From Distractive for the Community
Hi Polkadot fam 
As some of you may know, the team at Distractive has been working hard in 2025 to deliver a multi-channel marketing campaign. We would like to share some early results + key insights we’ve discovered along the way.
The Mission: Put Polkadot back at the center of Web3 conversations in 2025. We want to reignite excitement amongst crypto natives who may have forgotten or dismissed Polkadot over the last couple of years, as well as reaching new audiences that have yet been untapped. Why now? Because we cannot wait until the next bull run to gain people’s attention or trust—we want to build anticipation for all that’s happening and all that’s coming within our amazing ecosystem.
About This Campaign: “Unlock Tomorrow” is our multi-channel marketing campaign name (NOT a tagline for the entire Polkadot brand). It’s simply how we communicate this message across different platforms and channels, with each audience getting key messages on what “unlocking tomorrow” means for them specifically.
Instagram has emerged as the top-performing platform, driving the lowest cost per subscriber and the highest engagement across channels. The Crypto OG audience segment stands out with a 2% CTR and the lowest cost per lead among all target audiences.
$90K of $150K Budget Invested, Major Strategic Wins
The Bottom Line: Even with a small budget and tight turnaround times, the first paid media campaign delivered strong early results at scale: over 14 million impressions, an engagement rate above 0.6%, and among tracked website sessions resulting from the campaign, 94% of website visitors were new users to polkadot.com.
With only $90k used towards this ad spend so far, the campaign focused on raising awareness, testing narratives, and capturing early interest among identified target audiences: Crypto OGs, Retail Investors, and Gamers. Early indicators suggest that targeted messaging and smart channel selection can effectively move users from awareness toward meaningful interaction, even beyond the core crypto-native base.
Key Performance Indicators
Total Reach: 14.7 + million impressions across all channels
Budget Efficiency: Cost per engagement dropped 50% through optimization
Engagement Success: 0.61% rate consistently above 0.5% industry standard
Audience Expansion: 94% of website visitors are new to polkadot.com
Platform Discovery: Instagram delivering an engagement rate of up to and over 2% (2x benchmark)- Best Audience: Crypto OGs showing 2% CTR with lowest acquisition costs
Strategic Wins vs. Lessons Learned
What’s Crushing It:
Instagram outperforming every other platform by massive margins
Values-based messaging driving 2x more engagement than technical features
Crypto OG audience delivering premium performance at low cost
Cross-platform optimization reducing costs while improving results
What We Fixed Fast:
Reddit failed across all metrics → Eliminated entirely
Technical messaging fell flat → Pivoted to emotional triggers
Broad targeting wasteful → Focused on high-intent segments
Campaign Architecture: Three Phases, One Funnel
| Phase | Goal | Key KPIs | Strategic Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1: Brand Awareness | Drive visibility and interest | Engagement Rate, CPM, Cost per Engagement | Test messaging & build mindshare |
| Phase 2: Consideration | Move users from awareness to intent | Website Sessions, Email Signups, Website engagement | Capture and qualify interest |
| Phase 3: Conversion & User Growth | Activate users and grow ecosystem participation | Onchain activity, Developer engagement, Platform signups | Deliver measurable ecosystem growth |
Phase 1: Brand Awareness (March - Ongoing - Evergreen)
Goals:
- Build campaigns and content streams which drive brand awareness and enthusiasm.
- Test and refine messaging per audience/platform.
KPIs:
- Engagement Rate
- CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions)
- Cost per Engagement
Audiences targeted: GEO targeting of USA and Canada
- Crypto OGs
- Retail Investors
- Gamers
Platforms used:
- Social: Twitter, Reddit, Instagram
- Display: Ad360 (Web2 display placements) and Slise (Web3 native platforms)
Approach:
- A/B tested 3 distinct messaging directions
- Measured Engagement Rate (ER), CPM, and Cost per Engagement
Results to date:
- Spend: $84K
- Current daily spend circa $1,000
- Impressions: 14.7 Million
- CPM: $5.73
- Engagements: 93,000
- Combined Engagement Rate: 0.64%
Messaging A/B Test: Learnings
Three core messaging types were tested:
- Gamers - resonated best with Community Empowerment (“Your game, your rules”).
- Retail Investors - engaged most effectively with Cultural Shift (“Bet against Big Tech”).
- Crypto OGs - found Cultural Shift to be the most compelling (“You were promised decentralization…”).
Key takeaways:
- Audiences responded best to emotionally charged, values-based messaging rather than technical value props.
- Cross-platform performance validated the importance of matching messages to audience and platform (e.g., Instagram surprisingly effective for Crypto OGs).
- Based on this, we’re evolving future creatives to reflect these winning narratives.
Some example ads:
Link to Phase 1 Dashboard: Distractive, Inc. | Unlock Campaign - Community
Review of Phase 1 Ad Campaign:
TLDR:
The Engagement Rate is increasing, CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions) is decreasing, this is enabling a lower Cost per Engagement which is the goal at this stage.
Detailed Review:
During the messaging A/B test, the Engagement Rate remained steady at around 0.80%. However, since concluding the test and optimizing the campaigns, there has been a noticeable improvement, with engagement rates on platforms like X and Instagram rising to over 1%. The introduction of display advertising on May 11th led to a predictable drop in Engagement Rate but also brought a significant reduction in CPM. Most importantly, Cost per Engagement, the key metric in balancing engagement and cost, has steadily declined from over $1 to just above $0.50 following the launch of the display campaigns. Instagram emerged as the top-performing platform, achieving a 1.19% engagement rate across all Phase 1 campaigns. Among audience segments, Retail Investors generated 7,935 Tweet engagements with a 1.30% engagement rate, while Crypto OGs delivered 10,846 Instagram profile visits with a 1.32% click-through rate.
Key Takeaways:
- Instagram was the top-performing platform, outperforming X and Reddit across key metrics: Engagement Rate, Clickthrough Rate (CTR), and Cost per Click (CPC). For context, industry benchmarks for engagement on social platforms typically range between 0.50% and 1.00%, so Instagram’s performance, consistently exceeding 1%, is considered strong. It also exceeded expectations performing very well for both the Crypto OG and Retail Investor audience, showing great promise for the future use of this platform.
- The highest CTR was achieved by the Crypto OG audience on Instagram at 1.32%. This result suggests that reaching this audience on a less expected platform, like Instagram, can be a highly effective strategy.
- Reddit, on the other hand, underperformed across all three target audiences in Engagement Rate, CTR, and CPC. Given that typical Reddit campaign CTRs hover around 0.50% and this campaign’s fell below even that, Reddit was removed from Phase 1 and significantly reduced its budget for Phase 2.
Phase 2: Consideration (May 9 - Ongoing - Evergreen)
While Phase 1 continues to build awareness, Phase 2 is now running in parallel to guide the most engaged users toward deeper consideration and early action. The early signals are encouraging: the campaign is seeing a high rate of new-user traffic and strong performance from platforms like Instagram, helping validate which channels and messages drive real action.
Goal: Guide users from awareness to active consideration and early participation.
KPIs:
- Website sessions
- Website users
- New Users Vs Returning Users
- Email (Newsletter) Registrants
Approach:
- Drive qualified traffic to targeted landing pages, with tailored messaging, links to relevant polkadot.com pages and a CTA to join the Polkadot newsletter
- 3 dedicated landing pages (one per audience)
- Traffic split approx evenly across audiences
- Main CTA: Newsletter signups
Results to date (Below data up to 29 May - 20 days of campaign):
- Spend: $5,000
- Total website sessions (those tracked): 10,685
- Total website users (those tracked): 9986
- % of users being new users: 94%
- Email Registrants: 95 (Tracked on Hubspot but not included in below attached dashboard which tracks Google Analytics results)
- Best performing platform: Instagram ($52.12 cost per email subscriber)
- Best performing segment: Crypto OG ($37 cost per lead and 2% CTR)
- CPC
- CPC Instagram: $3.19
CPC Reddit: $0.95
- CPC Instagram: $3.19
- CTR
- CTR Instagram: 3.70%
CTR Reddit: 0.257%
- CTR Instagram: 3.70%
Link to Phase 2 dashboard: Distractive, Inc. | Unlock Campaign - Community
Review of Phase 2 Ad Campaign:
Phase 2 was only recently launched and therefore results are limited due to the small budget. That said, positive results have already been seen from Instagram. The hope is to launch ads on X imminently and performance will closely be monitored.
This is the first time there’s been the ability to track user conversions and report back to the ad platforms to improve performance (GDPR compliant). Remarketing audiences are being populated to test different incentives and have strengthened our relationships with social ad platforms by holding periodic meetings with their teams. These remarketing audiences can also be used for future campaigns, such as the Polkadot App campaign.
The plan is to expand the campaigns to other platforms (X, Google, YouTube, Facebook and potentially TikTok amongst others), testing out different media types and formats and ultimately aiming to find the best converting platforms.
Phase 3 = Expansion: Shifting Focus to Developers + User growth and onchain activity (Launching July - Evergreen)
With awareness and consideration campaigns under way, Phase 3 will focus on activating users, driving onchain activity, and engaging builders (pending approval for additional ad spend). Existing target audiences will have actionable CTAs that drive them to places like the website & onboarding experience where they can take actions to swiftly join the Polkadot DAO such as opening a wallet, getting DOT, and more.
We’re intentionally looking for ways to drive users to meaningful onchain activities that they can take as educated, empowered, and excited members of the community. This results not only in growth of the Polkadot community, but also increases loyalty to the brand and more champions for Polkadot’s long term goals.
Finally, we will spend a great deal of time in Phase 3 of the campaign engaging the developers audience. We specifically chose to focus on this audience at this point in the year to align with the rollout of product launches and technical advancements that will give developers a reason why and tangible actions to build on Polkadot over anywhere else. It’s no secret that the launch of Elastic Scaling, Hub, and future Polkadot product tools only enables developers to roll up their sleeves and get started now.
So with that being said, we intend to partner with the community on all the ways we can drive developer participation in the Polkadot ecosystem. Current teams we see exciting work from include Parity, PaperMoon, and more.
Goals:
- Drive user participation across key Polkadot Dapps, projects, and initiatives.
- Engage developers and onboard them into the ecosystem (especially with Solidity smart contracts launching on Polkadot in Q3).
- Enable the community to contribute to and co-own Unlock campaign momentum.
Planned Initiatives:
-
Developer Outreach:
- Early-stage conversations are underway with teams like Magenta Labs to co-develop builder-focused lead gen campaigns.
- Testing developer-focused messaging
-
Community-Driven Content:
- Create ways for the community to amplify the campaign and share ownership.
-
Project Campaigns:
-
Polkadot App ad campaign (In conjunction with Parity, The Polkadot Community Foundation, and the Marketing Bounty),
-
Potentially:
- Mythical Games (FIFA Rivals, Pudgy Penguins)
- Unlock Polkadot eLearning modules & content hub (built in partnership with Marketing Bounty, AirLyft, Braille).
- Other ecosystem project campaigns.
So, Is It Working?
Results to date have been encouraging, particularly the ability to identify which narratives actually move the needle for different audiences. Real traction is being seen in awareness, and early signs of qualified interest too.
That said, the aim is to build with the community and make sure this momentum turns into meaningful growth for the Polkadot ecosystem.
What’s Working
-
Narrative Insights: Learnings have been made as to which storylines drive engagement and action across different audience segments.
-
Instagram Performance: The platform is outperforming others in both cost per subscriber and engagement rate.
-
Crypto OG Segment: Strongest performance in terms of CTR and cost per lead—this segment is proving high intent.
-
New Audience Reach: 94% of website users are new, showing effective expansion for the ecosystem’s visibility.
Areas To Improve
-
Conversion Funnel: Strong traffic is not translating proportionally to sign-ups; optimizing landing pages is a priority.
-
Channel Efficiency: Reddit underperformed and was deprioritized, new platforms are planned to be launched imminently.
-
Creative Testing: Need to accelerate iteration on messaging and formats to better match what’s driving results.
What we’re hoping to hear from you
As we continue refining and expanding this campaign, we’d really appreciate the community’s perspective on a few strategic areas. Your feedback shapes how we invest the remaining budget.
Platform Expansion Strategy
- TikTok for new audience recruitment: Short-form content for younger builders?
- LinkedIn for enterprise adoption: B2B outreach for institutional partnerships?
- YouTube for education: Long-form tutorials and ecosystem deep-dives?
- Discord/Telegram: Direct community engagement and support?
Audience Development Priorities
- International expansion: Beyond US/Canada—which markets offer best ROI?
- University outreach: Target computer science programs and blockchain courses?
- Enterprise decision-makers: Add corporate developer recruitment to consumer focus?
Ecosystem Integration Opportunities
- Project partnerships: Which teams should we prioritize for co-marketing campaigns?
- Community amplification: How can we make community members campaign co-owners?
- Developer incentives: Should marketing budget support hackathons or builder grants?
Success Metrics Evolution
- Beyond engagement: What ecosystem health indicators should drive strategy?
- Long-term value: How do we measure lasting community growth vs. temporary attention?
- Competitive positioning: Which metrics matter most for Polkadot vs. other L1s?
We’re committed to evolving this campaign in ways that reflect the community’s priorities, and your input will help shape what comes next.
For any questions, ideas or input please feel free to comment on this post, or if you’d feel more comfortable speaking in private then feel free to email digital@distractive.xyz or reach out on Telegram to @nate_ham or Eric @buythedip_Eric
The Bottom Line: Momentum That Matters
Phase 1 proved we can reach new audiences at scale with messages that work.
Phase 2 is converting that attention into ecosystem participation.
Phase 3 will focus on the builders and users who determine Polkadot’s long-term success.
We’re not just buying impressions—we’re building the marketing engine that will serve Polkadot’s growth for years to come. Every strategic decision creates lasting advantages that compound over time.
The community’s input shapes where we go next. Help us make every dollar count.
We’re just getting started, and we’d love to sharpen this next phase with your input. Appreciate any and all feedback!
Thanks for reading! 