December 22, 2025 • 54 mins
Summary
In this conversation, Asaf Nadler, co-founder of Addressable, discusses his journey from military service in the IDF to entrepreneurship in the Web3 marketing space. He highlights the unique challenges of marketing in a blockchain environment, particularly the issue of user anonymity and the need for effective user acquisition strategies. Addressable's innovative approach, including the introduction of the 'cost per wallet' metric, aims to empower marketers by providing actionable insights into user engagement and conversion. Asaf emphasizes the importance of quantifying marketing efforts to secure resources and support within organizations, especially during challenging market conditions. In this conversation, Asaf Nadler discusses the challenges and strategies of marketing in the Web3 space, focusing on user acquisition, the importance of data-driven marketing, and the role of Addressable in helping marketers effectively reach their target audiences. He highlights the complexities of finding Web3 gamers, the significance of understanding user acquisition costs, and the need for awareness and education in crypto marketing. The discussion also touches on the evolving landscape of marketing narratives and the importance of real user engagement over speculative trends.
Takeaways
Military service provided a strong network and diverse tech experience.
Entrepreneurs from the military often seek a higher purpose in their work.
Web3 marketing faces unique challenges due to user anonymity.
Addressable aims to solve user acquisition problems in the blockchain space.
The 'cost per wallet' metric helps assess the quality of traffic.
Marketers need to quantify their impact to secure resources.
Understanding user behavior is crucial for effective marketing strategies.
The blockchain offers transparency that can be leveraged for marketing insights.
Many projects are still in the awareness phase, complicating attribution.
Marketers must adapt to the evolving landscape of Web3 marketing. Marketers need to effectively communicate budget allocation for campaigns.
Understanding the target audience is crucial for successful marketing.
Web3 gaming presents unique challenges in user acquisition.
Addressable helps marketers build targeted campaigns using data.
Data-driven insights can alleviate marketer's shame about strategy.
Awareness of available marketing tools is lacking in the crypto space.
User acquisition costs need to be clearly defined and understood.
The bias towards organic growth can hinder effective marketing strategies.
Mindshare and narrative play a significant role in crypto marketing.
Addressable aims to connect real users with meaningful products.
Chapters
00:00 From Military Service to Entrepreneurship
08:47 Addressable's Unique Approach to User Acquisition
17:51 Understanding Cost Per Wallet Metric
23:00 Empowering Marketers in the Crypto Space
30:11 Case Study: Immutable and Web3 Gaming
40:56 Awareness and Education in Crypto Marketing
46:09 Mindshare and Narrative in Marketing
52:15 Addressable's Role in Real User Engagement
Follow me @papiofficial on X for upcoming episodes and to get in touch with me.
Watch these interviews and subscribe on Youtube Block by Block Show.
See other Episodes Here. And thank you to all our crypto and blockchain guests.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Asaf Nadler co-founder of Addressable.
Thanks for being on the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Peter.
Yeah.
I want to begin with going back to your distant past.
I understand you served in the IDF.
Is that correct?
I'm really curious.
I met with Jon Kol who also served in the IDF, and he's a co-founder of Hyperlane.
(00:26):
And we had a really fascinating conversation around what he learned in the IDF that helpedhim become an entrepreneur.
And I want to point the same question to you.
Like what did you learn and how has that helped you with your entrepreneurial journey atAddressable?
That's a fantastic question.
So to give the full background in Israel, everybody goes to the military, to the IDF.
(00:52):
It's mandatory.
And the mandatory service is around three years.
I've spent 10 in the military.
And if I had to kind of name two takeaways that I think served me as an entrepreneur, oneof them is the network.
I was very, very lucky.
(01:12):
to meet other young people like me were very, very fascinated about tech.
So throughout my 10 years of military service, I did tech in military intelligence.
I met other people who were very, very tech savvy and talented.
A lot of them today are other entrepreneurs.
So the networking was definitely something that contributed a lot to that.
(01:33):
And another part that I guess it's not just about the IDF, but my kind of character aswell.
I always think that the things that I'm not doing are the most interesting.
Whereas in the industry, you're kind of falling into specific frameworks and it's verydifficult to create them.
(01:53):
Being young in the military kind of gave me the opportunities to shift between differentfields of tech, ranging from cybersecurity to security research to data sciences to AI.
into a lot of that.
So I got to experience with so many different things over the course of 10 years.
(02:15):
So I think that kind of also prepared me for being an entrepreneur and dealing with a lotof changes and a lot of the need to learn new tech and solve new problems.
And I find that fascinating because it's, know, for most of us that have been in tech, youknow, we're confined really to an office in front of our computers.
But for those that have kind of done real world things, you know, where your life is onthe line, it gives you a different perspective.
(02:43):
And I think, and also priorities, you know, what's more important than another thing.
And it certainly shows in some of the entrepreneurs that I've worked with that have servedin the military.
Like they just approach business differently.
Absolutely, I definitely relate to that.
I think that within the industry, a lot of the KPI of software is about revenue or whatare users getting as a form of that.
(03:10):
But for a lot of entrepreneurs that started their tech career in the military, it startswith serving a higher purpose for the country.
You see how systems that are working on are saving lives, who are doing...
great things in even when you leave the military to the industry you want to do somethingthat has a purpose something that you fully believe in so this is definitely something
(03:33):
that sticks with a lot of former IDF that go to be entrepreneurs later onI wanna switch topics to addressable where you're a co-founder, but I wanna begin with the
problem.
I think if I could just lay out the landscape in crypto or web three marketing, I thinkthe marketing five stack is quite new.
(03:58):
And I think it's maturing.
And I'm really, really encouraged by seeing more and more projects and companies buildingmarketing.
stack services and offerings to serve Web3 marketers.
I'm very encouraged by that.
But let's begin with the problem.
(04:19):
Like what problem do you see?
Like I guess what's wrong with Web3 marketing?
And then maybe we can segue into addressable.
That's a great question.
It starts with a problem, but it actually falls into an opportunity.
When we started our ideation for Addressable, we met many blockchain companies.
(04:41):
We fell in love with the blockchain space, and I can get into that why later.
But we asked many companies, what are the biggest problems that you're facing that youthink data can be helpful with?
And a lot of them were...
specifically mentioning user acquisition for looking to get more users.
(05:02):
In this current rare market, sounds a bit weird, like everybody are cutting down onmarketing, situation is not very good.
But the time that I'm referring to was after 2021, blocking companies to those who weren'tyet in the industry, raised more capital than cybersecurity companies than digital help.
(05:24):
companies than education tech.
raise so much money.
And if you were to be asking them, what are they planning to do with this money?
They would be saying, we're looking to onboard more users.
We're looking to do user acquisition.
Well, great.
mean, that's what a lot of companies that are raised money are planning to do.
Why aren't you running the existing playbooks?
(05:46):
And this is where the problem lies.
The problem is anonymity.
So inherently users on the blockchainare anonymous in this kind of mechanism that's inherent by design on the blockchain is
also propagating into the culture.
So even the people that are buying from you are not leaving you with their email.
(06:09):
They're not leaving you with their mobile.
And for well-experienced marketers that are used to collecting the data of who visited mywebsite, who bought something, learning from that about how to grow.
being blind to that was a huge problem.
And a lot of them were launching NFT collections and launching products and launchingtokens, but not really being able to learn about what was working.
(06:36):
And the biggest problem that follows that is how do we even reach users that we careabout?
Because in crypto, when you think about the products, very small percentage of that arecommodities that any user would see, understand,
buy, like click on Instagram and say, want that.
Most of the products are very complicated and are a good fit only for crypto nativepeople.
(07:00):
But how do you know who's crypto native?
How do you even find these users?
That was the biggest problem, finding the relevant users that are behind anonymity.
And for the team that we were at the time, we all came from a military intelligencebackground.
So for us,Putting together the signal about wallet owners on the blockchain, who they are, what do
(07:21):
they care about, what are their interests and how to find and target them, it seems like aproblem that we saw many times before in the 10 or 15 years that preceded the emergence of
Addressable.
(07:42):
So it really seemed like there was a very good opportunity to help the space growproperly.
slightly shifting from the problem into the opportunity.
It seems like Web3 marketing is at a disadvantage with everybody being anonymous.
But as a matter of fact, in Web2 marketers are pretty much becoming blind to anythingthat's taking place outside of their platform.
(08:10):
Sure, if a user is buying from you, they will give you the email, they will give you themobile number and you can start collecting the data.
But anywhere else,Google is deprecating third-party cookies.
Apple is no longer giving you mobile attribution data.
So you don't know what's happening anywhere else.
You have no idea.
But the blockchain is all open.
(08:30):
You can see all the transactions all the time.
So as a marketer, even though the users that are coming to you are anonymous, you cananonymously still see the trends across the industry.
Is my competitor's user drifting away?
Is somebody making money?
Is there a good business in NFT?
(08:52):
What is currently happening and where does the opportunity lies?
In trying to frame all of that together, we were convinced at that point in time that itwill put the data into a single source of truth and reach it to help companies and
marketers better understand their audiences and reach out to them.
(09:13):
this industry can grow properly.
That's the story that led us to address it.
You know, I'm glad that you brought up kind of the Web2 experience because, you know,having come from the Web2 world, like I loved knowing as much as I could about my
customers in my funnel and the characteristics of each stage of the funnel.
(09:34):
One of the my favorite features back in the Web2 space was progressive profiling, youknow, where initially I'll ask you for your first name, last name and email.
And then the next time we encounter you,Then I'm like, already know your first name and last name in the email.
Let me just ask you your phone number.
So it's like one field.
Next after that is like, let me ask you one question.
(09:57):
And then I start forming this really rich information database of all of my encounters.
And I love knowing that, but you're right, in the blockchain space, that's almost againstthe ethos of privacy.
But as a marketer, it's like, I need that.
(10:18):
I feel like I need that.
And one of the frustrating things as a marketer in Web3, it's like, there's not a lot Ican know.
But it sounds like Addressable has, you've kind of reframed that in the Web2 space, it'sbecoming more and more private.
But in Web3, everything's on the blockchain.
And so maybe we can actually know as much or even more now.
(10:43):
Am I characterizing that correctly?
It's exactly that.
It's exactly that.
funnily for someone who came from Web2, you see the potential of that.
But I think at the given point in time, there are still marketers that in theoryunderstands the benefit of that, but it not fully understood how meaningful it is to rely
(11:08):
on all this data.
So it's still kind of a gradual process to get people in the blockchain space toadopt this new opportunity that is featured within this industry.
Yeah, I think this idea of attribution is so hard.
And I am really encouraged by everything that you've shared about addressable.
(11:33):
Let's talk about how addressable, actually, let me back up.
Attribution and defining the stages of the funnel is so hard in Web3.
Because I feel like a lot of the...
A lot of Web3 projects or crypto projects right now are really at the kind of theawareness stage because they're not quite sure what a conversion event is.
(12:03):
And for some projects, one conversion event might be, you you're a developer, join myprogram and become a developer on my blockchain.
So that's kind of one conversion event.
But for some projects that don't haveThey don't necessarily have main net yet or even test net and they, but they have a token.
so the conversion event there might be by my token.
(12:24):
And so I think projects, you know, across the web three space kind of run the.
You've got developers, which are users.
You've got token holders, which are users.
If you have applications on a layer one, you know, you've got users of that application.
So I guess what am I gasking?
I'm asking, I guess.
(12:47):
I guess two things, you know, as you, when you speak with clients or potential clients,like how do you help them define their funnel and how does addressable kind of help them
at all stages of the funnel when it comes to attribution?
It's a fantastic question.
initially we were very romantic about the tech opportunity of attribution and web-free.
(13:12):
So my background is coming from tech, not from marketing.
And seeing for the first time a tech that is fully programmable, in which attribution canbe fully on the blockchain, we can use the wallet as kind of this persistent identifier
across everything.
(13:32):
We can tie everything together from the revenue that is being made within the conversionall the way to the source that drove this conversion.
This was very appealing.
But what I think we saw working with more and more clients over time is exactly what youmentioned earlier.
A lot of them are not yet at the monetization phase.
(13:54):
They're not yet at the conversion stage.
They're somewhat ranging between awareness and engagement.
That is where a lot of the industry lies.
Initially, when we thought we'll see more conversion events, we built a lot of theattribution part, which was very, very customizable, like you said.
(14:18):
There was no one size fits all.
It seemed at the time like if we would tap into the Wallet Connects logins and then find aconversion on the website, that would work.
But then a lot of the conversion events took place, not necessarily on the website.
Some of them with downloading the mobile app, like wallets, some of them on a centralizedexchange where the wallet is being exchanged.
(14:44):
It became pretty much a very customizable work.
And with that, the market was also shown to be very, very fragmented.
There was a very small portion of the market which actually had conversion.
This kind of led me to think over the past few months, what is the common denominator thaton a Pareto rule, 80 % of projects are facing, and yet very, very easily, like within one
(15:15):
hour of working together, we can already show them a metric or something to help themunderstand how well things are going.
And because a lot of the projects are still at the awareness or engagement phase, I had tolook for something at the top of the funnel.
And I think at the top of the funnel, the biggest question which we saw emerging fromusers is are we getting quality traffic?
(15:42):
We're using influencers, we're using all sorts of ads, we're using all sorts of trafficand PR and affiliates, but we're not sure.
If the traffic is bots, we're not sure if the traffic is crypto native.
It might be just somebody putting a banner on some website that is unrelated.
(16:04):
We're not sure if we're getting the quality traffic.
And this seemed to be something that is fitting 80 % of the market because a lot of themare in the awareness and engagement phase.
And more than 80 % of the market is clearly on web.
On mobile, there's so many restrictions.
Not a lot of them went into telegram mini apps.
(16:26):
So a lot of that is in web, a lot of that is awareness engagement.
And this is where we came up with the notion of cost per wallet, which is looking attraffic that is headed to your website.
How much of that traffic actually has a wallet installed as a browser extension on thebrowser?
(16:53):
If a website visitor has a wallet installed on their browser, it's unlikely to be a bot.
These are typically using headless browsers.
They don't install Metamask as an extension in an attempt to look like Chrome.
And on the other hand, it's unlikely to be a normie that doesn't understand crypto.
These people would just not install a wallet.
(17:16):
So we found this indicator to be very, very powerful, very simple.
And by powerful, what I mean is that we looked at data from half a million convertedusers, 100 advertisers, 250 campaigns.
Well, intuitively, it's a powerful indicator.
What we saw based on the numbers that a user that has a wallet installed is seven timesmore likely to convert and 18 times more likely to sign up.
(17:44):
So it's that powerful.
And on the other end, it's a very simple metric that80 to 90 % of the projects that actually has a website and want to understand if an
influencer or an ad system or anything is directing quality traffic, they can actuallymeasure that.
What is the cost that takes me to bring someone with the wallet to my website?
(18:10):
So if I'm trying to kind of capture everything together, attribution is definitely aproblem.
We've not yet seen a solution that is a one size fits all and doesn't require a kind ofdis-customization.
And we have this customization, we have the ability to go full path from that.
But altogether, what we see is that it's also important to find simple solutions, fastvalue to kind of provide the 80-20.
(18:39):
And this is exactly cost per wallet, what we're trying to do at the top of the funnel.
Now, cost per wallet is a metric.
That's a metric that I believe you guys coined.
you know, whenever you create a new metric like that, you know, there needs to be a lot ofeducation.
It's almost like a new category.
(19:00):
Like being the first in the category is you're almost guaranteed to be like the winner.
And probably the same thing when you come up with a new metric, then everyone starts tolearn about this metric and then starts to measure their activities with this metric.
um, and the creator of this metric all of sudden kind of generates a lot of kind ofthought leadership Excuse me Tell us about I guess if I were a How does this metric uh,
(19:32):
guess what does this metric mean to to various kind of user audiences like say you're a uha layer one and you're trying to get developers versus a layer one with without a
developers but you have a token.
My guess is those are probably two pretty large user segments that Addressable sees.
(19:55):
How does this metric translate for each for those?
Perfect.
So in the layer one, there's a marketing team that is responsible for demand generation.
They're responsible for the marketing budget in spending back to both generate creativeideas and how to leverage attention and spreading them across different resources to
(20:20):
attract users.
It might be influencers, it might be events, it might be PR, it might be advertisement.
The decision they ultimately need to make is which of these sources are driving qualityrevenue and we want to invest more of that and which of these sources aren't performing as
well as we expected.
(20:42):
Cost per wallet is designed to evaluate exactly that.
For every source, what is the cost?
How much am I paying to get one wallet owner visiting my website?
It might be a developer, it might be a trader, it might be an investor, but it'sdefinitely someone who's not a bot, native to this space.
(21:06):
And that's what the single very general metric is measuring per source.
And the way to measure that is you would typically install a system that tracks thataddressable, natively support that, but I definitely encourage
every paid media system to track that as well.
(21:30):
And it can be definitely independent.
And what any of these systems will do is as soon as you tap in what's the budget that youinvested for a specific source, it will identify any website traffic that is coming from
the source and start counting the amount of wallet visitors that made it to the website.
(21:52):
And ultimately from there, it's justIt's just a division.
How many wallets did you get divided by the budget?
And then you can realize that it takes you a dollar to get a wallet owner visiting.
$5, $10.
If it's much more than that, what you would find out is that some channels are not aseffective.
(22:13):
And it might be a problem with the creative that's not attracting quality traffic.
It might be a problem with the source.
But what you get as a result is that you have actually a quantitative metric, which iscomparable.
You can compare that with other marketers, with other teams.
You can communicate that to leadership.
(22:37):
What does it actually take us to get a user coming on the website?
User might buy, they might convert, they might sign up for the waitlist, they mightbounce.
But at least at the top of the funnel,there's an understanding of what's it take to bring a real native crypto user to my
website for whatever follows up next.
(23:00):
I think that's fascinating.
And for the listeners, the majority of the listeners are builders and they are marketersand learning more about the kind of the marketing fi.
I believe that's the category that's being that's kind of developing is is reallyfascinating because there really isn't a lot out there right now.
(23:22):
And addressable being one of the key leaders is important to, you know, for people tomarketers that are in the crypto space need to know about.
If you were speaking directly to all of these marketers that work at various differentprojects, I guess what would you want them to remember from this podcast and maybe try to
(23:44):
sell them unaddressable?
I think that marketers in this space are incredibly talented and I think they're facing abig challenge.
And that challenge has to do a lot with communicating to founders in this space that aretypically very much tech driven.
(24:05):
They're not coming from our main background.
Very small amount of them are coming from go-to market positions.
Marketers are struggling with communicatingthe activities with the output.
So they're asking for budgets, they're asking to grow their team, they're asking foradditional resources, sometimes with the inability to explain what will we get as a return
(24:33):
from that.
on a lot of occasions, this is understandable because marketing has a lot of intangibles.
How do you quantify brain?
How do you quantify a long-term demand?
But on a lot of short-term actions, unless you quantify what you face is the inability togrow your team, because it's unclear how to associate activities with outputs.
(25:04):
And on the longer term, when the market hits a very, very rough spot, you want to showcasefor what you're actually delivering.
And that's a pain within the industry.
I'm saying something that is extremely painful.
But in this industry, when it's down, marketers are a lot of time the first to be thrownoverboard.
(25:27):
The founders are looking at this.
It's really sad to say that.
It might be like a hot take from this recording.
But founders are looking at the devs and they're saying, these are the people that aredelivering features.
They're looking at the BD.
These are the people that are delivering sales or partnerships.
They're looking at product.
These are the people that are delivering the plans and the vision.
(25:50):
And they're looking at the marketers.
What are we getting there?
And it's, it's, it's horrible that this is not on defiable.
It's because I see marketers as a lot of the champions of the organization, but unlessthey kind of
transform a lot of their value that they're bringing into something that is quantitativeinto users, into attention, into something that can actually be measured that a founder
(26:16):
would actually need to think.
If I'm cutting the budget here, if I'm reducing the size of the team, I would be losing.
I would be losing users.
I would be losing attention.
would be losing things that will take more time to recover.
They would think twice about that.
And on the other way around, as you're looking to grow, marketers can actuallycommunicate.
(26:40):
If we'll put more budget on this specific campaigns, it has proven that it takes a $5 costper wallet to drive the user to the website.
This is what it costs.
So $1,000, we get us 200 wallets coming.
The homepage of the addressable site, I'm gonna read the headline and sub headline, wouldlove your comments on it.
(27:06):
The Web3 Growth Platform drive growth through super targeted user acquisition usingon-chain data and AI.
So two questions, who are you speaking to directly and what is it that you want them todo?
It's a fantastic question.
That's a tagline that back and forth, we're always thinking about how to play with that.
(27:34):
we're always speaking to two different teams.
One of them is the marketers.
That's the users of the systems.
These are the people that would be using the product on the day to day with typically withthe goal of attracting users very effectively.
(27:55):
It's a nervous game.
It's performance marketing.
They want to put their budget and get the best results for that.
And the second thing is they want to do it with ease.
Marketers in this space are so overwhelmed with doing so many tasks in small teams.
They're doing the PR, they're doing the social, they're doing the community management.
(28:18):
They're sometimes even doing the listings on exchange.
They want a tool that they can trust and can help them with that.
And the second type or the second team that we're speaking to are the decision makers ortypically if the team is big, it's a CMO, but in a lot of cases in crypto, still, it's
(28:39):
still founders that would be evaluating that they will not be the ones using the product,but they're the ones that need to approve it.
So what they'll be typically looking at isDoes this look like a team we can trust?
Does this look like something that we'd be working with?
(29:00):
Our marketers are definitely asking for that, but is this something that we can't rely on?
So the one voice that we're trying to funnel through, whether it's successful or not, istrying to hit on both of these.
Now, I believe this is all publicly available information.
So forgive me if I'm talking out of turn, but I believe on the site it says Immutable andPolygon are customers.
(29:26):
I'm curious about the Immutable case because they are a general purpose layer one, butvery game focused.
And so there you've got multiple levels of users.
You've got the studios that are building games on Immutable.
And then these games also have players.
(29:47):
And so having that as a backdrop, I'm curious how Immutable might be using Addressable tokind of learn more about all the levels of users they have.
And I think that's probably one of the more complicated use cases, different levels ofusers.
(30:11):
It definitely is.
And I'm being careful of words and how to kind of choose what's in the public domain.
What we have in the public domains is we support it immutable with promoting several oftheir major games, not the later one, not in beautiful X.
And some of these games include Metalcore, Guild of Guardians, and Gods of the Chain, thetrading card games.
(30:36):
And in all of these cases,what they were looking to find is Web3 gamers, which are incredibly difficult to find
because typically, classic gamers, you can advertise to them on Steam, on gamingplatforms, you would find them.
(30:57):
But in the Web3 gaming scene, there is a combination between people who on one hand viewinterest in gaming, but on the other end,
They're also native enough to understand how to connect their wallet on the way to play agame or what is the values of assets that I'm collecting on chain because at least at a
(31:20):
time you needed to be very, very technical to play this game.
So that is the case in Uniball.
We're actually one of our first clients.
They went on a Blockworks article that was featuring us.
Saying how well it helped them with acquiring Web3Gamers through Twitter ads.
(31:42):
This is what we did together that is on the public domain.
I think that's fascinating for a couple of reasons.
Immutable is a great project.
But the fact that they use Twitter ads, which not a lot of blockchain projects are doingany paid campaigns these days, but of those that are doing paid campaigns, it's probably
(32:04):
not on Twitter because Twitter doesn't often allow crypto specific language.
so seeing attribution from like a paid campaignto the click, to landing on a page and then converting at that stage.
That's like a dream come true for most marketers.
(32:25):
Just to have that much level of information is amazing.
And that's great that Addressable was able to help Immutable with some of that.
Tell us about the features, specific features of Addressable thatyour finding kind of really resonates with marketers.
(32:50):
So if I'm going from the start in an overview of what the addressable platform is lookinglike, it supports the single process, which is build the audience that you want to target,
we'll give you a report about this audience, their behavior, so you can understand andplan your campaign.
(33:11):
And then would help you launch.
a targeted ads campaign on Twitter or Reddit or banner ads on crypto websites to targetthese users.
And we'll provide you with a dashboard that showcases what are the results that you'regetting, as well as us collecting the data to optimize the entire campaign end to end.
(33:32):
That's the addressable platform on the end to end.
If I'm...
basing what do we see that's very helpful for users based on conversations that we'rehaving with them.
I think the first point has to do with we know who the audience is, but the way that we'rethinking about the audience is in on-chain terms.
(34:04):
So it's users that has money thatare investing in specific DeFi protocol that bought something from our competition.
But we have no idea who they are.
We have no idea how to get to them.
So this aha moment when they can feed in the data on our system and get a report that issaying, this is for audience.
(34:31):
This is where they're coming from across the globe.
These are the channels on which we've seen them converting.
in the distribution.
This is who they're following on social media.
This is the topics that they like to discuss on social media.
These are the different tokens that they're owning.
There's this feeling of this fits some of what I was thinking, but there's also somewhatof, I'm not sure if I'm choosing the correct word, but some form of shame of I'm a
(35:06):
marketer.
I know that I should be using data to plan ahead, but now I'm seeing that and I'm feelinga bit ashamed that I've never used a tool to strategize my campaign.
So I'm pitching the founders.
I'm trying to harness everybody for a huge movement, but I never really kind of use datato justify or to argue why it makes sense.
(35:31):
to target the specific users that I'm offering or not.
So this is definitely something that we're seeing very, very, very helpful.
Another part that we're seeing very, very helpful is as you said it earlier, a lot ofprojects aren't very much native to ads.
It used to be that Twitter and other platforms were not very fonding of crypto projects.
(35:56):
And I want to believe that we have a hand in changing that.
We're working very closely with the Twitter team.
We have a very, very powerful partnerships with them.
And there was a lot of change in Twitter policy towards crypto advertisers.
A lot of that is much more relaxed than it used to be in the past.
(36:18):
Obviously, you cannot promote directly by my token.
But a lot of things that are speaking about the tech and about education and aboutresources are definitely allowed now.
And we're seeing more and more projects opening up to that.
And still there's lots of projects that haven't print ads in the past.
(36:40):
There's a lack of marketing talent that has experience with running ads.
So I think another feature is getting a project that is saying, I want to get users.
I have a dedicated budget to that, but I, I I've never done that.
And I'm a bit scared of that.
You know, it's a budget I managed to convince the founders, but I'm not really sure how togo through that.
(37:07):
Having a product that is simplifying this process and showing you the results on the onehand, making it easy, but on the other hand, making you feel that you're in control.
think this is something that is incredibly meaningful.
And the last part.
is the use of AI to collect all of the data, show the results and what's working and getyou instance insights on what's working.
(37:35):
So when the CEO is kind of, or the founder is capturing you in the whole or texting you onSlack, like what's happening with the campaign that we're doing off?
Like every marketers knows this sweating moment when you're, you're, oh, what's happeningwith that?
You're a single button away.
from generating all the insights and telling the founders.
(37:56):
Our optimization just cut the cost by half.
It used to take eight cents for us to get an engagement on Twitter.
It's now four cents.
This is working excellent.
Our companion, the Ukraine, is actually working out the best.
So we might want to double down on that.
And in Southeast Asia, our assumptions weren't necessarily correct.
(38:17):
And you remember that we talked about this creative and we had like the pink versionversus the gray one.
And we thought that the pink one was going to work more.
It's 20 % better.
Like one click, you have all of that showing.
So this generates exactly what we want to have.
We want to have the marketers, the champion of the organization.
(38:40):
You know, just for the record, I am not a customer of Addressable, but everything you'vedescribed is exactly like, if I had that available to me, that would answer and help me so
much in my career.
Because it's, you know, it's really boils down to fundamentals.
It's like, what is it?
What is the messaging that I'm going out with?
(39:01):
Where, like, first of all, who is my audience?
What's the message, the position and the messaging I'm going out with?
How do I reach my audience?
And what's the performance of the positioning and messaging to my audiences based on thesechannels?
It's like just the fundamental questions are so hard to answer in crypto.
(39:24):
And if Addressable can help me answer all of that, I mean, that's a huge, huge value add.
And I mean, I'm a customer right away.
I mean, I would be.
And I think to your point aroundthe idea of shame, I think a lot of it, at least for me is, I don't think a lot of crypto
marketers know that there's even a software stack that could help them answer thesequestions.
(39:52):
And so I think at least from in the circles that I'm in, I think it's kind of an awarenessissue that they just don't know it's even available.
And to even underscore another point is like,You know, in the web two space, I, my marketing budget for, for paid ads was massive and,
but I could do the math.
(40:15):
I spent X amount, I would get, you know, X multiple of revenue.
Like it was, it was literally just math.
And we, it's not that simple in crypto.
And, and also to your point, there's just not a lot of crypto marketers that have donekind of large paid ad campaigns in the past.
(40:36):
And so.
there's a kind of a talent thing, there's an awareness that there is a service in asoftware stack available to them that would answer all of these questions.
So I don't even know if there's a question in there, but just an observation based oneverything you've shared is just people just don't know it's even out there that
addressable can do all of this.
(40:56):
It's, definitely agree with that.
There's definitely an awareness issue.
And I think people are aware of the name of Addressable.
And I think a lot of them would synonymously would say it's that company that connectswallet to social profiles.
So you can target them using ads, but we maybe don't do ads or we're made.
(41:17):
mean, this is somewhat the rejection.
But, but I definitely agree thatthere's a missing narrative in it's also the company that can help us better use data to
plan or better use data to understand what is working.
(41:37):
And if it makes sense because we have a clear ROI, then we can plan what we're spending toknow what we're getting and to tap even deeper into the ROI.
Many companies in blockchains are still startups.
still in discovery.
They're very far from having a viable and scalable business model that if they know thatfor a user, they're making $100 and they're buying them for 50, it's a great machine that
(42:08):
you can scale.
But I think that given that it's not the situation just yet, companies still need to getusers.
Why they need to get users, whether it'sUm, to prove that they have product market fit, um, to get the next funding round with,
with the showcasing of what they're able to do, um, to, to attract users to startmonetizing on some features that they have, or even to build attention.
(42:37):
They need the users throughout every part of their life cycle.
What they're often not thinking of is what am I willing to pay for the users?
And a lot of the reason for that is that.
for the founders in their mind, they're hiding the cost.
I mean, not knowingly in, we're hiring a marketer because we need marketers, or we'redoing a KOL round, or we're going to add KOLs to our round as somewhat advisors and people
(43:08):
that would speak on RBF.
So they're spending on the user acquisition without really framing that as useracquisition.
But if they're falling into a model in which we're saying, this is budget and this isbudget and this is budget, regardless of what's equity, what's token or what's headcount,
(43:30):
they're saying, what am I actually spending on driving users?
They might actually find out that sometimes there's a faster, more efficient way to getusers.
Yeah.
And I think part of it too, at least in the crypto space is kind of this bias for organicand or not paid.
(43:53):
so because there's, you know, people draw their attention or their attention gets drawn tokind of organic campaigns or seemingly organic, but it's really not.
And so, but a lot of founders don't know that, you know, a lot of founderswhen they see a project doing well and all these KOLs and influencers talking about it,
it's a good, it's probably that, you a good portion or percentage of those KOLs have beenpaid to do so, but it's just not disclosed.
(44:25):
And so people then get the impression that, it's organic, but it's really not.
And so I think that's part of the problem too, is this bias for organic, which means that,you know, they just don't...
they're not familiar with paid campaigns or that acquisition has a cost.
(44:46):
That's at least my observation, my experiences.
And I think it's also an opportunity for our industry to mature a little bit.
if projects are using influencers or KOLs, it's probably a good idea to have them.
If they're not disclosing,then at least make the assumption that probably a bunch have been paid to do so.
(45:10):
Absolutely, I definitely agree with that.
And if you're thinking about the founders that are still buying into the illusion thateverything's organic, if they're buying into the illusion, it means that they're not
paying for influencers.
They don't necessarily understand that.
And if that's the case, in the blockchain space, everything is so competitive.
(45:34):
Like you can't even name the amounts of wallets, the amount of layer 1s, layer 2s.
the amount of exchanges.
I mean, the numbers are huge.
There are so much solutions and yet not enough users.
And if you're a founder and you want to be competitive about finding market share andfinding the initial users to start, and you don't know where to find that, and you're
(46:01):
still not working with influencers, and you're not a rock star on social media, whichlet's face it, mean, not
most of people aren't broad-stressed on social media, which channel are you turning to?
mean, how are you planning to get your first users?
If you're not paying for that and doing that plain organic, you're just too slow.
(46:25):
I mean, there's no way that you will keep up with the pace of the market.
So yeah, this is absolutely where we're hoping that people will...
see through the illusion, they will least understand that nothing is really organic tostart with.
Would they understand that they can put everything on the same benchmark based on cost,maybe cost per wallet, but anything.
(46:50):
What is the cost for driving quality users to my product to test it out?
Yeah.
I want to maybe ask two last questions.
The first one is around mindshare.
There's kind of been a lot of buzz lately with mindshare and the different kind ofnarratives that are taking mindshare.
(47:16):
I think AI right now is like 40 some percent of the mindshare out there.
And what that's leading companies or projects to do that I kind of...
that I've kind of coined it, at least in my mind, kind of a narrative schizophrenia wherethey're a project that's not necessarily in the AI space, but then they pivot to the AI
(47:36):
space because they see that's where the attention is going.
I'd love your view on that, on mindshare in general.
And to what extent does Addressable help kind of understand mindshare and its role, Iguess, in marketing?
Like, how do you see that?
(47:59):
I tweeted something a few months back.
It's a poem that I call the tale of two funnels, which is it's somewhat of a joke, butwith a lot of truth behind that, that a lot of projects are setting up marketing funnel
(48:23):
that ispresumably aimed for users, like a Web3 game that is looking for gamers or a DeFi project
that is looking for investors, when in fact there's another funnel that matters to most ofthem.
That funnel is retail traders that would buy the token, would buy the speculation.
(48:44):
I think the situation that we're seeing in this space, at least at the moment, is that forsome of the projects, the token is more meaningful than the product.
So the second funnel, the hidden one is the one that's most important.
And with the speculation narratives are always going to win because it's not about whatwill people use.
(49:07):
It's not about what solving a real problem.
It's about what would get people to think it's a moonshot.
So what I'm seeing over there is there's lots of chatter in the Web3 marketing communitiesabout, why are there...
putting so many buzzwords on top of everything.
(49:27):
Don't they know that users don't read it?
I think they do.
I think they do know that, but it's not what they care about.
It's not who you're selling to.
When you were asking me about the tagline and the addressable, you asked me, who is itfor?
What I think is that some projects care about the token and the buyers of the speculationmore.
(49:48):
So they're designing it around narratives at the moment.
to get people to think it's a moonshot.
This where I'm thinking it's happening.
The way that we're treating that within Addressable is one, we're acknowledging that thisis the state of the market.
I think crypto will always have some distribution of company between one end, which iswhat Chris Dixon refers to as the casino within Read Write Own.
(50:20):
It's the part of the speculation.
It's the part in which people are trying to get money and moonshine and it's not reallyabout new tech being built to the other end, which is ranging between new tech being
built, whether it's DeFi or whether it's gaming and all the way to plain normie businessesthat treat crypto as a new form of payment.
(50:43):
Today, the casino speculation is still, I think, very much dominating.
a lot of crypto and therefore it's why we're seeing the narrative so powerful.
But I think it's changing.
think retail traders are becoming a bit more resilient to the narratives, especially whenthe market is down.
(51:04):
They're realizing that a lot of them are not really fulfilling on the promise.
And on the other hand, regulation is making it available for more businesses to acceptcrypto payments.
not?
I people got rich with crypto.
Why not sell them?
luxury goods or travel or all sorts of other things with crypto as just another paymentmethod or use DeFi with better UX so people have better trading opportunities.
(51:32):
And the way in which Addressable approaches that on the market is wanted by acknowledgingthat.
we're still providing Dashboard and helping you understand your audience andWhat are the narratives that they care about?
What are they speaking up?
Where's the mind chair?
Which is something that we still know a lot of companies care about.
(51:55):
And for that, if they care about that, we care about them.
We want them to succeed.
But on the bigger part, what we're trying to educate on and what we're trying to imply isthere's a product here by a real company that cares about the space being able to grow
thathas the infrastructure to get your real users to the product side, not to the token side,
(52:15):
but to finding real users, real engagement, real adoption, and driving them all the wayinside.
We are seeing products in this space that care about that.
We are seeing success with them.
And hopefully, we see much and much more of these in the future.
(52:39):
Awesome.
Well, Asaf, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
And if there's a listener that did not know about Addressable, but now they do and theybecome a customer, that would be a huge win for me.
So I hope that all those that are listening to this and they're interested in Addressable,they go to addressable.io.
(53:01):
Sign up, learn about Addressable and see how Addressable can serve your needs as amarketer in the crypto space.
Asaf, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us.
Thank you so much, Peter.
Awesome.
Asaf Nadler co-founder of Addressable.
Thanks for being on the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Peter.
Yeah.
I want to begin with going back to your distant past.
I understand you served in the IDF.
Is that correct?
I'm really curious.
I met with Jon Kol who also served in the IDF, and he's a co-founder of Hyperlane.
(00:26):
And we had a really fascinating conversation around what he learned in the IDF that helpedhim become an entrepreneur.
And I want to point the same question to you.
Like what did you learn and how has that helped you with your entrepreneurial journey atAddressable?
That's a fantastic question.
So to give the full background in Israel, everybody goes to the military, to the IDF.
(00:52):
It's mandatory.
And the mandatory service is around three years.
I've spent 10 in the military.
And if I had to kind of name two takeaways that I think served me as an entrepreneur, oneof them is the network.
I was very, very lucky.
(01:12):
to meet other young people like me were very, very fascinated about tech.
So throughout my 10 years of military service, I did tech in military intelligence.
I met other people who were very, very tech savvy and talented.
A lot of them today are other entrepreneurs.
So the networking was definitely something that contributed a lot to that.
(01:33):
And another part that I guess it's not just about the IDF, but my kind of character aswell.
I always think that the things that I'm not doing are the most interesting.
Whereas in the industry, you're kind of falling into specific frameworks and it's verydifficult to create them.
(01:53):
Being young in the military kind of gave me the opportunities to shift between differentfields of tech, ranging from cybersecurity to security research to data sciences to AI.
into a lot of that.
So I got to experience with so many different things over the course of 10 years.
(02:15):
So I think that kind of also prepared me for being an entrepreneur and dealing with a lotof changes and a lot of the need to learn new tech and solve new problems.
And I find that fascinating because it's, know, for most of us that have been in tech, youknow, we're confined really to an office in front of our computers.
But for those that have kind of done real world things, you know, where your life is onthe line, it gives you a different perspective.
(02:43):
And I think, and also priorities, you know, what's more important than another thing.
And it certainly shows in some of the entrepreneurs that I've worked with that have servedin the military.
Like they just approach business differently.
Absolutely, I definitely relate to that.
I think that within the industry, a lot of the KPI of software is about revenue or whatare users getting as a form of that.
(03:10):
But for a lot of entrepreneurs that started their tech career in the military, it startswith serving a higher purpose for the country.
You see how systems that are working on are saving lives, who are doing...
great things in even when you leave the military to the industry you want to do somethingthat has a purpose something that you fully believe in so this is definitely something
(03:33):
that sticks with a lot of former IDF that go to be entrepreneurs later onI wanna switch topics to addressable where you're a co-founder, but I wanna begin with the
problem.
I think if I could just lay out the landscape in crypto or web three marketing, I thinkthe marketing five stack is quite new.
(03:58):
And I think it's maturing.
And I'm really, really encouraged by seeing more and more projects and companies buildingmarketing.
stack services and offerings to serve Web3 marketers.
I'm very encouraged by that.
But let's begin with the problem.
(04:19):
Like what problem do you see?
Like I guess what's wrong with Web3 marketing?
And then maybe we can segue into addressable.
That's a great question.
It starts with a problem, but it actually falls into an opportunity.
When we started our ideation for Addressable, we met many blockchain companies.
(04:41):
We fell in love with the blockchain space, and I can get into that why later.
But we asked many companies, what are the biggest problems that you're facing that youthink data can be helpful with?
And a lot of them were...
specifically mentioning user acquisition for looking to get more users.
(05:02):
In this current rare market, sounds a bit weird, like everybody are cutting down onmarketing, situation is not very good.
But the time that I'm referring to was after 2021, blocking companies to those who weren'tyet in the industry, raised more capital than cybersecurity companies than digital help.
(05:24):
companies than education tech.
raise so much money.
And if you were to be asking them, what are they planning to do with this money?
They would be saying, we're looking to onboard more users.
We're looking to do user acquisition.
Well, great.
mean, that's what a lot of companies that are raised money are planning to do.
Why aren't you running the existing playbooks?
(05:46):
And this is where the problem lies.
The problem is anonymity.
So inherently users on the blockchainare anonymous in this kind of mechanism that's inherent by design on the blockchain is
also propagating into the culture.
So even the people that are buying from you are not leaving you with their email.
(06:09):
They're not leaving you with their mobile.
And for well-experienced marketers that are used to collecting the data of who visited mywebsite, who bought something, learning from that about how to grow.
being blind to that was a huge problem.
And a lot of them were launching NFT collections and launching products and launchingtokens, but not really being able to learn about what was working.
(06:36):
And the biggest problem that follows that is how do we even reach users that we careabout?
Because in crypto, when you think about the products, very small percentage of that arecommodities that any user would see, understand,
buy, like click on Instagram and say, want that.
Most of the products are very complicated and are a good fit only for crypto nativepeople.
(07:00):
But how do you know who's crypto native?
How do you even find these users?
That was the biggest problem, finding the relevant users that are behind anonymity.
And for the team that we were at the time, we all came from a military intelligencebackground.
So for us,Putting together the signal about wallet owners on the blockchain, who they are, what do
(07:21):
they care about, what are their interests and how to find and target them, it seems like aproblem that we saw many times before in the 10 or 15 years that preceded the emergence of
Addressable.
(07:42):
So it really seemed like there was a very good opportunity to help the space growproperly.
slightly shifting from the problem into the opportunity.
It seems like Web3 marketing is at a disadvantage with everybody being anonymous.
But as a matter of fact, in Web2 marketers are pretty much becoming blind to anythingthat's taking place outside of their platform.
(08:10):
Sure, if a user is buying from you, they will give you the email, they will give you themobile number and you can start collecting the data.
But anywhere else,Google is deprecating third-party cookies.
Apple is no longer giving you mobile attribution data.
So you don't know what's happening anywhere else.
You have no idea.
But the blockchain is all open.
(08:30):
You can see all the transactions all the time.
So as a marketer, even though the users that are coming to you are anonymous, you cananonymously still see the trends across the industry.
Is my competitor's user drifting away?
Is somebody making money?
Is there a good business in NFT?
(08:52):
What is currently happening and where does the opportunity lies?
In trying to frame all of that together, we were convinced at that point in time that itwill put the data into a single source of truth and reach it to help companies and
marketers better understand their audiences and reach out to them.
(09:13):
this industry can grow properly.
That's the story that led us to address it.
You know, I'm glad that you brought up kind of the Web2 experience because, you know,having come from the Web2 world, like I loved knowing as much as I could about my
customers in my funnel and the characteristics of each stage of the funnel.
(09:34):
One of the my favorite features back in the Web2 space was progressive profiling, youknow, where initially I'll ask you for your first name, last name and email.
And then the next time we encounter you,Then I'm like, already know your first name and last name in the email.
Let me just ask you your phone number.
So it's like one field.
Next after that is like, let me ask you one question.
(09:57):
And then I start forming this really rich information database of all of my encounters.
And I love knowing that, but you're right, in the blockchain space, that's almost againstthe ethos of privacy.
But as a marketer, it's like, I need that.
(10:18):
I feel like I need that.
And one of the frustrating things as a marketer in Web3, it's like, there's not a lot Ican know.
But it sounds like Addressable has, you've kind of reframed that in the Web2 space, it'sbecoming more and more private.
But in Web3, everything's on the blockchain.
And so maybe we can actually know as much or even more now.
(10:43):
Am I characterizing that correctly?
It's exactly that.
It's exactly that.
funnily for someone who came from Web2, you see the potential of that.
But I think at the given point in time, there are still marketers that in theoryunderstands the benefit of that, but it not fully understood how meaningful it is to rely
(11:08):
on all this data.
So it's still kind of a gradual process to get people in the blockchain space toadopt this new opportunity that is featured within this industry.
Yeah, I think this idea of attribution is so hard.
And I am really encouraged by everything that you've shared about addressable.
(11:33):
Let's talk about how addressable, actually, let me back up.
Attribution and defining the stages of the funnel is so hard in Web3.
Because I feel like a lot of the...
A lot of Web3 projects or crypto projects right now are really at the kind of theawareness stage because they're not quite sure what a conversion event is.
(12:03):
And for some projects, one conversion event might be, you you're a developer, join myprogram and become a developer on my blockchain.
So that's kind of one conversion event.
But for some projects that don't haveThey don't necessarily have main net yet or even test net and they, but they have a token.
so the conversion event there might be by my token.
(12:24):
And so I think projects, you know, across the web three space kind of run the.
You've got developers, which are users.
You've got token holders, which are users.
If you have applications on a layer one, you know, you've got users of that application.
So I guess what am I gasking?
I'm asking, I guess.
(12:47):
I guess two things, you know, as you, when you speak with clients or potential clients,like how do you help them define their funnel and how does addressable kind of help them
at all stages of the funnel when it comes to attribution?
It's a fantastic question.
initially we were very romantic about the tech opportunity of attribution and web-free.
(13:12):
So my background is coming from tech, not from marketing.
And seeing for the first time a tech that is fully programmable, in which attribution canbe fully on the blockchain, we can use the wallet as kind of this persistent identifier
across everything.
(13:32):
We can tie everything together from the revenue that is being made within the conversionall the way to the source that drove this conversion.
This was very appealing.
But what I think we saw working with more and more clients over time is exactly what youmentioned earlier.
A lot of them are not yet at the monetization phase.
(13:54):
They're not yet at the conversion stage.
They're somewhat ranging between awareness and engagement.
That is where a lot of the industry lies.
Initially, when we thought we'll see more conversion events, we built a lot of theattribution part, which was very, very customizable, like you said.
(14:18):
There was no one size fits all.
It seemed at the time like if we would tap into the Wallet Connects logins and then find aconversion on the website, that would work.
But then a lot of the conversion events took place, not necessarily on the website.
Some of them with downloading the mobile app, like wallets, some of them on a centralizedexchange where the wallet is being exchanged.
(14:44):
It became pretty much a very customizable work.
And with that, the market was also shown to be very, very fragmented.
There was a very small portion of the market which actually had conversion.
This kind of led me to think over the past few months, what is the common denominator thaton a Pareto rule, 80 % of projects are facing, and yet very, very easily, like within one
(15:15):
hour of working together, we can already show them a metric or something to help themunderstand how well things are going.
And because a lot of the projects are still at the awareness or engagement phase, I had tolook for something at the top of the funnel.
And I think at the top of the funnel, the biggest question which we saw emerging fromusers is are we getting quality traffic?
(15:42):
We're using influencers, we're using all sorts of ads, we're using all sorts of trafficand PR and affiliates, but we're not sure.
If the traffic is bots, we're not sure if the traffic is crypto native.
It might be just somebody putting a banner on some website that is unrelated.
(16:04):
We're not sure if we're getting the quality traffic.
And this seemed to be something that is fitting 80 % of the market because a lot of themare in the awareness and engagement phase.
And more than 80 % of the market is clearly on web.
On mobile, there's so many restrictions.
Not a lot of them went into telegram mini apps.
(16:26):
So a lot of that is in web, a lot of that is awareness engagement.
And this is where we came up with the notion of cost per wallet, which is looking attraffic that is headed to your website.
How much of that traffic actually has a wallet installed as a browser extension on thebrowser?
(16:53):
If a website visitor has a wallet installed on their browser, it's unlikely to be a bot.
These are typically using headless browsers.
They don't install Metamask as an extension in an attempt to look like Chrome.
And on the other hand, it's unlikely to be a normie that doesn't understand crypto.
These people would just not install a wallet.
(17:16):
So we found this indicator to be very, very powerful, very simple.
And by powerful, what I mean is that we looked at data from half a million convertedusers, 100 advertisers, 250 campaigns.
Well, intuitively, it's a powerful indicator.
What we saw based on the numbers that a user that has a wallet installed is seven timesmore likely to convert and 18 times more likely to sign up.
(17:44):
So it's that powerful.
And on the other end, it's a very simple metric that80 to 90 % of the projects that actually has a website and want to understand if an
influencer or an ad system or anything is directing quality traffic, they can actuallymeasure that.
What is the cost that takes me to bring someone with the wallet to my website?
(18:10):
So if I'm trying to kind of capture everything together, attribution is definitely aproblem.
We've not yet seen a solution that is a one size fits all and doesn't require a kind ofdis-customization.
And we have this customization, we have the ability to go full path from that.
But altogether, what we see is that it's also important to find simple solutions, fastvalue to kind of provide the 80-20.
(18:39):
And this is exactly cost per wallet, what we're trying to do at the top of the funnel.
Now, cost per wallet is a metric.
That's a metric that I believe you guys coined.
you know, whenever you create a new metric like that, you know, there needs to be a lot ofeducation.
It's almost like a new category.
(19:00):
Like being the first in the category is you're almost guaranteed to be like the winner.
And probably the same thing when you come up with a new metric, then everyone starts tolearn about this metric and then starts to measure their activities with this metric.
um, and the creator of this metric all of sudden kind of generates a lot of kind ofthought leadership Excuse me Tell us about I guess if I were a How does this metric uh,
(19:32):
guess what does this metric mean to to various kind of user audiences like say you're a uha layer one and you're trying to get developers versus a layer one with without a
developers but you have a token.
My guess is those are probably two pretty large user segments that Addressable sees.
(19:55):
How does this metric translate for each for those?
Perfect.
So in the layer one, there's a marketing team that is responsible for demand generation.
They're responsible for the marketing budget in spending back to both generate creativeideas and how to leverage attention and spreading them across different resources to
(20:20):
attract users.
It might be influencers, it might be events, it might be PR, it might be advertisement.
The decision they ultimately need to make is which of these sources are driving qualityrevenue and we want to invest more of that and which of these sources aren't performing as
well as we expected.
(20:42):
Cost per wallet is designed to evaluate exactly that.
For every source, what is the cost?
How much am I paying to get one wallet owner visiting my website?
It might be a developer, it might be a trader, it might be an investor, but it'sdefinitely someone who's not a bot, native to this space.
(21:06):
And that's what the single very general metric is measuring per source.
And the way to measure that is you would typically install a system that tracks thataddressable, natively support that, but I definitely encourage
every paid media system to track that as well.
(21:30):
And it can be definitely independent.
And what any of these systems will do is as soon as you tap in what's the budget that youinvested for a specific source, it will identify any website traffic that is coming from
the source and start counting the amount of wallet visitors that made it to the website.
(21:52):
And ultimately from there, it's justIt's just a division.
How many wallets did you get divided by the budget?
And then you can realize that it takes you a dollar to get a wallet owner visiting.
$5, $10.
If it's much more than that, what you would find out is that some channels are not aseffective.
(22:13):
And it might be a problem with the creative that's not attracting quality traffic.
It might be a problem with the source.
But what you get as a result is that you have actually a quantitative metric, which iscomparable.
You can compare that with other marketers, with other teams.
You can communicate that to leadership.
(22:37):
What does it actually take us to get a user coming on the website?
User might buy, they might convert, they might sign up for the waitlist, they mightbounce.
But at least at the top of the funnel,there's an understanding of what's it take to bring a real native crypto user to my
website for whatever follows up next.
(23:00):
I think that's fascinating.
And for the listeners, the majority of the listeners are builders and they are marketersand learning more about the kind of the marketing fi.
I believe that's the category that's being that's kind of developing is is reallyfascinating because there really isn't a lot out there right now.
(23:22):
And addressable being one of the key leaders is important to, you know, for people tomarketers that are in the crypto space need to know about.
If you were speaking directly to all of these marketers that work at various differentprojects, I guess what would you want them to remember from this podcast and maybe try to
(23:44):
sell them unaddressable?
I think that marketers in this space are incredibly talented and I think they're facing abig challenge.
And that challenge has to do a lot with communicating to founders in this space that aretypically very much tech driven.
(24:05):
They're not coming from our main background.
Very small amount of them are coming from go-to market positions.
Marketers are struggling with communicatingthe activities with the output.
So they're asking for budgets, they're asking to grow their team, they're asking foradditional resources, sometimes with the inability to explain what will we get as a return
(24:33):
from that.
on a lot of occasions, this is understandable because marketing has a lot of intangibles.
How do you quantify brain?
How do you quantify a long-term demand?
But on a lot of short-term actions, unless you quantify what you face is the inability togrow your team, because it's unclear how to associate activities with outputs.
(25:04):
And on the longer term, when the market hits a very, very rough spot, you want to showcasefor what you're actually delivering.
And that's a pain within the industry.
I'm saying something that is extremely painful.
But in this industry, when it's down, marketers are a lot of time the first to be thrownoverboard.
(25:27):
The founders are looking at this.
It's really sad to say that.
It might be like a hot take from this recording.
But founders are looking at the devs and they're saying, these are the people that aredelivering features.
They're looking at the BD.
These are the people that are delivering sales or partnerships.
They're looking at product.
These are the people that are delivering the plans and the vision.
(25:50):
And they're looking at the marketers.
What are we getting there?
And it's, it's, it's horrible that this is not on defiable.
It's because I see marketers as a lot of the champions of the organization, but unlessthey kind of
transform a lot of their value that they're bringing into something that is quantitativeinto users, into attention, into something that can actually be measured that a founder
(26:16):
would actually need to think.
If I'm cutting the budget here, if I'm reducing the size of the team, I would be losing.
I would be losing users.
I would be losing attention.
would be losing things that will take more time to recover.
They would think twice about that.
And on the other way around, as you're looking to grow, marketers can actuallycommunicate.
(26:40):
If we'll put more budget on this specific campaigns, it has proven that it takes a $5 costper wallet to drive the user to the website.
This is what it costs.
So $1,000, we get us 200 wallets coming.
The homepage of the addressable site, I'm gonna read the headline and sub headline, wouldlove your comments on it.
(27:06):
The Web3 Growth Platform drive growth through super targeted user acquisition usingon-chain data and AI.
So two questions, who are you speaking to directly and what is it that you want them todo?
It's a fantastic question.
That's a tagline that back and forth, we're always thinking about how to play with that.
(27:34):
we're always speaking to two different teams.
One of them is the marketers.
That's the users of the systems.
These are the people that would be using the product on the day to day with typically withthe goal of attracting users very effectively.
(27:55):
It's a nervous game.
It's performance marketing.
They want to put their budget and get the best results for that.
And the second thing is they want to do it with ease.
Marketers in this space are so overwhelmed with doing so many tasks in small teams.
They're doing the PR, they're doing the social, they're doing the community management.
(28:18):
They're sometimes even doing the listings on exchange.
They want a tool that they can trust and can help them with that.
And the second type or the second team that we're speaking to are the decision makers ortypically if the team is big, it's a CMO, but in a lot of cases in crypto, still, it's
(28:39):
still founders that would be evaluating that they will not be the ones using the product,but they're the ones that need to approve it.
So what they'll be typically looking at isDoes this look like a team we can trust?
Does this look like something that we'd be working with?
(29:00):
Our marketers are definitely asking for that, but is this something that we can't rely on?
So the one voice that we're trying to funnel through, whether it's successful or not, istrying to hit on both of these.
Now, I believe this is all publicly available information.
So forgive me if I'm talking out of turn, but I believe on the site it says Immutable andPolygon are customers.
(29:26):
I'm curious about the Immutable case because they are a general purpose layer one, butvery game focused.
And so there you've got multiple levels of users.
You've got the studios that are building games on Immutable.
And then these games also have players.
(29:47):
And so having that as a backdrop, I'm curious how Immutable might be using Addressable tokind of learn more about all the levels of users they have.
And I think that's probably one of the more complicated use cases, different levels ofusers.
(30:11):
It definitely is.
And I'm being careful of words and how to kind of choose what's in the public domain.
What we have in the public domains is we support it immutable with promoting several oftheir major games, not the later one, not in beautiful X.
And some of these games include Metalcore, Guild of Guardians, and Gods of the Chain, thetrading card games.
(30:36):
And in all of these cases,what they were looking to find is Web3 gamers, which are incredibly difficult to find
because typically, classic gamers, you can advertise to them on Steam, on gamingplatforms, you would find them.
(30:57):
But in the Web3 gaming scene, there is a combination between people who on one hand viewinterest in gaming, but on the other end,
They're also native enough to understand how to connect their wallet on the way to play agame or what is the values of assets that I'm collecting on chain because at least at a
(31:20):
time you needed to be very, very technical to play this game.
So that is the case in Uniball.
We're actually one of our first clients.
They went on a Blockworks article that was featuring us.
Saying how well it helped them with acquiring Web3Gamers through Twitter ads.
(31:42):
This is what we did together that is on the public domain.
I think that's fascinating for a couple of reasons.
Immutable is a great project.
But the fact that they use Twitter ads, which not a lot of blockchain projects are doingany paid campaigns these days, but of those that are doing paid campaigns, it's probably
(32:04):
not on Twitter because Twitter doesn't often allow crypto specific language.
so seeing attribution from like a paid campaignto the click, to landing on a page and then converting at that stage.
That's like a dream come true for most marketers.
(32:25):
Just to have that much level of information is amazing.
And that's great that Addressable was able to help Immutable with some of that.
Tell us about the features, specific features of Addressable thatyour finding kind of really resonates with marketers.
(32:50):
So if I'm going from the start in an overview of what the addressable platform is lookinglike, it supports the single process, which is build the audience that you want to target,
we'll give you a report about this audience, their behavior, so you can understand andplan your campaign.
(33:11):
And then would help you launch.
a targeted ads campaign on Twitter or Reddit or banner ads on crypto websites to targetthese users.
And we'll provide you with a dashboard that showcases what are the results that you'regetting, as well as us collecting the data to optimize the entire campaign end to end.
(33:32):
That's the addressable platform on the end to end.
If I'm...
basing what do we see that's very helpful for users based on conversations that we'rehaving with them.
I think the first point has to do with we know who the audience is, but the way that we'rethinking about the audience is in on-chain terms.
(34:04):
So it's users that has money thatare investing in specific DeFi protocol that bought something from our competition.
But we have no idea who they are.
We have no idea how to get to them.
So this aha moment when they can feed in the data on our system and get a report that issaying, this is for audience.
(34:31):
This is where they're coming from across the globe.
These are the channels on which we've seen them converting.
in the distribution.
This is who they're following on social media.
This is the topics that they like to discuss on social media.
These are the different tokens that they're owning.
There's this feeling of this fits some of what I was thinking, but there's also somewhatof, I'm not sure if I'm choosing the correct word, but some form of shame of I'm a
(35:06):
marketer.
I know that I should be using data to plan ahead, but now I'm seeing that and I'm feelinga bit ashamed that I've never used a tool to strategize my campaign.
So I'm pitching the founders.
I'm trying to harness everybody for a huge movement, but I never really kind of use datato justify or to argue why it makes sense.
(35:31):
to target the specific users that I'm offering or not.
So this is definitely something that we're seeing very, very, very helpful.
Another part that we're seeing very, very helpful is as you said it earlier, a lot ofprojects aren't very much native to ads.
It used to be that Twitter and other platforms were not very fonding of crypto projects.
(35:56):
And I want to believe that we have a hand in changing that.
We're working very closely with the Twitter team.
We have a very, very powerful partnerships with them.
And there was a lot of change in Twitter policy towards crypto advertisers.
A lot of that is much more relaxed than it used to be in the past.
(36:18):
Obviously, you cannot promote directly by my token.
But a lot of things that are speaking about the tech and about education and aboutresources are definitely allowed now.
And we're seeing more and more projects opening up to that.
And still there's lots of projects that haven't print ads in the past.
(36:40):
There's a lack of marketing talent that has experience with running ads.
So I think another feature is getting a project that is saying, I want to get users.
I have a dedicated budget to that, but I, I I've never done that.
And I'm a bit scared of that.
You know, it's a budget I managed to convince the founders, but I'm not really sure how togo through that.
(37:07):
Having a product that is simplifying this process and showing you the results on the onehand, making it easy, but on the other hand, making you feel that you're in control.
think this is something that is incredibly meaningful.
And the last part.
is the use of AI to collect all of the data, show the results and what's working and getyou instance insights on what's working.
(37:35):
So when the CEO is kind of, or the founder is capturing you in the whole or texting you onSlack, like what's happening with the campaign that we're doing off?
Like every marketers knows this sweating moment when you're, you're, oh, what's happeningwith that?
You're a single button away.
from generating all the insights and telling the founders.
(37:56):
Our optimization just cut the cost by half.
It used to take eight cents for us to get an engagement on Twitter.
It's now four cents.
This is working excellent.
Our companion, the Ukraine, is actually working out the best.
So we might want to double down on that.
And in Southeast Asia, our assumptions weren't necessarily correct.
(38:17):
And you remember that we talked about this creative and we had like the pink versionversus the gray one.
And we thought that the pink one was going to work more.
It's 20 % better.
Like one click, you have all of that showing.
So this generates exactly what we want to have.
We want to have the marketers, the champion of the organization.
(38:40):
You know, just for the record, I am not a customer of Addressable, but everything you'vedescribed is exactly like, if I had that available to me, that would answer and help me so
much in my career.
Because it's, you know, it's really boils down to fundamentals.
It's like, what is it?
What is the messaging that I'm going out with?
(39:01):
Where, like, first of all, who is my audience?
What's the message, the position and the messaging I'm going out with?
How do I reach my audience?
And what's the performance of the positioning and messaging to my audiences based on thesechannels?
It's like just the fundamental questions are so hard to answer in crypto.
(39:24):
And if Addressable can help me answer all of that, I mean, that's a huge, huge value add.
And I mean, I'm a customer right away.
I mean, I would be.
And I think to your point aroundthe idea of shame, I think a lot of it, at least for me is, I don't think a lot of crypto
marketers know that there's even a software stack that could help them answer thesequestions.
(39:52):
And so I think at least from in the circles that I'm in, I think it's kind of an awarenessissue that they just don't know it's even available.
And to even underscore another point is like,You know, in the web two space, I, my marketing budget for, for paid ads was massive and,
but I could do the math.
(40:15):
I spent X amount, I would get, you know, X multiple of revenue.
Like it was, it was literally just math.
And we, it's not that simple in crypto.
And, and also to your point, there's just not a lot of crypto marketers that have donekind of large paid ad campaigns in the past.
(40:36):
And so.
there's a kind of a talent thing, there's an awareness that there is a service in asoftware stack available to them that would answer all of these questions.
So I don't even know if there's a question in there, but just an observation based oneverything you've shared is just people just don't know it's even out there that
addressable can do all of this.
(40:56):
It's, definitely agree with that.
There's definitely an awareness issue.
And I think people are aware of the name of Addressable.
And I think a lot of them would synonymously would say it's that company that connectswallet to social profiles.
So you can target them using ads, but we maybe don't do ads or we're made.
(41:17):
mean, this is somewhat the rejection.
But, but I definitely agree thatthere's a missing narrative in it's also the company that can help us better use data to
plan or better use data to understand what is working.
(41:37):
And if it makes sense because we have a clear ROI, then we can plan what we're spending toknow what we're getting and to tap even deeper into the ROI.
Many companies in blockchains are still startups.
still in discovery.
They're very far from having a viable and scalable business model that if they know thatfor a user, they're making $100 and they're buying them for 50, it's a great machine that
(42:08):
you can scale.
But I think that given that it's not the situation just yet, companies still need to getusers.
Why they need to get users, whether it'sUm, to prove that they have product market fit, um, to get the next funding round with,
with the showcasing of what they're able to do, um, to, to attract users to startmonetizing on some features that they have, or even to build attention.
(42:37):
They need the users throughout every part of their life cycle.
What they're often not thinking of is what am I willing to pay for the users?
And a lot of the reason for that is that.
for the founders in their mind, they're hiding the cost.
I mean, not knowingly in, we're hiring a marketer because we need marketers, or we'redoing a KOL round, or we're going to add KOLs to our round as somewhat advisors and people
(43:08):
that would speak on RBF.
So they're spending on the user acquisition without really framing that as useracquisition.
But if they're falling into a model in which we're saying, this is budget and this isbudget and this is budget, regardless of what's equity, what's token or what's headcount,
(43:30):
they're saying, what am I actually spending on driving users?
They might actually find out that sometimes there's a faster, more efficient way to getusers.
Yeah.
And I think part of it too, at least in the crypto space is kind of this bias for organicand or not paid.
(43:53):
so because there's, you know, people draw their attention or their attention gets drawn tokind of organic campaigns or seemingly organic, but it's really not.
And so, but a lot of founders don't know that, you know, a lot of founderswhen they see a project doing well and all these KOLs and influencers talking about it,
it's a good, it's probably that, you a good portion or percentage of those KOLs have beenpaid to do so, but it's just not disclosed.
(44:25):
And so people then get the impression that, it's organic, but it's really not.
And so I think that's part of the problem too, is this bias for organic, which means that,you know, they just don't...
they're not familiar with paid campaigns or that acquisition has a cost.
(44:46):
That's at least my observation, my experiences.
And I think it's also an opportunity for our industry to mature a little bit.
if projects are using influencers or KOLs, it's probably a good idea to have them.
If they're not disclosing,then at least make the assumption that probably a bunch have been paid to do so.
(45:10):
Absolutely, I definitely agree with that.
And if you're thinking about the founders that are still buying into the illusion thateverything's organic, if they're buying into the illusion, it means that they're not
paying for influencers.
They don't necessarily understand that.
And if that's the case, in the blockchain space, everything is so competitive.
(45:34):
Like you can't even name the amounts of wallets, the amount of layer 1s, layer 2s.
the amount of exchanges.
I mean, the numbers are huge.
There are so much solutions and yet not enough users.
And if you're a founder and you want to be competitive about finding market share andfinding the initial users to start, and you don't know where to find that, and you're
(46:01):
still not working with influencers, and you're not a rock star on social media, whichlet's face it, mean, not
most of people aren't broad-stressed on social media, which channel are you turning to?
mean, how are you planning to get your first users?
If you're not paying for that and doing that plain organic, you're just too slow.
(46:25):
I mean, there's no way that you will keep up with the pace of the market.
So yeah, this is absolutely where we're hoping that people will...
see through the illusion, they will least understand that nothing is really organic tostart with.
Would they understand that they can put everything on the same benchmark based on cost,maybe cost per wallet, but anything.
(46:50):
What is the cost for driving quality users to my product to test it out?
Yeah.
I want to maybe ask two last questions.
The first one is around mindshare.
There's kind of been a lot of buzz lately with mindshare and the different kind ofnarratives that are taking mindshare.
(47:16):
I think AI right now is like 40 some percent of the mindshare out there.
And what that's leading companies or projects to do that I kind of...
that I've kind of coined it, at least in my mind, kind of a narrative schizophrenia wherethey're a project that's not necessarily in the AI space, but then they pivot to the AI
(47:36):
space because they see that's where the attention is going.
I'd love your view on that, on mindshare in general.
And to what extent does Addressable help kind of understand mindshare and its role, Iguess, in marketing?
Like, how do you see that?
(47:59):
I tweeted something a few months back.
It's a poem that I call the tale of two funnels, which is it's somewhat of a joke, butwith a lot of truth behind that, that a lot of projects are setting up marketing funnel
(48:23):
that ispresumably aimed for users, like a Web3 game that is looking for gamers or a DeFi project
that is looking for investors, when in fact there's another funnel that matters to most ofthem.
That funnel is retail traders that would buy the token, would buy the speculation.
(48:44):
I think the situation that we're seeing in this space, at least at the moment, is that forsome of the projects, the token is more meaningful than the product.
So the second funnel, the hidden one is the one that's most important.
And with the speculation narratives are always going to win because it's not about whatwill people use.
(49:07):
It's not about what solving a real problem.
It's about what would get people to think it's a moonshot.
So what I'm seeing over there is there's lots of chatter in the Web3 marketing communitiesabout, why are there...
putting so many buzzwords on top of everything.
(49:27):
Don't they know that users don't read it?
I think they do.
I think they do know that, but it's not what they care about.
It's not who you're selling to.
When you were asking me about the tagline and the addressable, you asked me, who is itfor?
What I think is that some projects care about the token and the buyers of the speculationmore.
(49:48):
So they're designing it around narratives at the moment.
to get people to think it's a moonshot.
This where I'm thinking it's happening.
The way that we're treating that within Addressable is one, we're acknowledging that thisis the state of the market.
I think crypto will always have some distribution of company between one end, which iswhat Chris Dixon refers to as the casino within Read Write Own.
(50:20):
It's the part of the speculation.
It's the part in which people are trying to get money and moonshine and it's not reallyabout new tech being built to the other end, which is ranging between new tech being
built, whether it's DeFi or whether it's gaming and all the way to plain normie businessesthat treat crypto as a new form of payment.
(50:43):
Today, the casino speculation is still, I think, very much dominating.
a lot of crypto and therefore it's why we're seeing the narrative so powerful.
But I think it's changing.
think retail traders are becoming a bit more resilient to the narratives, especially whenthe market is down.
(51:04):
They're realizing that a lot of them are not really fulfilling on the promise.
And on the other hand, regulation is making it available for more businesses to acceptcrypto payments.
not?
I people got rich with crypto.
Why not sell them?
luxury goods or travel or all sorts of other things with crypto as just another paymentmethod or use DeFi with better UX so people have better trading opportunities.
(51:32):
And the way in which Addressable approaches that on the market is wanted by acknowledgingthat.
we're still providing Dashboard and helping you understand your audience andWhat are the narratives that they care about?
What are they speaking up?
Where's the mind chair?
Which is something that we still know a lot of companies care about.
(51:55):
And for that, if they care about that, we care about them.
We want them to succeed.
But on the bigger part, what we're trying to educate on and what we're trying to imply isthere's a product here by a real company that cares about the space being able to grow
thathas the infrastructure to get your real users to the product side, not to the token side,
(52:15):
but to finding real users, real engagement, real adoption, and driving them all the wayinside.
We are seeing products in this space that care about that.
We are seeing success with them.
And hopefully, we see much and much more of these in the future.
(52:39):
Awesome.
Well, Asaf, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
And if there's a listener that did not know about Addressable, but now they do and theybecome a customer, that would be a huge win for me.
So I hope that all those that are listening to this and they're interested in Addressable,they go to addressable.io.
(53:01):
Sign up, learn about Addressable and see how Addressable can serve your needs as amarketer in the crypto space.
Asaf, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us.
Thank you so much, Peter.
Awesome.
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