TL; DR
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With FB/IG/Google today you find the audience, pay the platform and hope you can convert a few thousand of them into paying customers.
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Web3’s direct-to-community advertising turns that model on its head, because you have the ideal, lean audience from the start.
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It’s still early days, but if this model catches on, it has huge potential.
Full story
You know that brainteaser, it goes like this:
For example, we will tell you something: the most popular color for new cars sold is not black or white as you would expect, but actually green.
You suddenly see that statement confirmed in your daily life, when you notice green cars everywhere.
…but in reality we made that fact up. The only reason you started noticing green cars everywhere was because you were now actively looking for them.
Yes, this could be true… or it could be the start of a much bigger trend.
Either way, there’s some super interesting potential underneath it all.
Physically Web3 products seem to be popping up everywhere:
The ‘super interesting potential’ we notice is:
These Web3 communities are like a ‘cheat code’ for targeted trading.
With Facebook/Instagram/Google ad targeting, you start with a list of billions of internet users and then narrow it down based on A/S/L demographics – compared to a Venn diagram of shared interests, until…
Bam! You have a list of (let’s say) 1 million users who power like your product.
You then pay to reach them via FB/IG/Google and hope you can convert a few thousand into paying customers.
Web3’s direct-to-community advertising turns that model on its head, because you have the ideal, lean audience from the start.
You know what they like. You know they’re willing to spend money on community-related items (e.g. NFTs and DAO tokens).
You can even scan their wallet address to see how much money they have!
It’s still early days and we might see green cars here, but if Web3-based communities eventually become ubiquitous…
Something really nice could happen:
→ The communities we belong to will have commercial value
→ Which will be measured (in part) by the value of the community’s NFTs/tokens
→ NFTs/tokens that we, as community members, will own…
→ Give us a stake in the communities and networks we help build/support
(Unlike Web2 networks, such as FB, IG, TikTok, where the vast majority of monetary value accrues to a small group of shareholders outside the network).
Wild!