Crypto marketing shows where all marketing is headed: from buying attention via one-off campaigns to creating participation in economic systems where users become stakeholders. Ekaterina Tarasova (co-founder of Idolme PR Agency) and Anita Chaikovskaya (Web3 Growth Advisor) shared insights on how these shifts play out in practice—from modern retention mechanics to the dual challenge of optimizing for both human and AI audiences.
The key trend today is authentic, native storytelling. That’s the foundation for product promotion that feels like a natural extension of that story.
You can’t build lasting trust on viral videos. Systems matter more than virality. The bet is increasingly on recurring formats and serial content—engagement over view counts. Building engagement requires creating a space where the audience feels understood, seen, and ideally included in the process of discovering new possibilities.
Designing Participation
During market downturns—when institutional capital became the main driver—community became critical for smaller projects. For participants, trust builds through self-custody and transparency.
From Airdrops to Stakeholders
Like marketing in general, pure top-down broadcasting is giving way to audience participation—through TikTok replies, Discord groups, co-creation challenges, votes on governance, or exploring new products and what they can do.
“Point farming burned out retail—inflated metrics didn’t convert to organic liquidity,” says Anita Chaikovskaya, Web3 Growth Advisor. “This makes retention even more important. Community is the core of the business model.”
One-time token drops gave way to progressive loyalty systems with game mechanics. Rewards evolved as well:
- Point systems for whitelist access
- Evolving NFT badges that unlock content
- Non-transferable tokens as on-chain reputation proof
Learn-to-earn programs became part of this ecosystem—users earn tokens for completing product modules. Education here isn’t even the goal. It’s a side effect: gamification drives engagement, product knowledge grows as a result.
“Users value what they earn,” says Ekaterina Tarasova, co-founder of Idolme PR Agency. “Community-driven approaches show 2-5x retention and 3-8x lower user acquisition costs versus one-time drops.”
Trust Over Reach
Micro-influencers with relevant, active audiences often bring more users than mega-bloggers with millions of followers. Crypto influencers average 5.2% engagement—well above traditional categories like fashion, beauty, or lifestyle. Working with influencers shows 4-6x ROI compared to paid ads (Facebook/Instagram ads, search).
“The focus used to be just reach—how many millions see a post,” Ekaterina explains. “Now we look more at trust scores and audience quality. Community relevance and engagement weigh more than follower count.”
Transparency Wins
Projects use dashboards with on-chain metrics (TVL dynamics, wallet activity on Dune) to make claims verifiable. Public data weighs more than words.
Key opinion leaders (KOLs) rely more on public data (tokenomics, transaction history, smart contract audits) when evaluating projects, moving beyond simple ad integrations.
Personalization changed: instead of cookies and email lists, crypto often lets you segment audiences by real on-chain behavior. NFT minting, token staking, DeFi transactions—all recorded on public blockchains.
Analytics platforms let you identify Web3 users, track wallet behavior, and connect this data to marketing funnels. Use cases include airdrops for long-term holders based on ownership history, personalized messages for whale accounts, and retargeting wallets with incomplete transactions.
“On-chain transparency changes how we work with influencers too,” Anita adds. “Audiences can sometimes see ambassador payments, and projects can track results (TVL, active wallets). Token launches can include KOL rounds where influencers get tokens at discounted valuations—becoming investors, not just promoters.”
Invisible Infrastructure: Localization at Scale
The more successful a web3 product, the less it mentions web3. Major brands launch loyalty programs on blockchain rails without mentioning the tech. Messengers embed crypto wallets and dApps—for users, these are just “new features,” not crypto products.
“Marketing sells transaction speed and borderless access, not decentralization,” Ekaterina notes. “In Asia, these messengers became operating systems for Web3.”
Region defines not just where to find audiences, but what to tell them.
In Korea (16.29 million users, 96% through KakaoTalk), Naver dominates over Google—campaigns build around Naver Blogs, Naver Cafés, and local media. KakaoTalk with integrated Kaia blockchain became the crypto community hub.
In Vietnam, where grassroots crypto adoption is among the world’s highest (with estimates suggesting over 20% of the population owns crypto), social proof is particularly effective—surveys show around three-quarters of investors rely on peer recommendations. Telegram is the main platform for trading, airdrops, and news.
In Argentina (30% crypto penetration, inflation hit ~200% a year ago), stablecoins make up 60%+ of all crypto transactions—versus roughly 45% globally.
“Brands targeting global audiences often need multiple regional narratives,” Anita emphasizes. “In Korea, ecosystem integration into familiar mega apps matters. In Vietnam, social proof and peer-to-peer mechanics work. In LatAm, dollar pegs and financial incentives matter most.”
Invisible tech + cultural relevance = frictionless adoption. Users get benefits without the cognitive load of learning the technology. But marketing now serves a second audience as well—one where invisibility doesn’t work at all. Algorithms demand maximum explicitness.
Dual Audience Reality
Much of search is already zero-click: for crypto, an estimated 60% of traffic now resolves as answers straight in Google results, according to recent SEO analytics. Now AI is eating search—users get answers through AI assistants, bypassing search engines entirely. As a result, LLM optimization is replacing SEO.
Modern marketing works for two audiences: human and AI. And the second is growing faster, as in DeFi, an increasing share of transactions comes from autonomous AI agents with their own wallets.
For marketers, this means shifting priorities: content structure matters as much as visuals, data matters more than metaphors, and structure matters more than design, as AI only processes text and numbers.
“There aren’t many specific LLM optimization frameworks yet. Most techniques are good SEO and UX that always existed,” Ekaterina observes. “The difference is that structure and semantics moved from ‘nice to have’ to ‘critical.’ AI doesn’t forgive bad information architecture.”
In a sense, AI and human audience requirements are starting to align and complement each other. Structure, transparency, measurability work for both. AI will likely ignore bad information architecture. But people are also less willing to spend attention filling in missing context for projects.
Native storytelling around community problems is also about structure: building content around what matters to the audience, on their turf. AI optimization continues the same principle, just for algorithms. Understanding both parts of your audience means creating content that works for both at once.
Crypto marketing doesn’t need to convince people web3 matters. It needs to make participation valuable enough that the tech becomes irrelevant. The projects getting this right aren’t talking about decentralization—they’re designing systems where users earn, own, and verify, turning attention into ownership.
Source: Crypto Marketing in 2026: Participation, Transparency, Dual Audiences
