The promotion of cryptocurrency in digital marketing: rules and regulations
The popularity of cryptocurrencies is growing year by year. Advertising agencies are starting to understand that they can find potential attractive clients in the crypto segment. Thus, they are actively working in this direction. Read the new article by Go Mobile to learn more about cryptocurrency promotion, as well as the opportunities and restrictions of ad platforms for this particular type of business.
In 2022, crypto market capitalisation increased to $2.9 trillion, and the total volume of daily transactions made on the Binance exchange reached $27 billion in May 2022. The popularisation of “meme coins” such as Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu, along with the popularity of NFT on the Ethereum blockchain attracted new users to this segment.
However, the cryptocurrency market remains quite unstable. A prominent example would be the collapse of TerraUSD at the beginning of May 2022 which ruined the holders of this supposedly stable coin and provoked the fall of other tokens. While in early June, the Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange rates collapsed by more than 20%.
Cryptocurrency activity is associated with many risks: high volatility of the coins exchange rate, hacker attacks, fraud, and often a lack of legal protection.
Today, the penetration of cryptocurrencies into everyday life is very low. Most people treat it only as an opportunity to earn money quickly. Current Web3 projects are highly dependent on centralised platforms, and DeFi is not yet able to fulfil simple requests, such as renting or issuing loans.
Bluemental A., Worldwide Managing Director in Go Mobile
Despite this, the Go Ahead team believes that cryptocurrency is the future. The audience’s trust in it will soon strengthen, and the legislation of countries will soon soften, and the security of cryptocurrency platforms will soon increase. In order to help facilitate this change, it is necessary to increase the penetration of cryptocurrencies into ordinary life: to talk about this method of both payment and income, as well as to promote crypto projects.
What can be promoted?
Crypto Wallets
These are programs for storing public and private cryptographic keys that allow you to perform transactions and have access to your digital coins. There are two types of wallets:
- “cold” — physical medium for storing keys;
- “hot” — smartphone/desktop apps or services that store keys on servers.
NFT Projects
An NFT, or non-interchangeable token, is a digital token tied to a unique object: a picture, a video, a meme, the first-ever Twitter post, a song by Elon Musk, and a variety of other things.
Buying an NFT proves ownership of a unique object in the digital space. NFTs can be traded at auctions. They are attractive both as investments and collectibles.
Thanks to the current popularity of blockchain technologies, Play-to-Earn games have recently made an appearance. NFT in such projects are sets of in-game characters and resources which the user can own. Users can earn virtual money by completing tasks and convert it into real money. Such games include, for example, Axis Infinity, STEPN, and many others.
Crypto Exchanges
These are online platforms where you can trade cryptocurrency, exchange it for fiat money, as well as invest and earn on exchange rate fluctuations. There are many exchanges, each of which has its own commissions and trading conditions. Exchanges compete with each other, so they need promotions and discounts to make their services more enticing.
Crypto Exchangers
These are platforms or special ATMs where you can exchange crypto for fiat money.
The main difference from exchanges is that you can cash out money in exchangers. They don’t have a considerably large turnover as their operations are limited, thus, as a result, the commissions are usually higher than on exchanges. There is also much less customer data stored in exchangers, and the functionality is less diverse.
Listing of new coins
This is the process of adding cryptocurrency to the list of exchange assets. After its listing, you can carry out transactions for purchase or sale. The process is similar to entering an IPO on the stock market.
New coins are constantly appearing in cryptocurrency markets. To attract investors, they need informational and marketing support.
Equipment for mining
Lots of companies which sell goods or rent out capacities for mining cryptocurrencies need promoting.
Who to promote to?
The target audience of cryptocurrency advertising is relatively narrow, including but not limited to:
- investors;
- IT specialists;
- gamers;
- travellers / people who have relocated;
- users of high-tech devices: the latest iPhones, Tesla;
- subscribers to techno bloggers.
Advertising communication is characterised by the following USPs:
- profitability for investors;
- independence for travellers;
- decentralisation for people who need to be outside of state control;
- anonymity;
- NFT has many specific characteristics which make it unique:
- transparent transfer of an object;
- the opportunity to find out about the creator;
- how the NFT was transferred;
- price fluctuations.
Ways of promotion
Cryptocurrency can be promoted in several ways: through advertising networks, through influencers, and with the help of communities. Advertising of crypto projects encounters various limitations which depend both on the country and the actual placement platform.
Crypto advertising is not allowed in all countries. China, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and some other countries, have banned the promotion of cryptocurrencies.
In countries where cryptocurrency advertising is allowed, there may still be advertising restrictions on certain products and services related to crypto. It depends on the legislation of each state. For example, advertising of crypto exchanges is prohibited in some countries, but in Canada and Luxembourg it is allowed.
Promotion through advertising networks
In most countries, cryptocurrency advertising is available on almost all the usual channels: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and others.
As far as advertising platforms are concerned, some products and services related to crypto can be promoted freely, others are prohibited from advertising all together, and some projects need to obtain a licence. You can obtain it from the state agency that regulates the country’s financial industry. The procedure for obtaining a licence in each state is different and depends on the state’s development of legislation concerning cryptocurrency.
Different platforms require a differing number of documents authorising the launch of advertising campaigns. Some channels have special forms where you can upload documents yourself. Sometimes you need to communicate with sales managers. After the licence is granted, the advertising campaign gets moderated in the same order as other campaigns.
Because of this limitation, the launches can be tedious: you need not just to create an account and launch the ad, but also to communicate with support and ask customers to provide a licence.
The decision for which products and services can/can’t be promoted, and also those which require special permission, depends on the rules of the advertising channels. For example, in Telegram, cryptocurrency advertising isn’t limited at all, so promotion in this channel is swifter.
In 2021, for the first time, cryptocurrency took third place among the thematic categories in terms of advertising turnover in Telegram. It accounted for 6% (in the previous year, it wasn’t even in the top 10).
By the end of 2021, cryptocurrency became the most expensive advertising category in Telegram. The CPM indicator (the cost of 1000 ad impressions) in this category increased by 4.5 times over the year and amounted to $90.
The requirements of other platforms aren’t as soft. The various limitations of advertising networks are shown in the spreadsheet below.
You can view the full version of the spreadsheet via this link.
It is important to remember that products and services allowed as stated in the ‘Rules and Regulations’ may not pass moderation in certain advertising channels. In this case, you need to communicate with support who may ask for additional information about the project. In most cases, negotiations and talks will lead to approval and the launch of a campaign that initially was refused publication.
Promotion through communities
The four pillars of the crypto community are Discord, Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram. On these platforms you can promote your project or coin, build a community of like-minded people, and even manage the course of your cryptocurrency.
Community helps establish communication with customers, increase a loyal audience, extinguish negativity, and find people for CastDevs. There are other advantages. All significant movements started with an idea and a group of engaged people. Not only the product is important to the modern buyer, but also the values that the company translates. Anyone can copy a product, but the brand philosophy shared by thousands of people cannot be repeated.
When a lot of people are gathered in a community, it is a sure sign for investors to fund a certain project or coin. However, this isn’t always the case. Some communities are scam projects. Scammers create the illusion of activity through fake followers who join the community for bonuses. After receiving money from the investor, the scammers disappear.
You can also promote in communities through integration when they agree to advertise their project by barter or for money.
Advertising with bloggers
An effective way to promote cryptocurrency is promotion through bloggers. Audiences trust those more familiar to them than contextual or targeted advertising. The blogger should have a background in crypto as people will be more likely to listen to his/her recommendations. Usually, influencers say what applications and services they use and, in turn, create demand for them.
Difficulties of promotion
In addition to geo restrictions and the requirements of advertising platforms, the promotion of cryptocurrencies runs into other difficulties:
- A difficult-to-understand product. Cryptocurrency, blockchain and NFT are specific tools that require additional knowledge which the audience must acquire.
- Complex copywriting. The crypto community understands cryptocurrency well and will immediately know if the copywriter isn’t an expert in crypto. Thus, such texts will be less trusted.
- An expensive auction due to the high competition in the niche.
- Restrictions on creatives. In advertising, you cannot write about the guarantees of earnings or the security of operations using cryptocurrency.
- Difficult preparation for launch and a long process of advertising approval.
- Low level of trust. The audience is afraid of scam projects that will close in a couple of months.
Conclusions
The penetration of cryptocurrencies in wider society is steadily increasing. Major players in the global market are becoming interested in the possibility of paying for goods with digital currency, and countries’ legislation are softening in regards to crypto. The future of finance will mainly be characterised by the transition to decentralised forms of money management.
The future lies in changing society itself and the processes of information exchange and decision-making between people. Not only in the new financial system. Perhaps we will become part of the creation of DeSoc, a decentralised society where every live event will be recorded on the blockchain allowing you to make more accurate decisions about hiring, issuing loans, or self-organisation around an idea. It will make processes more transparent, reduce the need for additional regulation, and the development of the blockchain will get a new round.
Bluemental A., Worldwide Managing Director in Go Mobile
As of today, many countries are afraid of a complete or even partial transition to digital money. Some seek to regulate this sphere by creating digital analogs of national currencies and prohibiting payment using other cryptocurrencies, while others impose a complete ban on them altogether.
We can say with confidence that cryptocurrency is here to stay. This sphere is already developing rapidly, and thanks to the informational and marketing support for crypto, the days when we pay for a loaf of bread in supermarkets using bitcoin lay not far ahead.
Crypto will undoubtedly be popularised both technologically and as an investment. The global digitization of the economy has already begun, and in some places, there is already a symbiosis of traditional and digital currencies. I think crypto will become mainstream in business over the coming years. This is just the beginning! We live in a great time.
