In 2022, brands spent $297.5 billion on marketing in the U.S. Globally, advertisers spent over $1 trillion. Even with the prospect of recession looming, many marketers expect their budgets to increase in 2023. It’s not getting any easier to reach audiences in Web2. As fast as the digital media landscape has evolved, it’s still fundamentally broken for brands, artists and fan communities.
Brands contend with fragmentation. Today, a typical media mix for a major advertiser includes influencer campaigns, paid social, short-form video, TV ads, email, performance marketing and more. Once you find your community across this fractured ecosystem, your relationship with it is mediated. You’re reliant on third-party platforms and limited by third-party data.
Straith Schreder is the executive creative director at Palm NFT Studio. This op-ed is part of CoinDesk'sAnd while digital fan communities have more influence than ever before, they lack the ability and incentive to meaningfully participate in a brand’s story online. You can like a post, but you can never own it.
Web3 offers an alternative. What non-fungible token-based experiences empower, above all else, is connection. You can encode rights in a way that remunerates creators. You can give communities a stake in what they love. You can make pieces that point to what’s possible with art and technology; that live, breathe and react to the moment.