March 1, 2024 • 34 mins
From a small town in Bihar to the buzzing tech hubs of Silicon Valley, Ankita Verma's story is nothing short of cinematic. As the co-founder and CEO of Persona, Ankita sheds light on her incredible journey through academia and the corporate world, culminating in her venture into the groundbreaking realm of Web 3.
This episode is a goldmine for anyone intrigued by the evolution of digital advertising. It's not every day you get a front-row seat to the thought process behind pioneering Web3 advertising strategies. Ankita walks us through the shift from Web2's opaque practices to a new paradigm where privacy and user empowerment are at the forefront. Imagine a world where gas-less ads are the norm, rewarding user engagement is the standard, and transparency is not just a buzzword but a built-in feature of the very ecosystem we interact with.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ankita Verma (00:00):
I was a very I was a very starry-eyed kid.
I always had like big dreams inmy eyes.
I became the first girl in mytown to get into an IIT.
If done right, ifblockchain-based technology can,
like, truly change the waycertain things operate, Hello
(00:30):
everyone, today we are at BiddleCrypto Biddle Space with Ankita
Verma.
Host (00:36):
Ankita, welcome to the show.
Ankita Verma (00:38):
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Host (00:41):
Before I go into all your achievements, I wanted to just
ask you tell me a little bitabout yourself and your life
journey so far.
Ankita Verma (00:54):
Sure, that's usually the first question that
I get.
Hello everyone, I am Ankita.
Ankita Verma.
I'm the co-founder and CEO ofPersona.
I come from India.
I was born, I grew up there.
I come from a very small townin Bihar called Mahagalpur.
I was a very I was a verystarry-eyed kid.
(01:14):
I always had like big dreams inmy eyes.
I became the first girl in mytown to get into an IIT.
It was always my dream to getinto an IIT, spent amazing few
years there and then after that,spent a little over four years
in India, mostly moving from onejob to another, trying to
(01:34):
figure out what I want to do inmy life, because I had no idea.
Started as a developer, softwareengineer, and then soon
realized that I want to be moreon the business side of things,
so moved to consulting and thento VC, and while I was working
at the VC fund, I got a chanceto launch their incubator
accelerator, which is when I gota chance to meet multiple
(01:57):
amazing founders and I realizedthat probably that's my true
calling, that I want to be onthe other side of the table and
around the same time, I was alsovery inspired by the innovation
that was happening in SiliconValley.
I was reading up a lot on MarkZuckerberg and Google and Tesla
and I thought to myself that ifI want to be an entrepreneur, I
(02:21):
want to be one in Silicon Valley.
So I had no idea how to get tothe US at that point of time and
the only most viable way that Icould think of was coming here
for my MBA.
So luckily I applied and I gotinto Wharton.
I came here, spent two amazingyears at Wharton and it was kind
of like a really life-changingexperience, because you come
(02:42):
from India, you have this techbackground and you think that
tech and engineering iseverything and they are the
smartest people.
But then here you get exposedto all sorts of people from
different walks of life, sopeople from social sciences and
from military and people fromeconomics.
So it's just like reallybroadens your horizon quite a
lot.
(03:03):
And then after that, because Ihad never worked in the US, I
decided to spend some timeworking here just to understand
how businesses operate here, howit is like to build in the US
market.
So I joined Amazon.
I got an amazing role as aproduct manager.
I grew very quickly, becamehead of product at AWS AI and
(03:23):
got a chance to build and launchmultiple products.
I learned how to build products, how to sell products, how to
work with engineers.
I learned all of it.
It was kind of a trainingground for me for what I do
today.
And then, after that, I got mygreen card and then I was like
Ankit, you don't have any moreexcuses left now.
So the day I got my green card,I quit my job and then that's
(03:46):
how, and that point of timestarted building persona.
Host (03:50):
That's an amazing story, especially on the part of when
you got your green card.
You had it all planned out,that just you know.
This is it Because I rememberwhen it was my time a while back
and I didn't think much of it,and so now I think I didn't plan
as such fantastic journey, thatyou have a very short amount of
(04:15):
time that is very suitable forthe type of person that you are.
That I know when I met you inthe conference, the star eyed
person, and so it very perfectlymatches what I've imagined.
So you mentioned yourinspiration, and I know there
(04:37):
are a lot of.
If you indulge me, I might go ina little bit in that tangent is
the Zuckerberg and the Teslas,and you know, when you come to
Silicon Valley, those are thefirst things you look at, and
those are not just in thisdecade.
It started way back when, rightwith the semiconductor industry
, and I got exposed to it alittle later.
(04:59):
That feeling that you had Ikind of have a mutual kind of
respect for that that that's,somebody who comes to this mecca
for software, for IT, has Anyother thing that inspired you
besides that, besides thoseiconic figures, say, I would say
(05:24):
specifically led you to a Web 3space.
Ankita Verma (05:29):
Yeah, so I actually started investing in
Bitcoin in 2015 when I came tothe US, when I came to Wharton,
and you know I was a small timeinvestor.
I have been investing in thisspace for quite some time since
then.
But I was watching this spacemostly from the side for several
years as a Bitcoin investor andthen, you know, bought couple
(05:52):
of NFTs and then Ethereum andcouple of all coins.
So I was watching this spacefrom the side and investments
that I was doing, but at thesame time, I was really very
closely following the technology.
So they were evolution ofblockchain, and then NFTs and
then and then ZK.
So I was following thetechnology quite a bit.
(06:16):
So, very honestly, what led meto Web 3 was the fact that it's
such a green field space, it'ssuch an open space where there
is this potential to buildsomething that can truly change
the game for how things operatein this world.
And I always compare it it'skind of cliched, but I compare
(06:36):
it to the early 2000s of the dotcom era where there were so
many like the yahoo's and theGoogles of the world were being
formed, and I compare it to thattime because I truly believe
that, if done right.
A blockchain based technologycan, like I said, truly change
the way certain things operate,be it fintech, be it ads, be it
(07:00):
attribution.
So the biggest draw was, ofcourse, like the ability to do
something in such a nativemanner in a green field space.
Host (07:12):
Yeah, that is a very interesting point.
In fact that's partly why I gotinto the space, because it's so
green field and you know thatfeeling of starting fresh or
starting it's so true.
I was thinking initially to goweb 2 with podcasting and on,
(07:32):
but then I thought why not startfrom scratch if I want to do
this?
And so I do kind of resonatewith what you said there, that
it's an open field and thetechnology is there, it's real,
it's not going anywhere.
Ankita Verma (07:47):
Totally yeah.
Host (07:50):
You're a startup persona.
It's a very interesting pieceof technology, interesting
solution to a problem that us inthe industry know exists, and
so I would love to hear from youhow are you approaching this?
Ankita Verma (08:07):
The way.
When, in 2022, I was, you know,very, very deep trying to
figure out what's the rightbusiness and the solution to
build.
I was talking to a lot ofbuilders, a lot of investors, a
lot of people in this web 3space in general and the web,
and the one thing that stood outto me was how the user
(08:30):
experience, the user acquisitionfunnel, is so broken.
So if you look at web 3 today,marketing, user acquisition all
of it happens in a very nativeform in the form of, like,
discord messages and Twittermessages and conferences.
So it's all, like I said, theearly 2000s of the internet.
So what used to happen then inthe regular web 2 world, the
(08:53):
same things are happening in theweb 3 world right now.
So I started thinking about,like, how do we bring that data
driven approach to makemarketing growth, user
acquisition, very, very seamlessand easy for web 3.
And in parallel, I was alsovery, very fascinated by the on
chain data.
(09:13):
So if you are, if you have everused transacted crypto, you
know that there is this walletand whatever transactions you
make using those wallet whetherit is purchasing an NFT or a
token or a coin all of thesetransactions, they go on this
public ledger, which is theblockchain right, and all of
this data is public and if youthink about it, it is not.
(09:34):
It is not like a browsing data,it is not like an intent data,
it is not a third party data.
It's an actual, immutable dataabout you making a real purchase
.
So I was very fascinated abouthow this data could be used for
user acquisition, growth,targeted campaigns, and that's
what led to persona.
(09:55):
So, coming to persona, a verysimple way to understand it is
it is Google Adsense, but it isbuilt natively for web 3.
I'll explain how it works.
There are two sites, there aretwo network, so there are two
sites to the network.
First site is the advertisingsite, so anybody in web 3
looking to get in front of realweb 3 audience.
(10:16):
So that's site number one.
Site number two is thepublishing site.
So this is where the ads go.
This is where the ads aredisplayed.
So what we do at persona is wepartner with web 3 applications.
So this could be different.
Web 3 decks is these could beweb 3 gaming platform, these
could be web 3 data aggregators,and what we do is we show our
(10:38):
ads on these web 3 nativeplatforms.
The goal is to fold one is thatonly real web 3 users they see
this ad.
And the second is because theseplatforms they allow users to
connect their wallet.
We are able to target users onthe basis of what's in their
wallet.
So I'll break it down a littlebit.
So, like I was talking aboutthe on chain data, right, so
(11:01):
it's all associated to yourwallet.
What we did at persona was weindexed these different wallets
about 200 million at this pointof time and we know all of their
transaction history.
We know what kind of NFTs theypurchase whether it was music
NFT or sports NFT or gaming NFT.
We know what kind of tokensthey transact and we know how
(11:22):
much they hold.
So, based on all of this, wecreated persona, hence the name
persona.
And now on these platform, ourpartner platform, we are able to
show them like really targetedads based on their wallet
persona.
So that does two things One,that it is so relevant the ads
that we get much higherperformance on these ads, and
second is that we're able toexclude any wallets that we
(11:46):
don't want to show these ads to.
So it's a win-win for everybody.
We are not using cookies or anykind of PII data.
It's all public data which isassociated to your wallet.
So we don't know if you're amale, female, or you have a dog
or a cat, but what we do have is, like these, actual purchase
(12:06):
data from the chain.
So this is essentially what weare doing at persona.
We launched in August of 2023.
And then, you know, since then,we have grown at a crazy pace.
Today we work with some of thebiggest web three names,
including MetaMask, immutableEngine, hash Flow.
We have run campaigns for allof these, and then, on the
(12:26):
publishing side, our ads go onsome of the biggest dApps in web
three today.
So we are very excited aboutwhat it holds for us and the
future holds for us.
Host (12:38):
Yeah, it's very exciting to see that that you know this.
This problem has persisted inthe space where you know you
really don't know what to dowith all that data that's
generated on chain, right?
How do you, how do you makesense of that data?
Just give insights with and, atthe same time, balance out the
(12:58):
privacy concerns one one mighthave, and there's a very
delicate balance which whichseems like you've you've kind of
cracked that code in some way,and it's a super, super
interesting.
On that topic, I wanted to askyou, like when you mentioned
Google AdSense for Web3, right.
Now, web3 enables, you know, aswe all know, it enables some
(13:23):
other, these new primitives,enable some other new features
that you cannot do on Web2,right, and I would love to hear
from you, ankita, what thosekind of capabilities are or will
be in the future.
Ankita Verma (13:39):
Yeah, that's a very good question.
So if you think about Web3,some of the core tenets of Web3
are privacy there andtransparency.
Right, Building a Web3 nativead network meant that we have we
we were able, because we werebuilding for the blockchain, we
(13:59):
were able to bring in some ofthese tenets by default.
For example, like I said, rightyou know, coming to privacy, we
are able to target on the basisof on-chain data.
Today, no Web2 company can dothat.
No Web2 company has that kindof data about, like, who their
users are and what are theypurchasing and if they're, you
know, purchasing from acompetitor or if they're like,
(14:19):
what are the other local likeproducts they're purchasing, and
all of that.
So Web3, first of all, I thinkblockchain enables that and is,
if you look at the ad funnelright in Web2, it's, it's broken
.
You don't know if it's a botthat's engaging with your ad.
You don't know what happensafter they click on an ad.
(14:40):
The attribution is such atricky problem in Web2.
But with Web3, given all ofthese transactions happen on the
chain, which is an immutablerecord of these transactions, it
becomes multiple times easierto actually get the entire life
cycle of an ad right from aperson seeing the ad to a person
(15:03):
clicking on the ad and thenafter that you know, completing
the purchase or minting orwhatever.
All of that is on chain.
So it's very, it becomes verystraightforward problem to
actually solve that attributionissue with that persistence in
Web2.
That is point number two.
There are other ad types thatWeb2 does not, will not be able
(15:23):
to support which Web3 does.
Which brings me to actually thethird tenant, which is
ownership.
So Web3 is a lot aboutownership.
If you are giving your time, ifyou are giving your attention,
you should be rewarded in someway.
You should own a piece of thepie, which is what we can do
with persona and Web3 ads ingeneral, which is if the user is
(15:46):
engaging with the ad, they getrewarded for their time and
engagement.
So one of an examples of this,very clear examples of this, is
something like a gasless ad.
For example, the user makes atransaction on the chain.
They have to pay a transactionfee, which is called the gas fee
.
Now, coming up with new adtypes which can enable these
kind of rewards where you knowthe gas fee gets taken care of
(16:09):
by the advertiser, this issomething which is very unique
and which can happen in a Web3like system, and it's not
something which can very easilyhappen in Web2.
So I think, coming back, Ialways think about the tenants
that Web3 stands for, and howcan we make our product 10x more
(16:31):
effective than a Web2equivalent by just like sticking
to those tenants?
Host (16:35):
no-transcript.
You mentioned Web 3,interesting use case that you
just mentioned about gaslesstransactions, gasless ads,
taking care of that.
I mean that is something thatis truly unique to Web 3.
If you try to mimic that in Web2, it's just you're running
(16:58):
into centralized systems andthat sort of a thing.
I mean that in itself.
Could you like expand on it alittle?
My brain is getting fired inall different directions and all
sort of possibilities that youcan even layer this in the real
world sort of scenarios, right,and I don't know, like going my
(17:19):
car pass, like fast track passor something like get paid off
or something and then you cancrash order or like your Netflix
subscription or like yeah,there are so many use cases.
Ankita Verma (17:30):
Yeah, endless possibilities like that.
It's true, yeah, but I guessthe idea is ownership, rewarding
users for their time andattention, which does not happen
in Web 2 today.
So Facebook and Google theyhave all of your sorry, meta and
Google, they have all of yourdata.
They build billion dollars atthe top of your data and you end
(17:52):
up giving your attention.
So it's a very simple idea.
But, like you said, theapplication gasless is just like
one simple use case of such anapplication.
There are several other usecases like we were talking about
.
Right, you know your dash pass,or like your Uber order, or
like Netflix subscription.
(18:12):
There's just so much out therethat can be done.
Host (18:16):
Is Brave, considered a co-partner or like are they
something that you wouldconsider them like in the system
that you see them integratingwith?
Because I remember they hadsome sort of inbuilt browser
kind of feature reward system,but I wasn't sure if it was
pertaining to like ads, specificto ads, the way you are trying
(18:40):
to do, because I think you'retrying to do more dynamically.
When, say, somebody's payingfor coffee or something, some
other transaction in the realworld, I mean, that's a totally
another world out there, thetransactional world, and then I
think they were trying to dothat in the in browser.
Ankita Verma (18:58):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the difference.
Brave also does the bad rewardsbad tokens as rewards, but it
is for the ads that come on thebrowser.
So you opt in to watch certainnumber of ads on the browser and
then you get rewarded accordingto how many ads you engage with
.
But ours is a different modelin the sense that you know it's
(19:20):
more like the other side, wherethe ads can be, the way it can
appear in front of you.
That's like very like limitlessright.
There can be different ways inwhich it could appear.
It could appear on a website,it could appear in your wallet,
it could appear in some otherway.
So essentially, the scope ofthe ads, the modalities of ads,
(19:42):
it's actually much broader inour case.
Host (19:44):
Because you're not chain agnostic.
I mean you're chain agnostic.
Ankita Verma (19:49):
And at the same time, we are not limited to one
platform to show ads.
For example, Brave ads, they goon Brave browser.
We can partner with a lot ofpublishers and go in different
places.
Host (20:01):
Great segue into my next sort of question that I've been
thinking about after looking atPersona is just trying to map it
out with.
You know, for folks who are newto the space, like
traditionally, you know, in web2 space we have CPC.
You know all of that cost foracquisition, all the you know
(20:23):
AdSense folks know what I'mtalking about.
How does that map into web 3and into Persona specifically?
Ankita Verma (20:33):
Yeah, so the way it maps is that it's actually so
.
Right now what we do is a CPMmodel, which is cost per
thousand impressions and adfolks will be very familiar with
this term.
But again, coming back toattribution, because the
attribution funnel in web 3 isso transparent, because all of
it happens on chain.
We are also very excited aboutCPA, or cost per action model,
(20:58):
where you actually pay wheneverthere is an action that is taken
.
So if you want a swap to happenas a result of an ad, you pay
only when the user performs thatactual swap, right.
So, and it, like I said, itbecomes easier for web 3 because
the swap happens on the chainand we get immutable data about
(21:19):
the user actually going andperforming that swap.
So we are actually web 3enables like a host of options,
which is like starting rightfrom CPM to like CPC, which is
cost per click, and then, like Isaid, cpa, which is cost per
action, and we want to be ableto offer the optionality to the
(21:40):
advertiser to choose which oneworks for them based on their
use case.
Host (21:47):
Got it.
So if I'm an advertiser and soall these different I would say
funnels in the that I want totarget and I can go in persona
platform and select that and Iwill be presented with all
different sort of options that Ican, I can play with in and
(22:09):
where I want to target my usersright.
Ankita Verma (22:12):
Exactly.
Yeah, so you have.
You can choose what type ofpayment model you want CPM, cpc,
cpc, pa.
You can also choose differentkind of targeting.
We can target on the basis ofsome web two criteria, which is
delay, geo devices, and also Webthree criteria, which is what's
(22:32):
in your wallet.
Host (22:33):
So how does that like, what is the range of that like
typically cost for for yourcustomer looks like for for
people doing the transtransitioning from web two and
also who are in the space?
Ankita Verma (22:47):
Yeah.
So it's actually a range, right.
Like anything, it depends onwhat kind of users you're
looking to target.
So I'll give you some baselinenumbers for our CPM based ads,
which is cost per thousandimpressions based ads.
They vary a lot on the basis ofnumber one, geography, like who
are you targeting, where arethey, and number two, like what
(23:09):
kind of users they are.
Are they like you know regions,or are they like transacting
users or are they gamers?
So there is a cost associatedwith them.
So, for example, like I said,coming back to like geo, if you
target users from, say, northAmerica, united States, canada,
specifically, those areexpensive, more expensive than,
(23:30):
say, like if you're targetinguser from, say, like a Thailand
or Vietnam, and it's just afunction of, like, the lifetime
value of the user that you'relooking to target and how much
they can potentially spend onyour platform, similarly.
So that's the, that's a geobased way of looking at it.
Similarly, if you're looking to, for example, looking for users
(23:53):
who actually transact, make bigtransactions on on chain, if
you're a metamask, you'relooking for users who can come
swap on your platform, thoseusers are, again, like, more
expensive than, say, likesomebody who can come and
download your game.
So those are like two differenttypes of actions and there are
different values associated withthese two actions.
(24:13):
So, coming back to actualnumber, it depends a lot, but it
can go like the CPM can goanywhere between, I would say,
like a dollar to, in some cases,like 10, $12 as well, and the
model that we have built is,like, very adaptive, so it
learns quite a bit as to likewhich user is more high value
(24:35):
than, say, like another type ofuser.
But that's the range.
I know it's a very broad range,but that's how it rolls.
Host (24:43):
And I think I mentioned it in the start and you very
eloquently described how youguys do it, but maybe I'll touch
it.
Touch a little bit on it againthe duality of, in this space,
having some sort of analyticsbut, at the same time, keeping
that anonymization of the datapoints that we have for users
(25:06):
right.
What are some of the challengesthat you like?
Are there challenges, first ofall, and if they are, how do you
sort of approach them in termsof you know, you know, zk seems
very compelling and I've heardyou mention it, so I would love
(25:27):
to know a little bit more aboutit.
Ankita Verma (25:29):
Yeah, I mean it's like it's a fine balance that we
have to strike.
So there is one side of thespectrum where you have no data
on the user except for theiron-chain data which is
associated to a wallet right.
That is one side of thespectrum, and the other side of
the other end of the spectrum isthat you have all of that data
(25:50):
about them, including theirwallet data, right.
Of course, the more data youhave, the better ads you're able
to show.
So we try to strike a balancebetween these two ends, where we
have on-chain data as well assome off-chain data, which is
their geo and their device typeand a couple of other data
(26:10):
points.
What we still clear off iscookies.
We don't use cookies, so wedon't, you know, get any kind of
PII about the users and wedon't store any of such data.
And again, like it becomes likea little bit of challenge to
balance that, because for someWeb3 users, even that's a lot
(26:34):
and that's the data that weshouldn't be looking at.
And then, but most of them theyunderstand that you know, the
better, the better data you have, the better ads you're able to
show, which is why we constantlyare working towards rewarding
the users more and more forsharing any data which is not
(26:54):
public.
So then they become a part ofthe ecosystem and they get
rewarded for them giving uspermission to use the data,
which is the future which we aremoving towards, and that's when
it all balance out and it'llbecome fair.
So that's point number one.
The point about ZK is again likeyou know it.
(27:16):
So ZK is the future, wherewe're going to see this can
happen through ZK technology,where users choose to share what
they want to share, even thepublic on chain data that might
not remain public forever, andthey can choose to share what
part of on chain data they wantto share for any kind of
targeting right.
So that's like an extreme formof like public owning their own
(27:40):
data.
So in the future, where ZKbecomes mainstream, this
rewarded ad ecosystem comes tolike a full fruition, where not
just the on chain off chain data, but also the on chain data
becomes permission and the usergets paid for whatever they want
to share.
So that's essentially a futurethat we are looking forward to,
(28:04):
and until then, like I said,we'll be trading this fine line
between the two extremes that Ispoke about.
Host (28:12):
Yeah, that's a.
That's a.
That's a good way to put it,ankita, that you want to be
there when it as, as it happens,right, and these primitives are
coming and they are useful.
You know, they still have sometrade offs performance, whatnot
but these, these primitives, arehere and it's almost like
encryption in the 70s, right,you cannot the genies out of the
(28:33):
bottle.
It's great.
Yeah, I was gonna actually.
Let's see.
Ankita Verma (28:40):
I think for developers, there are two value
propositions.
One is, of course, they canlike run their ads and acquire
users.
The other is that it is their,their, platform, right by
showing our ads.
Host (28:52):
Yes, yeah, that's a community connected.
I think what I was actually.
That's a good point.
That when you mentioned aboutthe community right coming back
like some kind of DAO thatconnects to an ad network, I
mean that would be like that,would I mean this is just blue
sky thinking right?
I'm not.
There are some interestingideas definitely there, which
(29:13):
maybe a lot have to think moreabout, since this podcast is
highly focused towards builders,right, people who built the
code and you know the whole teamis around that designers, be it
even campaign managers oranybody what is your viewpoint
on folks who are, say,developers, who have application
(29:33):
development and they want touse your platform persona like?
How could they benefit in a newand interesting ways?
Ankita Verma (29:42):
Yeah.
So they have two different waysof working with us.
The first way is useracquisition and growth, which is
very straightforward.
They come to persona.
They want to acquire new users.
They create a campaign.
It's a self-serve platform takeslike five minutes to set up a
campaign.
They set up their targetingcriteria who are they trying to
(30:03):
reach out to, which geos, whatkind of users and then they
upload their creatives and thenyou know, within five minutes
they click Summit and we approveit and their ads will start
displaying on some of thebiggest web three websites and
they can track their entire useracquisition funnel using our
dashboard who all are clicking,how many are converting, how
many are actually ending up tobuy their product or like, sign
(30:27):
up or like, whatever theirconversion goal is.
So that's first way of workingwith us.
The second way of working withus is monetizing their dApps.
So if they already haveapplications that has users,
they can actually work with usto integrate with our SDK and
show ads show persona ads ontheir platform.
(30:49):
So whenever there areadvertisers who want to run ads
on our platform, we'll bedirecting those ads to their
platform and they will earn forevery view or every impression
on the ad.
So some of our publishers theyearn upwards of 10K, 15k, 20k
depending on their trafficmonthly just by showing ads on
(31:12):
their platform.
So these are the two differentways of working with us.
Host (31:16):
Yeah, that is fantastic, I think, especially for
developers finding that new waysfor revenue generation seems a
very plausible way to goactually and developers are
going to be developing anywaysfor this ecosystem.
They'll be around for a while.
To giving them those tools aswell and making their life
(31:38):
easier and helping them would befantastic.
And this is, as you know I kindof overindulge in the
futuristic sort of ideas.
I was wondering perhaps ifthere would be some data models
in the future which kind of givesort of like flow of where the
(31:58):
data is going across chain, andthat sort of a thing would also
be valuable even for developersbuilding in multi-chain
ecosystem.
Ankita Verma (32:09):
Yeah, definitely, docchain makes all of that
possible.
Host (32:13):
Yes, definitely.
Okay, this is kind of atradition that I'm kind of
starting, like you know what.
Before I go to my finalquestion, I wanted to ask you do
you have any piece of advicefor people who are, I would
consider, not just in SoutheastAsia, but all over the world,
(32:35):
who are global cryptoentrepreneurs?
Anything you would like to sayto them?
And also my next guest, who'sunknown at the moment what would
you say to them?
Passing the baton, sort of athing?
Ankita Verma (32:51):
I think one thing which I feel very strongly about
in Web 3 is that in a lot ofbuilders, they build for FAD and
they build for the reallyshort-term returns and rewards
and they spend less timethinking about what is the
problem statement they aresolving for, why are they doing
it?
Who are the potential actualusers?
(33:13):
What are their pain points?
So the basics right.
So I would just urge everybodywho is looking to build in Web 3
to build for the actual problemand not a FAD, and really think
deeply about the use cases,your users, and build for the
long-term, because that is whatis missing in Web 3 and
(33:34):
blockchain ecosystem quite a bitin today's time.
So that would be my advice.
Host (33:41):
That is a fantastic advice and you don't hear that often
in the space actually.
Ankita Verma (33:46):
Yeah, which is why I feel very strongly about this
, and this is the advice that Igive to everybody who wants to
become a Web 3 entrepreneur.
Host (33:55):
There's definitely a marathon, not a sprint.
Ankita Verma (33:58):
Yeah.
Host (34:00):
And where can builders find you and your team?
Ankita Verma (34:04):
Yes, so we are our website, wwwpersona3.io.
That's our website.
That will give you a very highlevel overview of what we do for
publishers, what we do foradvertisers.
It also has a link to sign upfor our demo.
So please go sign up for ourdemo.
Somebody from the team willreach out.
We'll be very happy to walk youthrough the product and the use
(34:27):
cases.
Host (34:30):
It was a pleasure talking to you, ankita.
I personally learned a lotabout the analytics side of
things in blockchain, whichpersonally, I was, to be honest,
not that knowledgeable, and sothis was a pleasure.
I would love to have you on theshow sometime in the future.
Ankita Verma (34:47):
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
I really had a lot of funchatting with you.
Host (34:52):
Thank you.
I was a very I was a very starry-eyed kid.
I always had like big dreams inmy eyes.
I became the first girl in mytown to get into an IIT.
If done right, ifblockchain-based technology can,
like, truly change the waycertain things operate, Hello
(00:30):
everyone, today we are at BiddleCrypto Biddle Space with Ankita
Verma.
Host (00:36):
Ankita, welcome to the show.
Ankita Verma (00:38):
Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Host (00:41):
Before I go into all your achievements, I wanted to just
ask you tell me a little bitabout yourself and your life
journey so far.
Ankita Verma (00:54):
Sure, that's usually the first question that
I get.
Hello everyone, I am Ankita.
Ankita Verma.
I'm the co-founder and CEO ofPersona.
I come from India.
I was born, I grew up there.
I come from a very small townin Bihar called Mahagalpur.
I was a very I was a verystarry-eyed kid.
(01:14):
I always had like big dreams inmy eyes.
I became the first girl in mytown to get into an IIT.
It was always my dream to getinto an IIT, spent amazing few
years there and then after that,spent a little over four years
in India, mostly moving from onejob to another, trying to
(01:34):
figure out what I want to do inmy life, because I had no idea.
Started as a developer, softwareengineer, and then soon
realized that I want to be moreon the business side of things,
so moved to consulting and thento VC, and while I was working
at the VC fund, I got a chanceto launch their incubator
accelerator, which is when I gota chance to meet multiple
(01:57):
amazing founders and I realizedthat probably that's my true
calling, that I want to be onthe other side of the table and
around the same time, I was alsovery inspired by the innovation
that was happening in SiliconValley.
I was reading up a lot on MarkZuckerberg and Google and Tesla
and I thought to myself that ifI want to be an entrepreneur, I
(02:21):
want to be one in Silicon Valley.
So I had no idea how to get tothe US at that point of time and
the only most viable way that Icould think of was coming here
for my MBA.
So luckily I applied and I gotinto Wharton.
I came here, spent two amazingyears at Wharton and it was kind
of like a really life-changingexperience, because you come
(02:42):
from India, you have this techbackground and you think that
tech and engineering iseverything and they are the
smartest people.
But then here you get exposedto all sorts of people from
different walks of life, sopeople from social sciences and
from military and people fromeconomics.
So it's just like reallybroadens your horizon quite a
lot.
(03:03):
And then after that, because Ihad never worked in the US, I
decided to spend some timeworking here just to understand
how businesses operate here, howit is like to build in the US
market.
So I joined Amazon.
I got an amazing role as aproduct manager.
I grew very quickly, becamehead of product at AWS AI and
(03:23):
got a chance to build and launchmultiple products.
I learned how to build products, how to sell products, how to
work with engineers.
I learned all of it.
It was kind of a trainingground for me for what I do
today.
And then, after that, I got mygreen card and then I was like
Ankit, you don't have any moreexcuses left now.
So the day I got my green card,I quit my job and then that's
(03:46):
how, and that point of timestarted building persona.
Host (03:50):
That's an amazing story, especially on the part of when
you got your green card.
You had it all planned out,that just you know.
This is it Because I rememberwhen it was my time a while back
and I didn't think much of it,and so now I think I didn't plan
as such fantastic journey, thatyou have a very short amount of
(04:15):
time that is very suitable forthe type of person that you are.
That I know when I met you inthe conference, the star eyed
person, and so it very perfectlymatches what I've imagined.
So you mentioned yourinspiration, and I know there
(04:37):
are a lot of.
If you indulge me, I might go ina little bit in that tangent is
the Zuckerberg and the Teslas,and you know, when you come to
Silicon Valley, those are thefirst things you look at, and
those are not just in thisdecade.
It started way back when, rightwith the semiconductor industry
, and I got exposed to it alittle later.
(04:59):
That feeling that you had Ikind of have a mutual kind of
respect for that that that's,somebody who comes to this mecca
for software, for IT, has Anyother thing that inspired you
besides that, besides thoseiconic figures, say, I would say
(05:24):
specifically led you to a Web 3space.
Ankita Verma (05:29):
Yeah, so I actually started investing in
Bitcoin in 2015 when I came tothe US, when I came to Wharton,
and you know I was a small timeinvestor.
I have been investing in thisspace for quite some time since
then.
But I was watching this spacemostly from the side for several
years as a Bitcoin investor andthen, you know, bought couple
(05:52):
of NFTs and then Ethereum andcouple of all coins.
So I was watching this spacefrom the side and investments
that I was doing, but at thesame time, I was really very
closely following the technology.
So they were evolution ofblockchain, and then NFTs and
then and then ZK.
So I was following thetechnology quite a bit.
(06:16):
So, very honestly, what led meto Web 3 was the fact that it's
such a green field space, it'ssuch an open space where there
is this potential to buildsomething that can truly change
the game for how things operatein this world.
And I always compare it it'skind of cliched, but I compare
(06:36):
it to the early 2000s of the dotcom era where there were so
many like the yahoo's and theGoogles of the world were being
formed, and I compare it to thattime because I truly believe
that, if done right.
A blockchain based technologycan, like I said, truly change
the way certain things operate,be it fintech, be it ads, be it
(07:00):
attribution.
So the biggest draw was, ofcourse, like the ability to do
something in such a nativemanner in a green field space.
Host (07:12):
Yeah, that is a very interesting point.
In fact that's partly why I gotinto the space, because it's so
green field and you know thatfeeling of starting fresh or
starting it's so true.
I was thinking initially to goweb 2 with podcasting and on,
(07:32):
but then I thought why not startfrom scratch if I want to do
this?
And so I do kind of resonatewith what you said there, that
it's an open field and thetechnology is there, it's real,
it's not going anywhere.
Ankita Verma (07:47):
Totally yeah.
Host (07:50):
You're a startup persona.
It's a very interesting pieceof technology, interesting
solution to a problem that us inthe industry know exists, and
so I would love to hear from youhow are you approaching this?
Ankita Verma (08:07):
The way.
When, in 2022, I was, you know,very, very deep trying to
figure out what's the rightbusiness and the solution to
build.
I was talking to a lot ofbuilders, a lot of investors, a
lot of people in this web 3space in general and the web,
and the one thing that stood outto me was how the user
(08:30):
experience, the user acquisitionfunnel, is so broken.
So if you look at web 3 today,marketing, user acquisition all
of it happens in a very nativeform in the form of, like,
discord messages and Twittermessages and conferences.
So it's all, like I said, theearly 2000s of the internet.
So what used to happen then inthe regular web 2 world, the
(08:53):
same things are happening in theweb 3 world right now.
So I started thinking about,like, how do we bring that data
driven approach to makemarketing growth, user
acquisition, very, very seamlessand easy for web 3.
And in parallel, I was alsovery, very fascinated by the on
chain data.
(09:13):
So if you are, if you have everused transacted crypto, you
know that there is this walletand whatever transactions you
make using those wallet whetherit is purchasing an NFT or a
token or a coin all of thesetransactions, they go on this
public ledger, which is theblockchain right, and all of
this data is public and if youthink about it, it is not.
(09:34):
It is not like a browsing data,it is not like an intent data,
it is not a third party data.
It's an actual, immutable dataabout you making a real purchase
.
So I was very fascinated abouthow this data could be used for
user acquisition, growth,targeted campaigns, and that's
what led to persona.
(09:55):
So, coming to persona, a verysimple way to understand it is
it is Google Adsense, but it isbuilt natively for web 3.
I'll explain how it works.
There are two sites, there aretwo network, so there are two
sites to the network.
First site is the advertisingsite, so anybody in web 3
looking to get in front of realweb 3 audience.
(10:16):
So that's site number one.
Site number two is thepublishing site.
So this is where the ads go.
This is where the ads aredisplayed.
So what we do at persona is wepartner with web 3 applications.
So this could be different.
Web 3 decks is these could beweb 3 gaming platform, these
could be web 3 data aggregators,and what we do is we show our
(10:38):
ads on these web 3 nativeplatforms.
The goal is to fold one is thatonly real web 3 users they see
this ad.
And the second is because theseplatforms they allow users to
connect their wallet.
We are able to target users onthe basis of what's in their
wallet.
So I'll break it down a littlebit.
So, like I was talking aboutthe on chain data, right, so
(11:01):
it's all associated to yourwallet.
What we did at persona was weindexed these different wallets
about 200 million at this pointof time and we know all of their
transaction history.
We know what kind of NFTs theypurchase whether it was music
NFT or sports NFT or gaming NFT.
We know what kind of tokensthey transact and we know how
(11:22):
much they hold.
So, based on all of this, wecreated persona, hence the name
persona.
And now on these platform, ourpartner platform, we are able to
show them like really targetedads based on their wallet
persona.
So that does two things One,that it is so relevant the ads
that we get much higherperformance on these ads, and
second is that we're able toexclude any wallets that we
(11:46):
don't want to show these ads to.
So it's a win-win for everybody.
We are not using cookies or anykind of PII data.
It's all public data which isassociated to your wallet.
So we don't know if you're amale, female, or you have a dog
or a cat, but what we do have is, like these, actual purchase
(12:06):
data from the chain.
So this is essentially what weare doing at persona.
We launched in August of 2023.
And then, you know, since then,we have grown at a crazy pace.
Today we work with some of thebiggest web three names,
including MetaMask, immutableEngine, hash Flow.
We have run campaigns for allof these, and then, on the
(12:26):
publishing side, our ads go onsome of the biggest dApps in web
three today.
So we are very excited aboutwhat it holds for us and the
future holds for us.
Host (12:38):
Yeah, it's very exciting to see that that you know this.
This problem has persisted inthe space where you know you
really don't know what to dowith all that data that's
generated on chain, right?
How do you, how do you makesense of that data?
Just give insights with and, atthe same time, balance out the
(12:58):
privacy concerns one one mighthave, and there's a very
delicate balance which whichseems like you've you've kind of
cracked that code in some way,and it's a super, super
interesting.
On that topic, I wanted to askyou, like when you mentioned
Google AdSense for Web3, right.
Now, web3 enables, you know, aswe all know, it enables some
(13:23):
other, these new primitives,enable some other new features
that you cannot do on Web2,right, and I would love to hear
from you, ankita, what thosekind of capabilities are or will
be in the future.
Ankita Verma (13:39):
Yeah, that's a very good question.
So if you think about Web3,some of the core tenets of Web3
are privacy there andtransparency.
Right, Building a Web3 nativead network meant that we have we
we were able, because we werebuilding for the blockchain, we
(13:59):
were able to bring in some ofthese tenets by default.
For example, like I said, rightyou know, coming to privacy, we
are able to target on the basisof on-chain data.
Today, no Web2 company can dothat.
No Web2 company has that kindof data about, like, who their
users are and what are theypurchasing and if they're, you
know, purchasing from acompetitor or if they're like,
(14:19):
what are the other local likeproducts they're purchasing, and
all of that.
So Web3, first of all, I thinkblockchain enables that and is,
if you look at the ad funnelright in Web2, it's, it's broken
.
You don't know if it's a botthat's engaging with your ad.
You don't know what happensafter they click on an ad.
(14:40):
The attribution is such atricky problem in Web2.
But with Web3, given all ofthese transactions happen on the
chain, which is an immutablerecord of these transactions, it
becomes multiple times easierto actually get the entire life
cycle of an ad right from aperson seeing the ad to a person
(15:03):
clicking on the ad and thenafter that you know, completing
the purchase or minting orwhatever.
All of that is on chain.
So it's very, it becomes verystraightforward problem to
actually solve that attributionissue with that persistence in
Web2.
That is point number two.
There are other ad types thatWeb2 does not, will not be able
(15:23):
to support which Web3 does.
Which brings me to actually thethird tenant, which is
ownership.
So Web3 is a lot aboutownership.
If you are giving your time, ifyou are giving your attention,
you should be rewarded in someway.
You should own a piece of thepie, which is what we can do
with persona and Web3 ads ingeneral, which is if the user is
(15:46):
engaging with the ad, they getrewarded for their time and
engagement.
So one of an examples of this,very clear examples of this, is
something like a gasless ad.
For example, the user makes atransaction on the chain.
They have to pay a transactionfee, which is called the gas fee
.
Now, coming up with new adtypes which can enable these
kind of rewards where you knowthe gas fee gets taken care of
(16:09):
by the advertiser, this issomething which is very unique
and which can happen in a Web3like system, and it's not
something which can very easilyhappen in Web2.
So I think, coming back, Ialways think about the tenants
that Web3 stands for, and howcan we make our product 10x more
(16:31):
effective than a Web2equivalent by just like sticking
to those tenants?
Host (16:35):
no-transcript.
You mentioned Web 3,interesting use case that you
just mentioned about gaslesstransactions, gasless ads,
taking care of that.
I mean that is something thatis truly unique to Web 3.
If you try to mimic that in Web2, it's just you're running
(16:58):
into centralized systems andthat sort of a thing.
I mean that in itself.
Could you like expand on it alittle?
My brain is getting fired inall different directions and all
sort of possibilities that youcan even layer this in the real
world sort of scenarios, right,and I don't know, like going my
(17:19):
car pass, like fast track passor something like get paid off
or something and then you cancrash order or like your Netflix
subscription or like yeah,there are so many use cases.
Ankita Verma (17:30):
Yeah, endless possibilities like that.
It's true, yeah, but I guessthe idea is ownership, rewarding
users for their time andattention, which does not happen
in Web 2 today.
So Facebook and Google theyhave all of your sorry, meta and
Google, they have all of yourdata.
They build billion dollars atthe top of your data and you end
(17:52):
up giving your attention.
So it's a very simple idea.
But, like you said, theapplication gasless is just like
one simple use case of such anapplication.
There are several other usecases like we were talking about
.
Right, you know your dash pass,or like your Uber order, or
like Netflix subscription.
(18:12):
There's just so much out therethat can be done.
Host (18:16):
Is Brave, considered a co-partner or like are they
something that you wouldconsider them like in the system
that you see them integratingwith?
Because I remember they hadsome sort of inbuilt browser
kind of feature reward system,but I wasn't sure if it was
pertaining to like ads, specificto ads, the way you are trying
(18:40):
to do, because I think you'retrying to do more dynamically.
When, say, somebody's payingfor coffee or something, some
other transaction in the realworld, I mean, that's a totally
another world out there, thetransactional world, and then I
think they were trying to dothat in the in browser.
Ankita Verma (18:58):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the difference.
Brave also does the bad rewardsbad tokens as rewards, but it
is for the ads that come on thebrowser.
So you opt in to watch certainnumber of ads on the browser and
then you get rewarded accordingto how many ads you engage with
.
But ours is a different modelin the sense that you know it's
(19:20):
more like the other side, wherethe ads can be, the way it can
appear in front of you.
That's like very like limitlessright.
There can be different ways inwhich it could appear.
It could appear on a website,it could appear in your wallet,
it could appear in some otherway.
So essentially, the scope ofthe ads, the modalities of ads,
(19:42):
it's actually much broader inour case.
Host (19:44):
Because you're not chain agnostic.
I mean you're chain agnostic.
Ankita Verma (19:49):
And at the same time, we are not limited to one
platform to show ads.
For example, Brave ads, they goon Brave browser.
We can partner with a lot ofpublishers and go in different
places.
Host (20:01):
Great segue into my next sort of question that I've been
thinking about after looking atPersona is just trying to map it
out with.
You know, for folks who are newto the space, like
traditionally, you know, in web2 space we have CPC.
You know all of that cost foracquisition, all the you know
(20:23):
AdSense folks know what I'mtalking about.
How does that map into web 3and into Persona specifically?
Ankita Verma (20:33):
Yeah, so the way it maps is that it's actually so
.
Right now what we do is a CPMmodel, which is cost per
thousand impressions and adfolks will be very familiar with
this term.
But again, coming back toattribution, because the
attribution funnel in web 3 isso transparent, because all of
it happens on chain.
We are also very excited aboutCPA, or cost per action model,
(20:58):
where you actually pay wheneverthere is an action that is taken
.
So if you want a swap to happenas a result of an ad, you pay
only when the user performs thatactual swap, right.
So, and it, like I said, itbecomes easier for web 3 because
the swap happens on the chainand we get immutable data about
(21:19):
the user actually going andperforming that swap.
So we are actually web 3enables like a host of options,
which is like starting rightfrom CPM to like CPC, which is
cost per click, and then, like Isaid, cpa, which is cost per
action, and we want to be ableto offer the optionality to the
(21:40):
advertiser to choose which oneworks for them based on their
use case.
Host (21:47):
Got it.
So if I'm an advertiser and soall these different I would say
funnels in the that I want totarget and I can go in persona
platform and select that and Iwill be presented with all
different sort of options that Ican, I can play with in and
(22:09):
where I want to target my usersright.
Ankita Verma (22:12):
Exactly.
Yeah, so you have.
You can choose what type ofpayment model you want CPM, cpc,
cpc, pa.
You can also choose differentkind of targeting.
We can target on the basis ofsome web two criteria, which is
delay, geo devices, and also Webthree criteria, which is what's
(22:32):
in your wallet.
Host (22:33):
So how does that like, what is the range of that like
typically cost for for yourcustomer looks like for for
people doing the transtransitioning from web two and
also who are in the space?
Ankita Verma (22:47):
Yeah.
So it's actually a range, right.
Like anything, it depends onwhat kind of users you're
looking to target.
So I'll give you some baselinenumbers for our CPM based ads,
which is cost per thousandimpressions based ads.
They vary a lot on the basis ofnumber one, geography, like who
are you targeting, where arethey, and number two, like what
(23:09):
kind of users they are.
Are they like you know regions,or are they like transacting
users or are they gamers?
So there is a cost associatedwith them.
So, for example, like I said,coming back to like geo, if you
target users from, say, northAmerica, united States, canada,
specifically, those areexpensive, more expensive than,
(23:30):
say, like if you're targetinguser from, say, like a Thailand
or Vietnam, and it's just afunction of, like, the lifetime
value of the user that you'relooking to target and how much
they can potentially spend onyour platform, similarly.
So that's the, that's a geobased way of looking at it.
Similarly, if you're looking to, for example, looking for users
(23:53):
who actually transact, make bigtransactions on on chain, if
you're a metamask, you'relooking for users who can come
swap on your platform, thoseusers are, again, like, more
expensive than, say, likesomebody who can come and
download your game.
So those are like two differenttypes of actions and there are
different values associated withthese two actions.
(24:13):
So, coming back to actualnumber, it depends a lot, but it
can go like the CPM can goanywhere between, I would say,
like a dollar to, in some cases,like 10, $12 as well, and the
model that we have built is,like, very adaptive, so it
learns quite a bit as to likewhich user is more high value
(24:35):
than, say, like another type ofuser.
But that's the range.
I know it's a very broad range,but that's how it rolls.
Host (24:43):
And I think I mentioned it in the start and you very
eloquently described how youguys do it, but maybe I'll touch
it.
Touch a little bit on it againthe duality of, in this space,
having some sort of analyticsbut, at the same time, keeping
that anonymization of the datapoints that we have for users
(25:06):
right.
What are some of the challengesthat you like?
Are there challenges, first ofall, and if they are, how do you
sort of approach them in termsof you know, you know, zk seems
very compelling and I've heardyou mention it, so I would love
(25:27):
to know a little bit more aboutit.
Ankita Verma (25:29):
Yeah, I mean it's like it's a fine balance that we
have to strike.
So there is one side of thespectrum where you have no data
on the user except for theiron-chain data which is
associated to a wallet right.
That is one side of thespectrum, and the other side of
the other end of the spectrum isthat you have all of that data
(25:50):
about them, including theirwallet data, right.
Of course, the more data youhave, the better ads you're able
to show.
So we try to strike a balancebetween these two ends, where we
have on-chain data as well assome off-chain data, which is
their geo and their device typeand a couple of other data
(26:10):
points.
What we still clear off iscookies.
We don't use cookies, so wedon't, you know, get any kind of
PII about the users and wedon't store any of such data.
And again, like it becomes likea little bit of challenge to
balance that, because for someWeb3 users, even that's a lot
(26:34):
and that's the data that weshouldn't be looking at.
And then, but most of them theyunderstand that you know, the
better, the better data you have, the better ads you're able to
show, which is why we constantlyare working towards rewarding
the users more and more forsharing any data which is not
(26:54):
public.
So then they become a part ofthe ecosystem and they get
rewarded for them giving uspermission to use the data,
which is the future which we aremoving towards, and that's when
it all balance out and it'llbecome fair.
So that's point number one.
The point about ZK is again likeyou know it.
(27:16):
So ZK is the future, wherewe're going to see this can
happen through ZK technology,where users choose to share what
they want to share, even thepublic on chain data that might
not remain public forever, andthey can choose to share what
part of on chain data they wantto share for any kind of
targeting right.
So that's like an extreme formof like public owning their own
(27:40):
data.
So in the future, where ZKbecomes mainstream, this
rewarded ad ecosystem comes tolike a full fruition, where not
just the on chain off chain data, but also the on chain data
becomes permission and the usergets paid for whatever they want
to share.
So that's essentially a futurethat we are looking forward to,
(28:04):
and until then, like I said,we'll be trading this fine line
between the two extremes that Ispoke about.
Host (28:12):
Yeah, that's a.
That's a.
That's a good way to put it,ankita, that you want to be
there when it as, as it happens,right, and these primitives are
coming and they are useful.
You know, they still have sometrade offs performance, whatnot
but these, these primitives, arehere and it's almost like
encryption in the 70s, right,you cannot the genies out of the
(28:33):
bottle.
It's great.
Yeah, I was gonna actually.
Let's see.
Ankita Verma (28:40):
I think for developers, there are two value
propositions.
One is, of course, they canlike run their ads and acquire
users.
The other is that it is their,their, platform, right by
showing our ads.
Host (28:52):
Yes, yeah, that's a community connected.
I think what I was actually.
That's a good point.
That when you mentioned aboutthe community right coming back
like some kind of DAO thatconnects to an ad network, I
mean that would be like that,would I mean this is just blue
sky thinking right?
I'm not.
There are some interestingideas definitely there, which
(29:13):
maybe a lot have to think moreabout, since this podcast is
highly focused towards builders,right, people who built the
code and you know the whole teamis around that designers, be it
even campaign managers oranybody what is your viewpoint
on folks who are, say,developers, who have application
(29:33):
development and they want touse your platform persona like?
How could they benefit in a newand interesting ways?
Ankita Verma (29:42):
Yeah.
So they have two different waysof working with us.
The first way is useracquisition and growth, which is
very straightforward.
They come to persona.
They want to acquire new users.
They create a campaign.
It's a self-serve platform takeslike five minutes to set up a
campaign.
They set up their targetingcriteria who are they trying to
(30:03):
reach out to, which geos, whatkind of users and then they
upload their creatives and thenyou know, within five minutes
they click Summit and we approveit and their ads will start
displaying on some of thebiggest web three websites and
they can track their entire useracquisition funnel using our
dashboard who all are clicking,how many are converting, how
many are actually ending up tobuy their product or like, sign
(30:27):
up or like, whatever theirconversion goal is.
So that's first way of workingwith us.
The second way of working withus is monetizing their dApps.
So if they already haveapplications that has users,
they can actually work with usto integrate with our SDK and
show ads show persona ads ontheir platform.
(30:49):
So whenever there areadvertisers who want to run ads
on our platform, we'll bedirecting those ads to their
platform and they will earn forevery view or every impression
on the ad.
So some of our publishers theyearn upwards of 10K, 15k, 20k
depending on their trafficmonthly just by showing ads on
(31:12):
their platform.
So these are the two differentways of working with us.
Host (31:16):
Yeah, that is fantastic, I think, especially for
developers finding that new waysfor revenue generation seems a
very plausible way to goactually and developers are
going to be developing anywaysfor this ecosystem.
They'll be around for a while.
To giving them those tools aswell and making their life
(31:38):
easier and helping them would befantastic.
And this is, as you know I kindof overindulge in the
futuristic sort of ideas.
I was wondering perhaps ifthere would be some data models
in the future which kind of givesort of like flow of where the
(31:58):
data is going across chain, andthat sort of a thing would also
be valuable even for developersbuilding in multi-chain
ecosystem.
Ankita Verma (32:09):
Yeah, definitely, docchain makes all of that
possible.
Host (32:13):
Yes, definitely.
Okay, this is kind of atradition that I'm kind of
starting, like you know what.
Before I go to my finalquestion, I wanted to ask you do
you have any piece of advicefor people who are, I would
consider, not just in SoutheastAsia, but all over the world,
(32:35):
who are global cryptoentrepreneurs?
Anything you would like to sayto them?
And also my next guest, who'sunknown at the moment what would
you say to them?
Passing the baton, sort of athing?
Ankita Verma (32:51):
I think one thing which I feel very strongly about
in Web 3 is that in a lot ofbuilders, they build for FAD and
they build for the reallyshort-term returns and rewards
and they spend less timethinking about what is the
problem statement they aresolving for, why are they doing
it?
Who are the potential actualusers?
(33:13):
What are their pain points?
So the basics right.
So I would just urge everybodywho is looking to build in Web 3
to build for the actual problemand not a FAD, and really think
deeply about the use cases,your users, and build for the
long-term, because that is whatis missing in Web 3 and
(33:34):
blockchain ecosystem quite a bitin today's time.
So that would be my advice.
Host (33:41):
That is a fantastic advice and you don't hear that often
in the space actually.
Ankita Verma (33:46):
Yeah, which is why I feel very strongly about this
, and this is the advice that Igive to everybody who wants to
become a Web 3 entrepreneur.
Host (33:55):
There's definitely a marathon, not a sprint.
Ankita Verma (33:58):
Yeah.
Host (34:00):
And where can builders find you and your team?
Ankita Verma (34:04):
Yes, so we are our website, wwwpersona3.io.
That's our website.
That will give you a very highlevel overview of what we do for
publishers, what we do foradvertisers.
It also has a link to sign upfor our demo.
So please go sign up for ourdemo.
Somebody from the team willreach out.
We'll be very happy to walk youthrough the product and the use
(34:27):
cases.
Host (34:30):
It was a pleasure talking to you, ankita.
I personally learned a lotabout the analytics side of
things in blockchain, whichpersonally, I was, to be honest,
not that knowledgeable, and sothis was a pleasure.
I would love to have you on theshow sometime in the future.
Ankita Verma (34:47):
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
I really had a lot of funchatting with you.
Host (34:52):
Thank you.
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