When it comes to working with various ICOs, I often face the issues of traffic and targeting. Some teams exclude the US, some are Asia-oriented, the others place a stake at Europe. At INCRYPTICO, we are constantly monitoring the trends and changes in the traffic, and how it influences the investments in ICOs. I have no rights to disclose the sources fully, but will be glad to share the general picture with the industry.
Let us start with the ICO projects in terms of the geolocation and incorporation.
source: icowatchlist.com
The leader in the number of registered ICOs is the United States (18.4%), the second place is held by the United Kingdom (10.6%), and the Russian Federation (8.8%) has the third place. Among other countries that are attractive for the blockchain-related companies are Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Estonia, Lithuania, Gibraltar, France and Germany. However, the company’s registration doesn’t mean that the team is placed there, and it is very clear from the traffic, especially for ICOs.
So, let’s come to the traffic and the question, where do most ICOs get it from. As the trends on the crypto market are changing almost everyday, and the data is getting old pretty soon, INCRYPTICO team has analyzed the timeframe of January-March 2018.
Most ICOs cooperate with media sources specialized in cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Those can be globally divided into two categories: news resources and ICO listings.
News Websites
News media are used by the companies for publishing press releases, articles and interviews with founders. Currently, the market mostly consists of such giants as CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, CCN, bitcoin.com, 99Bitcoins, and around 30 others that are smaller. There are also many regional resources targeting users of specific geography and language — Forklog, Coin News Asia, Criptomoedasfacil, Bitcoin News Brazil, Bitcoinnewsindo and others.
Over 200 resources have participated in the traffic analysis. The estimate has been made using such services as SEMrush, SimilarWeb, and Alexa. We considered the general number of visits during the first three months of 2018.
The traffic data for the news websites looks as foolows. The websites with overall number of visits of more than 10 million (20-23 million on average) made 17%. Media outlets with 1 to 10 million visits counted 36% of the market. 47% is covered by resources with less than 1 million visits.
Having thoroughly analyzed the traffic of these websites, the US has expectedly come out as a leader with 23% of the traffic. UK, India, and Brazil are following it.
source: incryptico.com (based on SEMrush, SimilarWeb, and Alexa analysis)
But before you undertake any actions, you should consider the Google trends that are looking a bit different. The chart below shows queries with the word ‘ICO’ as of 2018, with the list of countries.
source: trends.google.com
ICO Listings
The most detailed picture for ICOs can be shown by specialized websites, namely, listings of ICO projects. Within 2017, a number of such websites has rapidly passed a hundred ones.
Today, listings are offering conditions not only for placing information about your project, but also leading an ICO campaign, creating a marketing strategy, searching for advisors, etc. Some of them even make a detailed analysis of your project and the business plan, come up with a report and even pitch your project to the investors — everything in exchange for your money, of course.
But what happens with traffic on these websites?
We have chosen the top-100 ICO listings based on their global rank. The news websites have been removed from this list. We got such websites as Cryptocompare, Coingecko, Icodrops, ICObench, Coinschedule, Token Market, CoinCodex, ICO Alert, ICORating, Coinhills, ICO Watch List, Track ICO, Tokentops, Smith+Crown and many others.
source: incryptico.com (based on SEMrush, SimilarWeb, and Alexa analysis)
As we see, the US and the UK are still leading the traffic globally. The list is pretty similar to the one we had with news resources, but the countries’ order is slightly different. Vietnam and Japan are showing their interest in ICOs. We should also point out China and Korea that are not presented in the media resources’ list, but are actively studying ICOs on the listing websites.
Where do investors come from?
Curiously enough, 70% of ICO projects have no US residents among investors (although they’re getting lots of the traffic from the US). However, based on the gathered data and data of investors from the INCRYPTICO’s projects, we can see the correlation with the investment data. Strangely, but the leaders are the countries placed in the middle of the first and the second lists. The leading countries from both lists are not the first ones in terms of investments (the ICOs that are accepting investments from the US are rather an exception).
Therefore, if you are running an ICO campaign or only planning to do so, make sure to pay attention to the portrait of your potential investor, and check out, which resources have more traffic suitable for you. Do not chase the ad placements absolutely everywhere, and remember that traffic for the sake of traffic won’t bring investments to your ICO.