We are currently about half-way through the pDAO-funded Bankless Q3 sponsorship, which will terminate at the end of September. Expenditure is US$78,000 per month, resulting in circa 2m impressions per month at a CPM of $35 which is in line with industry standards for such a niche audience. Bankless used the first month’s RPL payment to spin up minipools, which for now has insulated the token price.
Separate to this sponsorship, the Rocket Pool community has been invited to appear on a “bullcast”, and two prominent community members will outline the “bull case” for Rocket Pool which has been drafted up in a Trading channel thread in Discord.
Looking ahead to Q4, there is another opportunity for sponsorship, the details of which will be shared with us shortly but are likely to be very similar.
The purpose of this proposal is to present some context and points for consideration:
Bankless’ niche DeFi audience is growing over time
Ads could be changed to focus on other specific topics
There will be increased attention on Staking post-Merge
Low-risk way to deploy funds at scale in case of insufficient alternatives
Q4 could feature additional marketing initiatives to produce campaign synergies
Diminishing returns from running ads repeatedly to what is largely the same audience
Does not directly target the main pain-points of volume rETH demand & volume
Difficult to model attribution & track some marketing metrics (such as CTR & CPA)
Opportunity cost if funds can instead be deployed on other initiatives
It would be great to see some discussion below with a view to subsequently vote on whether or not to proceed with Bankless Q4 sponsorship!
When do we have to commit to renewing our contract with Bankless?
If we renew, I think we need to focus entirely on rETH and not even mention running a node with RP. It should be swap all your ETH for rETH and earn rewards by just keeping the token in your wallet etc…
Not an immediate fan of this proposal. Can we compare past results and see growth in our community compared to using these funds for a hackathon or to get measurable users into the community?
I paid to get my way into the community and think that we should lure talented developers and community members into the community with grants and rewards and to get free marketing help via the content channel available. Thanks for listening.
If we renew, I think we need to focus entirely on rETH and not even mention running a node with RP.
Hard disagree here.
Rocketpool is so awesome because rETH helps NOs. If we just mention rETH then people will rightly question how this is different from Lido/Coinbase etc. and assume it’s also centralized or that our decentralization statement is bogus.
We need to promote the fact that when staking with rETH you help more NOs to be created. That is Rocketpools big advantage and we should shout it from the rooftops!
As much as I love the Bankless guys and having supported the first sponsorship I now believe we must focus our attention on other pressing subjects, like incentives and grants. I think the bankless audience is already aware of Rocket Pool. Those who haven’t joined our ranks yet might need additional reasons like incentives or more ways to use rETH on defi to help with their choice.
I feel like people may have ad fatigue at this point. It’s when you hear or see the same ad too many times and it just becomes background noise. Putting the money towards incentives could be the tipping point we need to get enough trade volume for the link oracle and/or cex. If we do run the ads, I agree on focusing entirely on rETH or running a node if the deposit pool flips in the future. This will help balance the dp and prevent confusion.
If there is ad fatigue, we could still renew and ask for a quick message at the start: “This ad-free episode is brought to you by Rocket Pool.” I don’t think anyone has pointed out yet that any ad space purchased by RP also denies competitor ads.
I’m not providing an opinion here, just making some points that I didn’t see here already.
I am currently against pDAO spending on more Bankless ads, at least at the moment. The pDAO treasury is quite limited with the community priority focused on rETH liquidity incentives. There’s also a backlog of very worthy grant recipients that I think is important to award through the pDAO properly.
At current RPL prices the $78k/mo cost for Bankless equates to about 30% of each period’s inflation; for this to be sustainable, we’d have to work that in between the 50/30/20 split of Incentives/Grants/Reserves.
Additionally, though not ratified yet, the first pDAO budget proposal has left off marketing spending as a viable category so if there is desire to fund Bankless ads, we will need to push to modify the budget (I know a few want marketing included still anyways).
Echoing what others have said, I think unless we can confidently say that Bankless marketing will have a higher ROI than liquidity incentives, we should pass.
IMO Bankless is most valuable in terms of brand awareness and legitimacy, rather than conversion. Maybe it’s anecdotal, but it didn’t appear that Bankless ads drove a lot of activity to either NOs or rETH deposits. Given the relatively high expense and our lack of confidence that it actually moves the needle on growth, I’d likely vote to pass.
I believe many Rocketpoolers would agree that the ad was a good one, and it’s baked into some excellent episodes which will withstand the test of time.
However it’s great point here that the budget ratification has already diverted funds away from marketing. If we were to re-address marketing in short term, I believe that branching out to new audiences would make sense.
The protocol speaks for itself, especially amidst the current dialog surrounding censorship. Let’s apply funds toward making rETH the most available and most decentralized liquid staking derivative.
I am glad we went with the Bankless Q3 sponsorship. It gave Rocket Pool exposure around the time of the merge. Bankless staked their RPL instead of selling.
But I think the results are a bit disappointing. I expected more traction, more rETH stakers. I watch a lot of Bankless episodes and to be honest the ads are quite crowded.
$78k/month is quite a lot. I’d rather we spent the money on trying other marketing opportunities or on liquidity incentives.
I think the Q3 Ads were good to hammer Rocketpool into the Bankless Audience, i think there will be diminishing returns for a Q4 and the Money is likely better spent on liquidity incentives. Maybe we will find other ways to sprinkle RP Ads into Bankless runs here and there.
I think the ads were unfortunate in their timing, as they occurred during the bear until the local bottom. Therefore a true assessment of effect is hard to make.
We know that there are viewers, we know that the ads were viewed x amount of times, and we can project the viewer count.
So if the ads were successfully viewed and delivered but uptake of reth and NO wasn’t measurably increased then that would suggest either advertising isn’t effective for this particular product outcome, or macro effect (bear, war, Celsius, tusd collapse) was greater.
Are incentives known to be more effective than advertising? Anyone else remember “wen marketing”? Is it really wise to pull marketing at the time of the most significant event in Blockchain history, the activation and realization of rocket pools product and assume liquidity incentives will drive demand?
I am once again asking the RPL community to consider increasing inflation in this critical time for growth. The next 12 months are critical. We are pinching pennies because our allocations are so small. I think we should be aggressive about marketing, liquidity incentives, and partnerships, to lock in as much stake as we can get.
In the meantime, I would love to see some metrics on how much our Discord community grew since the campaign began along with Twitter metrics on social media mentions.
The already mentioned diminishing returns for a back-to-back campaign + apparently limited effects on NO / rETH activity make me reticent to renew immediately. pDAO doesn’t currently budget for marketing efforts, so funding would have to come from the existing reserves. And the Bankless sponsorship cost is significant compared to pDAO income.
Our current periode already includes the run-up to the merge + a few weeks thereafter, which is fine. I do expect general interest in staking to gradually build up after the merge, but this will happen over time rather than all at once. And especially towards the unlocking of beacon chain withdrawals. So, I’d prefer to book another Bankless campaign sometime next year in the run-up to the withdrawals HF. Ideally also coinciding with more favorable (bullish) market conditions!
Mav has a great summary in the original post with the pros and cons. If we did re-up, I think our ads should just focus entirely on rETH and its value proposition/unique qualities as an LSD. We don’t have a lot left in the pDAO budget, but I’m wondering if we have sufficient amounts to buy a smaller, more targeted packaging of advertising with Bankless in Q4? Staking is going to take off post-merge, and inasmuch as our current advertising has tried to cover a lot of different substantive bases, it would be good to keep us on the air with something more targeted.
@maverick - as our CM/marketing person, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on the value of re-upping given our Q3 run with them.
The sponsorship has been great but most of the audience are well aware of Rocket Pool now. I think we should hold off on another sponsorship for now and maybe revisit in the future. (for example: closer to a bull-run, after major protocol updates, or long enough that the Bankless audience has diversified)