A $100,000 fund for cryptocurrencies on billboards — what’s the catch?

Matei Psatta
Blindspot
Published in
5 min readMay 8, 2021

Update 10th June: demand for this has been through the roof. Here’s a list of cryptocurrency friendly billboards to make the browsing process easier.

Disclaimer: We’re the guys who bought the now famous $GME GO BRRR billboard. We’ve seen things blow up since then and have a story to tell.

$GME GO BRRR — now the 2nd most popular Reddit post of all time

Cryptocurrencies have reached a tipping point. There’s a coin for almost anything, from the now infamous Dogecoin to up & coming players like Safemoon, ElonGate, XRP, Polkadot, Poocoin, not to mention others niched to more… lucrative industries.

What the slew of altcoins are missing is public trust & recognition. So what are they doing to establish this? Ironic enough, they’re resorting to one of the most established forms of advertising — billboards.

Anything from Times Square to highway billboards, alternative digital-first currencies have found that going outside the online bubble means people view them in a higher regard, which is exactly what they need right now.

What’s missing?

However, cryptocurrencies are not traditional advertisers. Most advertising agencies will not be extremely comfortable working with volatile clients and will most likely add a significant risk-markup on top of the media fees. This means that in most cases, you are not getting a fair deal.

Unfortunately, like it always happens when “new money” becomes a force to be reckoned with, most coins that are advertising on billboards now are being overcharged or simply not getting the most bang for their buck.

Simple math: let us say a fizzy drink company has a $100,000,000 per year OOH budget.

Media agencies usually get a 5% commission out of that, meaning they make $5m per year from that client. When a new advertiser comes in and offers up a 50k budget, a standard 5% commission would mean $2,500, barely worth the hassle of managing that client since they require the same manpower working on both the $100m client and the 50k one.

The issue with this, however, is that the markup on large volume deals is generally pretty low. So, what do most agencies do when they discover new clients that have budgets but have never ran Out of Home ads before? They jack up their margin so it’s worth the effort for them.

How to avoid being overcharged?

First option is to develop a long-term relationship with the billboard owners or media agencies, build trust and, in time, get better deals since you prove you can constantly provide budgets to them.

The second, thankfully, is technology.

Not to toot our own horn, but we had the same problem a while back. We wanted to advertise our business for a few hours on key billboards, but we’d get quotes for the same billboard that varied even up to 500% in costs compared to normal rates. Or they required a minimum spend that just didn’t make sense for us at the time.

So we said screw it and spent the last 3 years to build our own platform that ensures transparent and open trading of digital billboards. That means that everyone sees the same price and availability, no questions asked.

Supporting transparency and alternative currencies

Because we’re firm believers in an open pricing model for any industry, we’re offering an exclusive benefit to any cryptocurrencies that chooses to advertise with us:

  • Free consultancy worth $5,000 and a $100,000 fund per coin to support developers that are marketing their blockchain currencies
SafeMoon advertising with us in Times Square

We will redirect the profit we make from crypto advertisers as extra credits in our platform, up to $100,000 per currency, meaning we’re offering the best value for money if you’re a cryptocurrency looking to advertise on billboards. All you have to do is reach out via the link below or email and apply.

Here’s the official FAQ and details.

There’s also a form to apply if you haven’t advertised on billboards yet.

And just so we explain how our free tool works — you can buy as little as 1 hour on over 300,000 digital billboards worldwide at prices that will blow your mind.

Here’s a campaign we ran for Snoop Dogg on NASDAQ:

And for Dino Nuggs on Thomson Reuters:

This is a great spectacular option in Las Vegas:

And these highway billboards in LA are perfect for capturing attention:

These LinkNYCs in New York go for about $2 per hour. (you read that right)

These are just a few examples. There’s coast to coast highways available for rates that will, simply put, blow your mind.

We’ve already helped a variety of altcoins get on Times Square and other locations (and also worked with Snoop Dogg to troll NYC when weed was legalized, but that’s another story).

The coins that we worked with were getting even 2x rates from agencies compared to what we are offering.

We’re a startup with a mission to make buying digital billboards decentralized and accessible. And we’re here to support others with similar missions.

So if you’re planning to promote your altcoin, create a free account on TPS Engage, see the prices upfront and book only what you need. We’re here to help.

--

--

Matei Psatta
Blindspot

TPS Engage (Techstars ’18) co-founder and jack of digital trades.