Algorand

How Algorand Drove 2,448 Qualified Wallet Activations at a $49 CPA with Blockchain-Ads

−48%

lower CPA — $95 → $49 per Activated Wallet

2,448

qualified wallet activations (funded + dApp interaction)

19M+

verified impressions; 0.62% CTR; $1.02 CPC at scale.

2.07%

click-to-activation rate

Objective

Qualified Wallet Activation + Ecosystem dApp Engagement

Primary KPI

CPA per Activated Wallet (Funded + dApp interaction)

Industry

Layer-1 Blockchain / Web3 Infrastructure

Duration

8 months

Key Markets

North America, Western Europe, India, SEA

About the Brand

Algorand is a Layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain founded by Turing Award winner Silvio Micali, supporting a live ecosystem of DeFi, real-world-asset (RWA), and consumer dApps.

Target Audience: Crypto-active retail users, dApp explorers, developers, and stakers across North America, EU, South Asia, and SEA.
Growth Stage: Enterprise / Established Protocol.

Note on headline metric: "Activated Wallet" is defined as a wallet funded with ALGO that completed at least one ecosystem dApp interaction within seven days of activation.

The Challenge

Drive qualified, on-chain-active wallets into the Algorand ecosystem – funded wallets that performed at least one ecosystem dApp interaction within seven days of activation. However, there were some obstacles:

Vanity-metric trap. Most paid channels available to a Layer-1 deliver clicks and email captures — neither of which correlate with actual wallet behavior.
Audience invisibility. Mainstream platforms have no native targeting layer for "owns a non-Algorand wallet that has interacted with a comparable L1."
Crypto-platform restrictions. Token-related messaging is ad-policy-restricted on Google, Meta, and TikTok.
Attribution drift. Without wallet-level signals, the team could not connect a click to an on-chain action — making spent defense to the foundation board difficult.

Why Blockchain-Ads?

Pre-Blockchain-Ads, Algorand's paid acquisition stack relied on a mix of crypto-publisher direct buys, conference sponsorships, and influencer-led campaigns. Volume was fine; quality was not — and attribution from spend to on-chain activation was effectively impossible. Blockchain-Ads closed all four gaps:

Wallet-level targeting and attribution — the ability to define an audience as 'wallets active on competing L1s' and to confirm on-chain that the funnel converted.
Web3 publisher network — inventory across crypto editorial, DeFi dashboards, and developer media.
Compliance-aware creative — token-narrative messaging on inventory mainstream platforms is rejected.
Wallet retargeting — re-engaging connected wallets without third-party cookies.

Unique Capabilities Leveraged

Cross-chain behavioral segments — Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, and Avalanche wallet data.
dApp-interaction lookalike modeling — new prospects sourced from existing power-user on-chain behavior.
Stake-context targeting — wallets with staking or governance history on other chains.
Privacy-safe retargeting — re-engaging connected-but-not-activated wallets without cookies.

Before launching the campaign, the team aligned three initial strategies: (1) optimize to Activated Wallet, defined as a wallet funded with ALGO that completed a dApp interaction within seven days; (2) avoid bot-skewed inventory entirely (zero tolerance); (3) refresh creative on a 10-day cadence with developer-aware vs. retail-aware variants.

Results

Before Blockchain-Ads → After Blockchain-Ads

CPA (per Activated Wallet): ~$95 → $49
CTR: 0.10% → 0.62%
Click → Activation: 0.71% → 2.07%
7-Day dApp-Interaction Rate (post-activation): 38% → 64%

64% of activated cohorts showed seven-day dApp interaction; a measurable share moved into staking or governance within 30 days. The campaign produced the first fully attributable spend-to-on-chain-activation chain — paid spend tied directly to ecosystem activity in a format the board accepted.

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Inactive-State

Active State

Execution

Phase 1 — Learning (Month 1)

Objective: Identify the wallet segments most predictive of on-chain activation.

Actions:

Four wallet behavioral segments tested in parallel: Multi-chain DeFi power-users (Ethereum + Solana + BNB Chain), Stakers on competing L1s (Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot, Solana), High-balance stablecoin holders (cross-chain USDC/USDT), Governance-active wallets (DAO voting history)
Six creative variants — three retail-narrative, three developer-narrative
Geo split: NA (35%), EU (30%), India (20%), SEA (15%)

Insights:

Stakers on competing L1s converted at 2.8x the rate of generic DeFi users.
Developer-narrative creative drove higher dApp-interaction follow-through; retail-narrative creative drove higher initial wallet creation.
India outperformed expectations on both volume and CPA.

Phase 2 — Consideration (Month 2–3)

Objective: Focus budget on staker and DAO-voter segments; tighten the activation funnel.

Actions:

65% of media reallocated to staker and DAO-voter segments.
Creative production cycle moved to weekly. Vertical-video walkthroughs of "30-second wallet-to-dApp activation" added.
Funnel improvements: wallet-aware activation flow rebuilt to detect non-Algorand wallets and surface a one-click bridge experience, reducing 7-day activation drop-off by ~28%.

Performance Improvements:

CTR climbed 0.31% → 0.71%.
CPC compressed $1.40 → $0.92.
Click-to-activation rate improved 0.94% → 2.18%.

Phase 3 — Activation + Retargeting (Month 4–8)

Objective: Scale activation volume while holding CPA below the $60 internal ceiling.

Actions:

Daily spend lifted 3.2x against winning cohorts.
Wallet-based retargeting for connected but unfunded wallets — re-engaged with messaging tied to active ecosystem incentives.
Behavioral retargeting for users who completed wallet creation but not dApp interaction.
Stake-context targeting activated around two ecosystem incentive launches.
Geo expansion into Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey — all three cleared the CPA threshold.

Outcome:

Steady-state CPA settled at $49.
Retargeted cohorts activated at 2.4x the rate of cold prospecting.
2,448 qualified, activated wallets.

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Launch Similar Campaign

Optimization Framework

Scaling the Partnership

As results compounded, the team doubled down:

Additional Products Adopted

Wallet retargeting — added in Month 2.
dApp-interaction lookalike modeling — added in Month 3.
Premium curated developer-media inventory — added in Month 4.
Stake-context bidding profiles — added for the two foundation ecosystem launches.

Shift from Other Networks

Two crypto-publisher direct buys were paused after underperforming the wallet channel. Conference sponsorships were preserved as branding spend, not counted toward activation.

Defensible CPA, click-to-on-chain attribution, and behavior-segmented audiences — not interest, demographic, or follower-graph proxies.