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Paid social ads will bring crypto into the mainstream
Crypto brands are increasing their advertising presence with social ads. It's a huge opportunity to bring crypto to the mainstream under our own terms.
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Last month we discussed the return of crypto ads to Google. On June 2, Google announced that it was preparing to let some crypto companies run ads on their platform.
This was great news because crypto brands have been left without paid media as a channel to acquire new customers. Google is obviously a huge part of a healthy performance marketing mix, but social is arguably even more important for a growing brand.
Paid social in particular has become the lifeblood of countless companies, particularly ecommerce, over the last ten years. But crypto is no different.
The crypto community lives online. The primary US-based crypto audience lives on Twitter, with YouTube, Reddit, and now TikTok as secondary platforms. Globally you also have a significant presence through Facebook Groups. Instagram also has a small but growing presence in the community, as crypto marketers try to crack the code for that audience.
And now we’re seeing popular crypto brands breaking through the ad embargoes and begin advertising aggressively on the Facebook ad network, which spans the Facebook platform, Instagram platform, and others.
But for marketers, the challenge is to create smart and engaging ads for a category that most people haven’t been marketed from yet. There’s a learning curve. There’s a gap in familiarity of terms. But paid social is also the opportunity to bring crypto brands into the mainstream under our own terms.
There are some tools that I think are particularly helpful in providing marketers a bit of guidance and inspiration to inform your paid social ad strategy.
Today’s we’re going to discuss the Facebook Ad Library, a social performance marketer’s best friend.
The Facebook Ad Library is a transparency tool created by Facebook for marketers (or just the interested public) to see all of the ads currently running across the Facebook ecosystem.
It’s one of the best tools a marketer can have to not only audit the competition, but to also grab inspiration for their own campaigns.
Take this for example -- a search for “Coinbase” reveals that in July they had 47 active ads on the Facebook ad network. We can see that they are running a $5 sign-up incentive for new users. You can also see that they’re current A/B/C testing different visual creatives with the copy as a static variable.
Clicking the “See Ad Details” on a particular ad let’s see you all the versions of that ad’s creatives. So here we can see that Coinbase is designing creatives in 1:1, 16:9, and 9:16 sizing, which will work for placements like the Facebook News Feed, Instagram feed, and both Stories placements.
But one of the best things about the Facebook Ad Library is that you can also search by keyword. So a simple query for “Bitcoin” reveals ALL of the companies promoting an ad that mentions Bitcoin, or from a brand that includes the word Bitcoin in the name. On this search, we can see some creatives from brands some of you might even recognize, like Crypto.com and even my team’s eToro ads.
But what is also interesting to see is that media companies like The Hustle and Finder are putting paid media spend behind their bitcoin content. Might be something for me to dig into more later.
Paid social ads are a challenge all in themselves. There are a handful of platforms that each require a handful of unique creatives to reach their full performance potential. Here are some additional resources to help you craft your brands paid social ads:
Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?
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