Colorful Notion proposes to run $720K in On-Brand Twitter ads to Increase awareness of On-brand Polkadot messages from the Twitter accounts of Polkadot, Polkadot Parachains + Projects ecosystem-wide.

This is a follow-on to OpenGov Ref #324 and increases spend from $50K/mo (see Polkadot OpenGov Ref #324 Transparency Report (March 31, 2024)) to $90K/mo, promoting messages Polkadot-ecosystem wide in a larger range of countries. The ongoing #324 campaign has been boosting tweets from the following accounts:

This 577 Campaign is proposed to continue to be run as follows:

Ad Spend: $720,000 [85% of Requested Amount]
Strategy: Optimizing for High Reach and High Engagement (eCPE)
Time Period: May 1, 2024 - December 31, 2024 ( 8 months )
General Campaign Target: English-Speaking, High GDP Countries
(US, GB, AU, NZ, CA, IE, JP, KR, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, NO, FI, DK, CH, AT, LU, SE, PT, AE, SG)
Specific Campaign Targeting: Based on campaign message, with advisements from DF-funded Distractive + the OpenGov community, using "Follower Lookalike Targeting" from both Campaign Management Systems
Campaign Management Systems: Twitter Ads Direct (66%) for High Reach campaigns and Addressable.io (33%) for Highly Targeted (KPI-optimized, usually for lower eCPE) campaigns (discretionary allocation based on Campaign needs)

At this level of spend, throughout the 8-month campaign run, we anticipate:

1 BILLION Twitter impressions (at average of $0.792 CPM)
Reach: 10MM+ crypto twitter users in the General Campaign Target
Frequency: 100 impressions/user on average

As of March 31, 85% of the $144K allocated from #324 has been spent ($120.7K of $144K) with the remaining 15% expected to be exhausted by the end of April.

Key Benefits to DOT Tokenholders:

Robustly increase awareness of On-brand Polkadot Messages for mass crypto retail users (to both Polkadot AND parachains/projects) and builders (on both 1.0 parachains + 2.0 new technology [JAM, CoreTime, and so on])
Demonstrate Decentralized Marketing at scale, funded by OpenGov

Polkadot OpenGov Ref #324 Transparency Report (March 31, 2024)

Do you want to see the Polkadot ecosystem marketed via Twitter Ads?

If you do, please comment on OpenGov Ref #577 indicating your support .. and vote! 5 Decentralized Voices in #577 with 30MM+ NAYs [and a DOT Activist not voting] ensure that this will not be renewed.

Objections raised by DVs and the broader community .. and our proposal adjustments!

Overall spend of $200K/month is too much!

We adjusted the proposal. Instead of increasing $50K/mo spend to $200K/mo, we increased to $90K/mo spend. Its an 80% increase.

That is still too much money!

No, $90K/mo is not. Polkadot is a $10B market cap company. Crypto Twitter has not yet taken over by Farcaster, Subsocial, Mastodon in sufficient numbers. The reach of 10MM+ Twitter users is there. Most of those people can be targeted with Addressable and Twitter direct at scale.

How dare you promote DED!

It was definitely reasonable at the time to promote a 100% community generated token in Dec/Jan: *Because I am not an omniscient God, I could not predict what would happen in March back in Dec/Jan. However, it is no longer reasonable as of mid-March.

As to memecoins, I hate them too. Unfortunately, they are a part of what happens in Web3. BTC, DOGE, SHIB are all memecoin. They attract users. We have to relax and bring real people into the ecosystem to have fun. Polkadot is capable of everything.

Do not promote giotto tweets. He is a _______

Done! Promoting giotto content was useful in December in January but there is no need anymore as he is a DED activist rather than a DOT activist. Lets keep our blood pressure low and stay healthy and breathe the fresh air!

Lack of transparency

This report should cover it! All the raw data is in a table. You can query it. If you have an idea on how to weight the future marketing, please share!

This is all very random! You should have a meticulous plan in Month 1 of what should happen in Month 4.

False! Invention happens in the Polkadot ecosystem at extremely high rates. Ecosystem wide marketing of Polkadot cannot be a single campaign promoting one thing. You cannot know in December what will happen in April. One day its CoreJam, another day its JAM. That's part of the reason why we love Polkadot.

That said, you can have very focussed campaigns promoting ONE thing each month, e.g Polkadot+AI in April, Polkadot+Gaming in May, Polkadot+SocialNetworking in June, etc. But then the AI people not getting any voice in the other 11 months makes little sense. There is nothing wrong with a focussed based approach being combined

You are not a marketing professional!

False. I've done advertising startups my whole career. I've done $150MM of TAC in my life, $144K is nothing. I bought from Twitter's Mopub had Twitter as a advertiser in previous startups I've founded. But in this context, I understand what Twitter+Addressable is doing very well, and because the colorful notion team is doing ecosystem wide Dune integration, we follow most activity in the ecosystem closer than non-Polkadot people could.

Lack of closed-loop optimization

It is true that almost of the activity is for pure awareness, and is optimized for eCPE. But Web3 people do not like being tracked!

Everything should be in bounties. Or a collective.

No. While I agree that having more people look at something and advise on how to improve something is definitely useful, adding a bunch of curators or having N other people in a collective would not help. If I screwed up in executing in 324, someone can say what I did wrong. At the end of the day, 1 person has to push a button and N people can complain about it after the fact but NOT marketing at all makes little sense.

Distractive should do it instead.

Probably! Distractive is extremely capable and has wonderful positive people. I have met with them and should this pass or fail, we are super happy to work with them collaboratively. This data has been provided to Distractive's Katie Butler and the entire universe.

How dare you use your own account to run ads and promote yourself!

This is not a serious objection. Whereas the TheKus #298 ran ads that was "Follow the Kus!" and showcased The Kus in dozens of video content (which I love and see nothing wrong with), I did not. Our ads were like these:

In addition, we see no problem promoting @colorfulnotion's Dune dashboards. After all, Colorful Notion has been active in Polkadot analytics for the last 2 years and will continue to be a Polkadot ecosystem agent for the next 2 years with #366. If you think these are ads are somehow problematic, that's just too bad.

Thank you Addressable!

Tomer, Lev and Andres at Addressable were extremely valuable to make this campaign work and have a great platform. They have special skills with Twitter Ad Ops that very few Web3 teams will be able to replicate. Everyone in Web3 marketing should do campaigns with Addressable. Great platform, awesome people.

Thank you OpenGov + DOT Token holders!

Polkadot OpenGov is completely decentralized. Lead proposer Sourabh Niyogi would like to thank Polkadot OpenGov for the opportunity to get back and do some good old advertising work and get to know some fabulous Polkadot people better.

Increase Awareness of Polkadot On-Brand Messages via Twitter Ads (5/1/24-12/31/24)