Coinbase

Primary Challenge

Coinbase needed to acquire new traders across Southeast Asia from audiences with verified on-chain behaviour, not broad interest proxies. Four obstacles shaped what that required:

Key Obstacles

• Restricted inventory: Google and Meta apply significant restrictions on crypto exchange advertising across key SEA markets.
• Low signal targeting: Standard display networks serve crypto ads against interest categories, not verified wallet activity.
• Credibility barrier: Crypto users in SEA at the consideration stage required trust signals before converting, not just awareness.
• Audience fragmentation: Southeast Asia spans multiple wallet behaviour profiles, requiring segment-level targeting rather than a single unified audience approach.

Standard programmatic channels could not deliver the audience precision Coinbase needed in Southeast Asia. Google and Meta restrict crypto exchange promotion across several SEA markets, cutting off access to the region's most active trading demographics. Broad interest-based targeting on general display networks produces clicks from users with no verified on-chain history, inflating CPA and reducing the likelihood of trade completion.

Blockchain-Ads provided direct access to wallet-verified audiences at scale across the region through four capabilities:

• On-chain audience segments: Campaigns reached High Value Traders, DeFi Whales, Web3 Natives, High Value Holders, and Crypto Traders, each defined by verified transaction behaviour.
• SEA publisher coverage: The network provided access to crypto and finance inventory across Southeast Asian markets.
• Segment-level budget control: Spend was allocated independently per audience, enabling direct performance comparison across wallet profiles.
• Sign-up optimisation: Campaigns optimised toward new trader acquisition from the first week of spend.

• New traders acquired: 8,214 across 5 audience segments over 2 months.
• Impressions: 1.5M+ delivered across Southeast Asian markets.
• Clicks: 24,245 generated across display and native formats.
• CTR: 1.73% blended across display and native formats.

The objective was to establish which audience segments and creative angles produced the strongest sign-up rates across SEA. Display ads ran across crypto and finance publisher inventory in the region. Three creative angles launched simultaneously: an incentive-led creative highlighting up to $1,073 in potential earnings, a trust-led creative positioning Coinbase as the most trusted crypto platform, and an education-led angle introducing how crypto works. The incentive and trust angles generated the strongest early engagement against High Value Traders and Web3 Natives. The education angle indexed better against Crypto Traders and High Value Holders, identifying a secondary conversion path.

Budget shifted toward the two highest-performing segments from Phase 1. Native ads were added alongside display to deepen engagement through in-feed placements on crypto content sites. A security-focused creative variant was introduced, leading with "Protected, Secure" messaging to address the credibility barrier identified in Phase 1. The incentive creative continued running against warm audiences already exposed to the brand. High Value Traders and Web3 Natives maintained the strongest conversion rates across this phase.

The final phase concentrated spend across all five segments with creative tailored to each conversion stage. An accessibility-led angle was introduced for retargeting, leading with "Jump Start Your Crypto Portfolio" and "The easiest way to Buy & Sell Crypto" for users who had clicked but not yet signed up. DeFi Whales, despite lower transaction volume, produced $1.24M in attributed trading activity on the lowest spend allocation of the five segments. The incentive creative drove the highest volume of sign-up completions across the final two weeks.