This discussion is to gauge the interest and support (or opposition) and gather feedback to launch high-impact content marketing campaigns on leading business news sites (CNBC, NBC News, AP News, Wall Street Journal, and more) to reach mainstream audiences and elevate Polkadot’s branding and awareness across households. Any advice or recommendations from supporters on next steps to convert into treasury proposals would be greatly appreciated.

Background

Decentralized marketing relies heavily on tapping Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and reaching their followers using social media channels like X-Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc. This ‘decentralized’ approach to content marketing, also known as social media marketing, has been highly effective in creating impactful discussions designed to reach a specific target audience (young adults, technical, web3-savvy). However, the limitations of reach from an overlapping base of users on the same social channels will magnify the ineffectiveness of marketing budgets.

Opportunity

The same model used by KOLs on social media is available on leading news and media publishers like CNBC, NBC News, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Fox News, and the Associated Press.

Decentralized Autonomous Teams

To avoid conflicts of interest with the news editorial staff, the promotional team of writers and producers are typically from a separate entity or third-party contractors. Another third-party company manages the ad creative, ad-serving, optimizations and reporting to promote and drive traffic to the sponsored content.

Amplification of Polkadot’s Brand

Much like a social media provider provides KOL’s and their sponsors access to its users and marketing tools to disseminate content to their followers; a news publisher plays the same role providing access to its users and marketing tools to promote and drive traffic to sponsored content.

Strategic Planning

This content marketing plan can strategically position Polkadot as a thought leader by creating informative content about Web3 that addresses the pain points and interests of users seeking information on credible news platforms they trust. Simultaneously reaching audiences across multiple news platforms ensures those users associate Polkadot with trusted sources, while maximizing Polkadot’s brand visibility and reputation.

In addition, custom and premium ad placements can be negotiated and included in content marketing packages for the release of Polkadot 2.0 (or any other messaging) with Polkadot-themed ad creatives across all ad slots on the homepages or tech main pages for that day.

Package Pricing

A full series of sponsored content package will include the below, but may vary based on the budget, availability, and campaign requirements:

-4 video episodes or 4 digital articles and sponsor landing page

-Custom content creation

-Standard banner and custom rich-media ad production

-Ad impressions, and campaign management over 6-8 months

A Sponsored Content Package price can range by the size of the publisher based on reach (devices, households, viewers, daily traffic) = small $300,000 - large $700,000

The above cost estimates will cover the sponsored content package and any remaining balance would be allocated to direct or programmatic media buys or can be returned to the Treasury. I plan to submit bounty proposals separating each news publisher, instead of one proposal for all publishers, as I am not sure how many the community would like to include. I highly recommend trying and lock in a minimum of 3 (1 small and 2 large) news publishers, but ideally 5 (1 small, 2 medium and 2 large), which would prevent any Layer 1 competitors from imitating.

Campaign level reporting across placements and devices include:
-Delivered impressions, Engagements, Interactions, External Clicks, Video Completions, Video Duration, Time Spent

Proposer’s Background

I am the founder and president of a rich-media ad-serving technology company that provides high impact ad solutions for advertisers and agencies’ campaigns across the leading web publishers and networks. For the past 2 decades, we have worked with countless brands across all industries delivering high impact campaigns with measurable results and provide custom ad solutions for the news publishers mentioned that drive their users to sponsored content. We are privately held (not owned by a big corporation) and do not collect, track, or resell any personally identifiable information through our ad-serving or creative management platforms. As a Polkadot/Kusama investor and 6 parachain supporter, it would be a privilege and honor to be part of making Polkadot a household brand.

For those that support this proposal it would be great to hear any recommendations, changes, additional details, or other suggestions that you believe will gain the support of others; as well as for those that object, any issues, or concerns that I can address to gain your support would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time and look forward to your responses!

#2144 *REMOVED due to lack of interest