The decade of the 2010s was the golden era of digital marketing. Marketers were given a robust technology stack for analyzing ROI, tracking revenue, and modeling LTV.
Of course, the MarTech scene has expanded dramatically in the last decade, from 150 enterprises in 2011 to 11,000 by 2023:
However, by the late 2010s, the tide had begun to change, prompted by GDPR in 2018, CCPA in 2020, and Google’s announcement that third-party cookies would be phased out by 2021.
With the turn of the decade, what had been crafted to near marketing perfection began to unravel.
As web3 became more prevalent in the 2020s, so did a more community- and privacy-focused marketing environment.
Consumer behavior has altered as well, with customers interacting in “dark social” channels such as Discord, Telegram, and Reddit, which are notoriously tough to track. This meant that marketers could no longer rely on traditional targeting strategies.
Today, approximately 200 companies are thoroughly considering a new digital media ecosystem. 71 of these firms have raised more than $600 million in investment.
This research digs into this new industry and the web3 development stack that has resulted. It covers both publicly announced and privately disclosed funding statistics and a thorough database of 180 of the most promising web3 growing companies.
There are 9 web3 Adtech / attribution businesses in AdTech Attribution, with total funding of $22M
According to the research, the advertising business is made up of publishers who offer digital advertising real estate, advertisers who buy ad space from publishers, and networks/exchanges that act as middlemen by combining ad real estate from publishers and selling it to advertisers.
Addressable, which uses web2 and web3 data to help advertisers target and retarget users, and Superfine, which helps publishers expand income, are the two ad tech startups.
On the other hand, attribution monitors how customers engage across the internet. To decide which marketing channel to credit for a conversion, it has typically used a combination of bespoke links (UTMs, ref codes), browser data (cookies, fingerprinting), and in-app analytics (event analytics).
According to the paper, attribution is on its way out as a result of customer confidentiality legislation (GDPR, CCPA) and tracking issues (the end of IDFA / cookies, Apple’s Tracking Transparency). Web3 has the potential to develop a more powerful, accurate, and privacy-friendly attribution system.
There are four web3 attribution firms (Safary, ARCx, Spindl, and Wombi) that have raised a total of $11 million. It’s still early days: they’ve each been working on their projects for 6 months.
Identity involves user-profiles and activities that advertisers utilize for targeting and personalization
Customer data and behavior are critical inputs for advertising. The theory is that if the corporation learns a lot about you, it would be able to forecast your future spending habits.
Customer information has long been exploited for advertising objectives through illicit access, tracking, and sharing. Web3, on the other hand, promises to provide users more control over their data as well as the option to monetize it.
Since transactions in web3 are public, the corporation knows what you do and buy, thus we may no longer need to know who you are.
Snickerdoodle Labs, Oamo, and Jomo are three identity firms focused on assisting web3 users in better owning and monetizing their data.
Users can choose to communicate with marketers in exchange for monetary discounts and prizes. Snickerdoodle garnered $2.4 million in 2021, Oamo raised $1.3 million in 2023, and Jomo is still in the works.
While data unions have historically not scaled to the level required to attract advertisers, today’s shifting privacy landscape, along with the web3 concept and technology, could create an ideal environment for these players to thrive.
According to the research, there are 18 ad networks, with 7 having raised a total of $26 million
While privacy restrictions benefit consumers, they also further solidify Big Tech’s dominance and harm smaller enterprises that lack vast customer data sets.
Web3’s public data collection, on the other hand, provides advertisers with equal access to rich consumer data while maintaining privacy behind a veil of pseudonymity.
The “[Modern Billboard project], which built a network of entrepreneurs selling site real estate as NFTs to shepherd an alternative to centralized advertising systems, was an early web3 experiment.
Questing platforms, according to the research, are engagement marketplaces. They build web3 user networks and divert their attention to company reward offers for doing certain behaviors. There are 18 search firms, with a total of $100 million raised.
Read the full report here.
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