How Altcoin Chain Data Is Monetised Against You

Many of us have to head off to the fiat mines every day to exchange time for a deteriorating store of value, and my mine of choice or chance is digital marketing. 

I spend most of my working days collecting data on customers, analysing their behaviour, and optimising websites and apps based on that data with the intention of getting site visitors to hand over more data, like email addresses and phone numbers, for later conversion, convert them faster, or increase their average order value.

Over the last decade, the data sets the modern marketer gets to work with have grown exponentially. What started with basic on-site data, internal stock and payment data, and a few customer details has exploded into the big data warehouse. 

Today, we can extract data from websites, mobile apps, search engines, display networks, forums and popular third-party tools like social media apps. While already pretty intrusive, these are the white-hat markets; the data we can collect without too much issue and these data sets are large, ever-expanding and constantly updating. 

Then there are the grey markets, where some niches cut their teeth; if you’re excluded from advertising on certain platforms, there are first-party cookie markets, markets for phone numbers, email addresses and even browsers selling user data. You can then purchase or rent that data and then use it to target users across third-party ad networks or spam them directly through grey route email and SMS delivery. 

Modern marketers can’t work without data

The internet is a vast and chaotic place, and finding the right customer at the right time in a digital ocean of billions without any way to identify them is a tough ask.

Imagine trying to hit a moving target in the dark. 

That’s what marketing without data can be like. Given fierce competition and short attention spans, modern marketers need data to create advertising that hits more than it misses. So, we’ve defaulted to tracking users as far as we can without knowing their blood type.

Unless, of course, you’re working for 23andme or one of these medtech companies.  

Understanding your audience

Data paints a clear picture of your target audience. Demographics, online behaviour, interests, and purchase history reveal your ideal customers. This allows you to tailor your message and creatives to what will truly pique their interest and narrow down the list of users who will want your product or service in the near future.

Targeting the right people

Data helps you go beyond broad demographics and target specific user groups since the more you niche down and the more you know about a cohort, the easier it is to appeal to their sense, emotions or motivations. 

Imagine showing ads for hiking boots only to people who have recently searched for hiking trails, watched a hiking video, read a hiking article or added hiking as an interest on their social media bio. 

Data allows for this level of precision, maximising your return on ad spend.

Data allows you to personalise your marketing efforts. We can create funnels targeting you, specifically using your name in an ad or recommending products based on their browsing history. This level of personalisation can be creepy, but they drive positive user experience and make your ads convert, so we do it anyway.

Optimising campaigns

Digital advertising is constantly measurable. 

As marketers, we constantly look at data from clicks and conversions, what traffic source you used, what keywords you’re putting into search, what hashtags you’re using, which images drive clicks, did you watch the video, did you listen to the podcast, did you download the brochure, whether you scan a QR code, are all checked and reported on.

And once you hit the site or the conversion funnel, we monitor every engagement metric possible to see what’s working and what’s not. 

When we make changes to the site, write articles, write ad copy, buy ad space, or bid on a particular keyword, we must justify to management or clients why we are doing this and show our results. 

As we establish a cost per sale or lead, any adjustments after that focus on reducing cost over time. Based on your previous learnings, you can then refine your campaigns, discard what doesn’t perform, and focus on what clicks with your audience.

It’s all about performance, and if you can’t produce traffic at sustainable CPAs, you lose the client or your job.

The top-performing marketers are data scientists. 

When I started my journey into marketing, it was all about the copy, trying to come up with interesting angles, clever ways of getting your message across, and consistently re-inforcing unique selling points. 

To a degree, that hasn’t gone away, but it has taken a back seat. 

Marketers of today are less creative and more data-intensive than ever before. Tasks that were relegated to the BI department have migrated to marketing, and if you’re not learning SQL as a modern marketer, you’re getting left behind. 

Companies want marketers who can not only source as much data as possible but piece it together and create customer journeys from as far top of the funnel as possible. 

• Data-driven decision making: Marketing intuition used to be a big asset. Now, data scientists can analyse vast amounts of information to uncover hidden trends and patterns. This allows top performers to make marketing decisions based on hard evidence, not just gut feeling.
• Advanced campaign optimisation: Data science goes beyond basic click-through rates. Top performers can use techniques like machine learning to optimise campaigns in real time. This means constantly improving ad targeting, content recommendations, and overall campaign performance.
• Personalisation at scale: Data science allows marketers to personalise experiences for a vast audience. Imagine sending highly relevant emails or promotions to thousands of customers, all based on their unique data profiles. Top performers leverage data science to achieve this level of personalisation at scale.
• Predictive marketing: Data science can be used to predict future customer behaviour. This allows top performers to anticipate and proactively target customer needs with relevant marketing messages.

Data that has eluded marketers until now

Companies are collecting more data than ever, but one part of the funnel remains a mystery: the point of sale. The only conversion data we had was internal data once a user made a purchase or completed an order form. 

Fiat payment rails are fragmented between payment processors, cash, bank deposits and fintech companies, so you’ll never get that information in a format you can analyse.

Having interaction data, demographic data, and interest data is helpful. Knowing who your most profitable customers could be and those who are more likely to convert would be far more interesting to brands and marketers.

That has all changed with digital payments via the blockchain and, more specifically, account-based models on smart contract chains. While you can source public keys that have paid specific public keys on Bitcoin and tie them back to a user through chain analysis, the data is sparse in some instances, and users constantly change addresses. 

An EVM chain is a more reliable data mining operation; users are encouraged to use a static public address that can be tied to interactions with certain smart contracts. Wallet balances and histories can be scraped, and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Email Addresses, and phone numbers can be overlaid.

This makes it much easier to target users, considering all the information marketers can collect. Still, now they can refine those audiences based on the size of a user wallet and target your spending by bidding higher for wealthier wallet holders. 

We can also review all the smart contracts you’ve interacted with and all the assets you’ve bought and sold and turn these into custom audiences. For example, if you’re into on-chain gaming, we can overlay this data to sell gaming products and merch, and we know how much money you’re willing to spend based on your wallet history. 

It’s happening right now

This is not some future; this is today.

As a marketer, I’m constantly looking at the new tools, new data streams, and what people in my profession are talking about. If you’ve ever been on Marketing Twitter or Linkedin, you’ll know marketers love to brag about their wins and growth hacks, so they’re all too happy to give you insights into what they are doing and that’s how I came across these blockchain data marketplaces.

Companies are already scraping Etherscan, BSCscan, and other EVM block explorers or connecting to their APIs to pull this data and sell it to marketing agencies and brands.

There are marketplaces where you can upload email addresses and phone numbers, push third-party cookie data, like the Twitter pixel, and source active wallet addresses. Find out where they hang out online and advertise to them, either via social media or third-party display networks.  

I was shocked at the level of granularity these marketplaces offer in targeting users, and it shows how EVM users are creating a more extensive data footprint that can be used against them.

While brands and agencies are foaming at the mouth at the possibilities these data feeds provide, these marketplaces get to monetise the information, reselling it to any buyer that comes along. You won’t know who these buyers are, as the users are the commodity. You’re not getting anything out of the deal.

In fact, the deal is that the buyer of this data will be able to extract money from you.