Cracking the Web3 Attribution Code & Examining Wallet Level Data’s Role in Crypto

One thing that Web3 marketers seem to have struggled with for many years is which of their campaigns are actually driving conversions for them on-chain. To this point, one can see that when it comes to traditional online marketing, tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, etc can only pinpoint which ads led to purchases on specific websites.

However, the tables quickly turn when talking about crypto, as the leap from Web2 (say a social media ad or website visit) into Web3 (a blockchain transaction) breaks this tracking trail. The result is an attribution ‘black box,’ which obfuscates key metrics like ‘Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)’ — especially in instances where the final “conversion” is a token purchase or an NFT mint.

All of these issues stem from the fact that Web2 attribution methods simply don’t translate well when it comes to decentralized ecosystems. For starters, traditional analytics rely on cookies and user logins to follow a customer’s path, which while effective in certain scenarios, cannot track users when transitioning from off-chain (Web2) environments to on-chain (Web3) activities.

A crypto user might click on a Twitter ad and visit a dApp landing page, yet if they then switch to their wallet to execute a transaction on the Ethereum network, Google Analytics remains blind to it. This gap has real consequences as highlighted by a 2024 report which revealed that 72% of marketing teams globally are struggling to bridge the disconnect between blockchain activity and their overall business outcomes.

An ongoing evolution

Over the past two years, the push to solve this puzzle has accelerated with a wave of startups and tools emerging. In fact, according to a study released late last year, more than $1 billion has been invested in Web3 marketing and social startups, with attribution/analytics ventures among the top-funded.

Not only that, the study also revealed that about $277 million in new funding poured into such startups over the past year alone (with roughly 80% of this amount being used for attribution and analytics related purposes).

What this clearly suggests is that industry folk are betting that better Web3 attribution will be key to unlocking the next phase of crypto’s ongoing growth. At the cutting edge of this evolution is the idea of using the blockchain as an anchor for attribution. Instead of tracking just clicks and cookies, marketers can now follow wallets – in a privacy-conscious way – so that they can see an individual’s full journey from ad impression to on-chain action.

In this broader context, Addressable, a wallet-based targeting platform for Web3 marketers, has launched a “wallet-aware” attribution feature which ties ad clicks to on-chain conversions by capturing Web2 site events via a pixel and linking them with on-chain outcomes (fees, token swaps, NFT mints) under the associated wallet address.

As a result, marketers can finally get a comprehensive dashboard view of their true crypto ROAS. For example, users can finally see which campaign led to 50 wallet connects or 30 on-chain conversions worth 10 ETH, all broken down by which domain or creative delivered those results.

Lastly, such a wallet-centric view can also unlock tactics that were previously impossible, like Web3 retargeting. For example, if a user visits a dApp and connects their wallet but doesn’t complete any transaction, marketers can re-engage that high-intent user, with Addressable linking on-chain wallet behavior with off-chain signals so that teams can serve ads to these users across platforms such as X (Twitter), Reddit, or crypto-native ad networks.

Why all the fuss?

From the outside looking in, wallet data enables much richer segmentation of audiences as marketers can filter and target users based on on-chain behavior and assets (like distinguishing an NFT collector from a DeFi yield farmer and tailoring messages to each).

Every wallet that connects to a dApp becomes a profile enriched with data such as what tokens and NFTs it holds, which chains it’s active on, whether it’s a first-time user or a “whale,” even what crypto communities or influencers it follows off-chain.

Using these insights, campaign organizers can target high-value wallets (say, those holding significant stablecoin balances) with special promotions, or exclude users who already hold a competitor’s token.

Another breakthrough is the application of lookalike modeling to wallet analytics. By analyzing the traits of wallets that transact the most (i.e. on-chain behavior patterns and even off-chain social signals), Addressable is able to find “new users who behave just like” the best ones.

An increasingly digitized future ahead

For crypto founders and growth leads, these capabilities stand to be transformative, especially in an era of increasingly lean budgets and skeptical investors. By finally linking two seemingly disparate world's, i.e. Web2 and Web3, wallet-level attribution can help crypto marketing come of age. What was once a guessing game can become a data-driven discipline with the days of running campaigns “without knowing which ones actually move the needle” being numbered. Interesting times ahead, to say the least!