Ishan Pandey: Hi Jim, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind CryptoDSP?
Jim Walsh: Our roots are in political digital advertising. Politics led the microtargeted digital advertising revolution because oftentimes we had to slice and dice the electorate down to very small segments and target them based on specific offline datasets. We are changemakers and we realized that the best way to create empowering change is no longer through politics but through the financial technology revolution.
During the pandemic, my cofounder, Nick Krapels, whom I went to high school with, reconnected while I was remotely doing consulting work with clients in India and he was finishing his Ph.D. in Shanghai. It put us on the same work hours even though we were on opposite sides of the planet. We started talking about all his deep involvement in the crypto space. After sharing our professional challenges consulting during the pandemic, we realized there is a massive need for expert digital advertising services for innovators within the crypto ecosystem. The rest is history.
We took what we learned working for high-profile political parties around the world and applied it to a new type of revolution - financial technology, founding CryptoDSP.io in 2021.
Ishan Pandey: NFTs are becoming increasingly common, despite many people still being the fact that many people are still unsure about how to delve into them. What are your views on NFTs and their ever-rising popularity?
Jim Walsh: We have worked with NFT clients to promote their products and I must say, it’s been incredibly successful. We think it’s important to use advertising to tell the story of your NFT and the smart contracts assigned to them and why they have value.
Ishan Pandey: Web 3.0 is one of the most talked-about and debated technology concepts in recent times. Please explain the decentralisation factor that Web 3.0 brings with it and what it will be its impact?
Jim Walsh: We are not Web 3.0 innovators, but we do support them. What we do is help micro-target web 3.0 innovations to people that are interested in it on Web 2.0. That said, we think that there is an incredible opportunity and potential to build targeted digital advertising products in Web 3.0 and we’re excited to partner with the bleeding edge innovators in this space.
Ishan Pandey: What are your views on Metaverse and its future?
Jim Walsh: From a digital advertising perspective, we’re fascinated to see where it goes. We could see how paid ads could play a role with virtual billboards - as we already see in gaming - as well as the innumerable opportunities to create video ads as well as AI-driven advertising that it opens up. The possibilities are endless.
Ishan Pandey: Please tell us a little bit about CryptoDSP and how it works?
Jim Walsh: FinTech’s challenge is that we have the world. And, our customers want to reach specific crypto and FinTech enthusiasts the world over. We accomplish this by developing our own proprietary dataset of FinTech enthusiasts and feeding that segment through demand-side platforms - digital advertising technology that has access to 90% of the world’s display and preroll video inventory. So, when a user identified in our segment goes to look up a cricket score or financial news or whatever on the brand-safe internet, we serve them a display or video ad. Our view is that this is a perfect complement to earned media and social media marketing because not only are they getting information when they’re seeking it out, but, also when they’re living their lives.
Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions.