Crypto Media Buying on CoinGecko, CMC and CoinDesk

What you are actually buying on these sites: A CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap banner is not a click channel and should never be judged as one. On the flights I have measured, post-click conversion on the big listing-site display units sits roughly an order of magnitude below the same creative running on a network buy, and a large share of the recorded clicks does not survive a two-second session filter. What these properties sell that nothing else sells is position: the token page somebody checks before they size a position, the listing row, the newsletter that lands at eight in the morning in front of a desk with a mandate. Bought for that and read on assisted conversion, branded search volume and direct traffic, the spend defends itself. Bought on CTR, it never will. Where the money goes: Display and token-page sponsorships on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. Display, newsletter and category sponsorship on CoinDesk, The Block, Blockworks and DL News. Data-surface placements on DeFiLlama and Messari, which reach a smaller audience that reads more carefully. Podcast and newsletter reads where the host will accept a distinct landing path. I plan across those as one buy with one frequency ceiling, because the audiences overlap heavily and the third impression of the same unit in a morning is wasted money. What I negotiate: Published rate cards on the majors are opening positions. Quarterly commitment, off-peak weeks, bundled newsletter inventory and unsold token-page slots all move price, and the same sequence of asks tends to work across the category. Every insertion order I sign asks for three things: a third-party ad server tag, GAM or Flashtalking, so you count your own impressions rather than accepting theirs; make-good terms written before the flight rather than negotiated after a shortfall; and named placement reporting rather than a site-level total. A publisher who refuses the ad server tag does not get bought. That rule alone has removed several properties from plans. Not included: No editorial. I do not buy coverage, place articles that read as reporting, or work with press-release distribution networks. Sponsored content runs labelled as sponsored or it does not run. No coordination with anybody's market maker and no campaign timed to a price event. No inclusion in listing rankings, trending positions or any surface a site sells as organic. If a sales representative offers you one, that is the moment to change vendors, and I will say so in writing. Who this is wrong for: A pre-product token hoping that six figures of banner spend manufactures volume. It does not, and the traffic will show you why within two weeks. Anyone whose success measure is price. Teams without a landing page that can hold a reader for longer than a bounce, because these audiences arrive sceptical and read the docs before they read the hero copy. Projects restricted from marketing in the markets where the inventory actually delivers, which for the majors means a large United States share you may need to exclude and pay for anyway. How it runs: Media is bought on your contracts, invoiced to you by the publisher, in your ad server. I hold no rebate or revenue-share arrangement with any of these properties, which is the reason I can tell you when one of them is not worth renewing. You get the negotiated rate card, the placement-level performance, and a renewal recommendation for each property that says buy again, buy smaller or stop.