Robinhood

Robinhood needed to acquire new brokerage account holders beyond saturated social media channels, reaching crypto-native and financially active audiences with demonstrated investment intent.

Three obstacles shaped what that required:

• Channel saturation: Standard social media acquisition channels had reached diminishing returns. Robinhood needed incremental reach across crypto and finance publisher inventory outside Meta and Google.
• Audience quality: Reaching users likely to fund accounts required targeting active crypto holders and retail investors with demonstrated financial intent, not broad demographic audiences.
• Competitive market: US retail trading is highly competitive. Zero-fee positioning needed to reach users actively evaluating alternatives to traditional brokerages like E*TRADE and TD Ameritrade.

Standard acquisition channels were producing diminishing returns. Robinhood needed a network capable of reaching crypto-native and financially active audiences across finance and trading publisher inventory outside the major social platforms.

Blockchain-Ads provided the behavioural targeting infrastructure to reach high-intent investors efficiently across the US market through four capabilities:

• Crypto-native audience targeting: Campaigns reached active wallet holders, token holders, and perpetual traders with verified onchain investment activity.
• Retail investor and Forex trading segments: Interest-based targeting captured traditional investors actively researching commission-free alternatives to established brokerages.
• US finance publisher inventory: Display and native formats covered the crypto, finance, and investment platforms where retail traders research trading decisions.
• CPA-based optimisation: Campaigns optimised toward verified new account openings from day one.

• Accounts opened: 8,275 at $123 CPA
• Initial deposits: $4,750,000 generated across the new account cohort
• ROAS: 4.7x return on $1,020,728 spend
• Impressions: 42.6M+ delivered across US crypto and finance inventory
• CTR: 2.09% blended across all phases
• CPC: $1.14 blended across all phases
• Conversion rate: 0.93% blended across all phases

The acquired cohort deposited $4,750,000 in initial funds across 8,275 accounts, averaging $574 per new account opened. The zero-fee creative effectively drew users with active investment intent, as shown by the deposit behavior of the acquired cohort.

The objective was to establish baseline account opening performance across US crypto and finance audiences. Display and native formats launched simultaneously across crypto, investment, and personal finance publisher inventory. Three creative angles ran in parallel: zero-fee commission-free trading positioning, crypto trading and fractional shares availability, and instant deposit and account activation messaging.

Early data showed the zero-fee angle generating the strongest click-to-registration rates across retail investor and crypto-active segments. Native placements outperformed display on conversion rate in crypto editorial environments.

Budget shifted toward the zero-fee creative as the primary acquisition angle across both formats. Native inventory received increased allocation based on Phase 1 conversion efficiency. The crypto trading angle was retained for active wallet holder segments while instant deposit messaging was deprioritised. Retargeting tags activated against users who had clicked through but not completed account opening, using sequential zero-fee messaging to re-engage high-intent prospects.

Budget consolidated into the zero-fee creative across native and display inventory. Retargeting campaigns scaled against the Phase 1 and Phase 2 non-converter pool. The campaign closed with 8,275 verified new account openings at $123 CPA. It also recorded $4,750,000 in initial deposits across the new account cohort and 4.7x ROAS against campaign spend.