BLADE Advertising Case Study
One month in, let’s look at how BLADE is performing for advertisers
It’s been a whirlwind month with BLADE launching. BLADE is a first of its kind browser extension with the interests of three important parties at play: advertisers, end users, and publishers. The team has been working hard to drive steady adoption between advertisers and end users. It’s an ongoing balancing act, but with a disruptive product like BLADE and the amazing tech behind it, the team has been very pleased with the progress and performance in the first month.
BLADE has seen significant increase in traffic performance and analytics since launch and we’re very excited to share our first month findings with the community.
BLADE versus traditional advertising performance
If we take a look at both crypto display advertising from last year as well as average display advertising in the ad tech industry, we can see that BLADE ads have outperformed both these industries.
But first, what is CTR?
CTR stands for Click Through Rate. There are a few different data points that are measured in online advertising and this is one of them.
An ad impression is when an ad is loaded and the end user has viewed the ad. This is tracked as one impression in the ad campaigns total number of impressions. If a brand is looking for brand awareness and not necessarily sales — this is an important metric to look at.
When the user clicks the ad, this is tracked as one click in the ad campaigns “CTR” measurement. If a brand is looking to drive people to a landing page and make a purchase, this is an important measurement to look at.
What CTR do standard online ad campaigns have?
Standard display ad campaigns see click through rates (CTR) between 0.25% and .55% however this varies depending on where the ad placement is and on what format it’s displayed on, as well as what industry the ad belongs to, the demographics being targeted and other factors. The median direct display campaign is .41% CTR. (source)
Crypto display ad campaigns see click through rates between 0.06% and 0.14% — however, this saw a dramatic decrease in Summer and Fall of 2018 as most ICOs and crypto companies struggled with the onset of crypto winter.
How BLADE compares to traditional display advertising
In the first month of use, BLADE campaigns have seen high CTR as well as consistent numbers since launch. BLADE’s CTR has ranged between 0.11% and 1.8%. This is a significant jump from standard display campaigns and is one part of proving the value of BLADE impressions as premium CPM’s.
What’s important to note is that while our impressions have grown as the number of users has increased, our CTR has remained both consistent and higher than traditional crypto display advertising. This is tough to do, as most networks that see traffic growth, don’t necessarily see the growth in clicks and conversions. When we said that advertising was broken and we wanted to fix it — we weren’t lying! This is proof that digital advertising doesn’t have to be filled with fraud. With a product like BLADE built on the adbank protocol, it’s clear to see that the future of advertising doesn’t have to include ad fraud!
These findings underline both the importance of tackling ad fraud (and that it can be done!), but also the undeniable success that BLADE has achieved in scaling high quality, fraud-free traffic in its first month.
A big thank you to all of our early adopters and all of the praise and constructive feedback from users and advertisers. The team is hard at work building the next updates for BLADE and we can’t wait to share our future findings with the community.
Don’t forget to join the Telegram channel here to chat with the team and get all the news first!
