provocative methods of advertisin

Advertisers

• Ineffectiveness of some advertising channels, which only becomes apparent after the budget has been spent
• Uncertainty of achieving results as advertisers are forced to pay for clicks and displayed ads without a guarantee of actual sales
• Difficulty in figuring out all available advertising channels, leading to the need to hire marketing staff

Publishers

• Struggle to find advertisers to fill all ad slots
• Low earnings and inability to forecast future payments from advertisers
• Payment delays and non-payments from dishonest advertisers

Ubex as a platform aims to solve the aforementioned problems by combining the advantages of programmatic technologies, neural networks and smart contracts in a single system. This platform gets a 9 on 10 in terms of their choice of the problem statement and their novel attempt to use block chain to address the aforesaid challenges.

2. White paper (9%)

You can go through their whitepaper in the ‘Details’ tab.

• They have two sections here – The Whitepaper (exhaustive one with the detailed information), and the One pager (a quick snapshot for the investors with its key offering and Token distribution)
  
• In fact, they also have recently a One-pager in Hindi, exclusively to cater to the investors from India https://www.ubex.com/wp/Ubex-Onepager-hi.pdf
• Apart from Hindi, they have one pagers in German, Japanese, Vietnamese, French as well. We find this as very rare and we really like this as this shows their commitment to reach out to a wider range of investors across the Globe.
• The whitepaper is fairly exhaustive with detailed information including the market structure, the product, the Ubex platform, details comparative analysis of the alternatives, and others. The content of the documents is presented in structured manner and it provides a fairly deep understanding of the logic of the system
• There is a detailed architecture provided in the whitepaper about the Neural network model and about the system core – ADAM (Advanced Decentralized Advertising Marketing). We find this in very few whitepapers and we liked this aspect.

3. Product Status (10%)

UBEX has already launched desktop and mobile Alpha versions of the Advertiser application. They have a Demo mode which showcases their offering for Advertisers (get their target customers), Publishers (to place their ads on sites) and the Contributors (to buy the UBEX Tokens). The Ubex project has recently announced that their Alpha product version now allows logging in through the Civic app (https://app.ubex.com/home). 

Ubex has reached an agreement with Estee Lauder to conduct product testing via the Densu Aegis agency. UBEX also has partnered with Civic Technologies for Blockchain-Powered Identity Verification Services. Though there has been delays in the development of the Ubex Beta version, with the launch of their Alpha version and their roadmaps being well defined, we give them 8 out of 10 here

4. Team (10%)

The Ubex team consists of experienced professionals in the fields of marketing, investments and the crypto industry. The team is strong and most of them have been working together for more than an year. Artem Chestnov, the CEO and the Co-founder has been a serial entrepreneur with a background in marketing. Artem has experience in various top-management roles in a number of Tech and Blockchain projects, including LAToken, Reborn and Medviser. Daniel Biesuz is the Co-founder (And the Legal Head) and he has built his career in the legal space, helping the many companies in Switzerland with respect to Mergers and Acquistion. His experience with previous projects, like Global Blockchain Technology Fonds, Lapo Blockchain and InsurePal are notable and this will help kick-start his contribution block at Ubex.

Though Ubex is supported by a good number of advisors, the recent inclusion of Urs Bolt as an Advisor of the Ubex project has strengthened their team. Bolt has been a veteran of the financial services industry with over 30 years of experience and his core expertise is the development and rollout of new digital business platforms. He is also currently an Advisory Board member of several companies and an Advisor of several blockchain projects. In addition, he is the founder of Bolt.now

Overall, we give 8.5 on 10 for bringing on board relevant people with strong understanding of the challenges.    

5. ICO Pricing (7%)

Ubex target to raise funding worth 24000 ETH through this ICO, using 4,000,000,000 UBEX tokens (UBEX tokens are payment Tokens designed to support transactions on the Ubex platform). The tokens unsold during Token Sale would be burned, which is a plus. Out of the total of 4,000,000,000 UBEX tokens issued, 72% of which (or 2,880,000,000) will be available for sale. The smart contract does not allow for the issuance of additional tokens. Also to be noted is that Ubex reached its soft cap in less than 1 day of their Token Sale launch (4000 ETH worth tokens sold in a single day).

Considering this and the pricing, we give them 8 out of 10 in this aspect.

6. Business Model/Revenue Source (15%)

For the Ubex platform, the UBEX token will act as a unit of payment. The UBEX token will allow setting quotas (allowance) to a specific address within which the owner of the address can use the funds available on the account. Crediting is possible only on condition that the account holder has established the size of the quota and only from the address to which the quota is issued, otherwise the funds cannot be credited.

The Ubex platform enables owners of websites providing statistical data for training of the system core to receive UBEX Tokens as a reward for their actions. 5% of the income from all Ubex transactions will be distributed to the data providers. Using a proprietary token allows writing a smart contract that allows such actions. 

Every quarter, Ubex plans to use 20% of their proceeds from transaction commissions to buy back UBEX Tokens and destroy them, until 50% of all UBEX Tokens are taken out of circulation. This approach they feel would create a scarcity of token supply. Even though there is a small element of risk here, given their existing business model, Ubex can get a healthy revenue source. We give them 8 out of 10 for this aspect.

7. Token Value Increment Options (15%)

The total number of issued tokens is 4 billion UBEX and so the release of new tokens is made impossible by the smart contract. All unsold tokens will be burned. The team and the advisors are locked out of their tokens for a period of 1 year. We feel that the token-destroying mechanism (post buy back), regulated by Smart Contract, will contribute to the growth of the UBEX token value in the long run, which may be interesting to a number of investors already at the Token Sale stage. 

UBEX Tokens are used by advertisers to pay publishers and as this program expands into new geographies, it will lead to a surge in the number of advertisers that will be translated into demand growth for the token. 

Of course, in the event of success after the launch of the platform, it will contribute to the growth of the token price considerable. We give them 9 out of 10 here, purely considering the fact that Ubex reached its soft cap in less than 1 day of their Token Sale launch (4000 ETH worth tokens sold in a single day).

8. Social Media Presence/Hype (10%)

Ubex has developed a visually pleasing and appealing website with all the required information available as well. Their well marketed evangelizing efforts in various social media platforms like Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are all intensive and is gathering the intended mindshare among ICO enthusiasts, thereby currently they have very dense social media presence. They also have an official Japanese language group in telegram.

• Twitter – 34000+ followers
• Facebook – 38000+ followers
• Telegram – 40000+ followers

This is an area that has given them huge attention. In fact, an article in Forbes magazine makes a mention about Ubex project as one of the solutions that addresses the future of freelancing. We are very impressed with the social hype they offer and with their digital footprint and give them 10 out of 10 in this aspect. 

9. Competitors (12%)

Currently, the possible competition for Ubex could come from the likes of Digital agencies like WPP, Havas, OMD, Merkle, DigitasLBi, Omnicom Group among others, but none of them incorporate the kind of programmatic advertisement that Ubex does through blockchain and neural networks. Moreover, all of them are expensive in terms of their offering and also have a high vulnerability to the risk of fraud, as against low cost and low risk attached to Ubex. In comparison with other advertising exchanges, Ubex has the following advantages that can help them succeed in the long run.

• Neural networks help maximize purchasing efficiency
• Blockchain-based smart contracts help minimize participants’ risks

So what is unique about Ubex is that it offers maximum profit on key parameters for both the publishers and advertisers, thereby creating an environment for cooperation among the stakeholders with a high level of mutual trust. Overall, we give them 9 out of 10 in this aspect.

Based on our analysis, we give an overall score of 86.4 out of 100 to Ubex, which is Excellent.

Ubex has a unique value proposition – that of decentralizing advertising exchanges, using Neural network and Blockchain, which is not currently offered by the leaders of the market. Ubex offering a decentralized advertising exchange, is providing AI data and recommendations for its clients, so that they can have a scientific approach to ad placement and smart contracts for those campaigns. In a nutshell Ubex would result in making the advertising money much better spent. We are quite impressed with most of the parameters and feel that they have got it right in most of them. 

We give it “Excellent” rating and a medium to long term investment option.