Benchmark Report · 2026

Crypto Marketing Budget Benchmarks

What crypto projects actually spend on marketing at each stage, from pre-TGE through launch to post-listing, with the unit economics underneath. Retainers run $3,000 to $50,000 a month. Top campaigns acquire a wallet for $1.86 while untargeted ones pay $15 to $40. And roughly 60% of Web3 teams are budgeting against an acquisition cost that does not exist in any comparable market.

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Aug 2026

Updated

Written by Arun Kamala Santhanath

Edited by Vimal Joseph

Last verified 25 Aug 2026

How this report was built

Four steps, applied to every figure on this page.

01 Source

Every figure traces to a published rate card, a named survey with a stated sample size, or platform-disclosed pricing. All 34 sources are listed at the end.

02 Grade

Statistics are graded A or B. Grade A is primary and directly verifiable, such as a vendor's own published price. Grade B appears consistently across independent industry sources but has no single owner.

03 Exclude

Twenty-four figures collected during research failed corroboration and were cut. Among them was conference sponsorship pricing, which no organiser will publish. Absence here is deliberate.

04 Re-verify

Crypto marketing inventory reprices quarterly. This page carries a verification date and is re-checked every quarter.

WHAT THE DATA SHOWS

Nearly 60% of Web3 teams target a customer acquisition cost below $30; more than a third target below $15.

Average B2B SaaS customer acquisition cost is around $702. Average DeFi protocol acquisition cost is around $85 per user.

Most funded crypto projects spend between $5,000 and $30,000 per month on marketing.

The realistic floor is about $3,000 a month, or roughly $5,000 as a one-off for pre-token projects.

A complete token launch costs $30,000 at the disciplined floor and $500,000 or more for tier-1 media across several markets.

Projects raising $2M commonly allocate 6% to 12% of the raise to launch marketing.

Top-performing paid campaigns acquire a verified wallet for $1.86 to $3.12. Campaigns without wallet targeting pay $15 to $40.

Cointelegraph placement starts around $6,500 for client-supplied copy and reaches roughly $18,200 for a written sponsored article.

Mid-tier KOLs at 100,000 to 500,000 followers charge $3,000 to $8,000 per post; YouTube reviewers charge $15,000 to $45,000 per video.

84.4% of surveyed Web3 companies ran paid KOL campaigns in 2025. No other channel came close.

When choosing creators, teams ranked reputation first at 66%. Follower count ranked near the bottom at 7.6%.

53.1% of teams spend only around launch moments. Just 26.6% run a recurring monthly budget.

25% of surveyed Web3 companies did not track marketing or acquisition costs at all in 2025.

Median day-90 airdrop retention was 6% of recipient wallets; the top quartile retained 41%.

53.2% of the roughly 20.2 million tokens launched since 2021 are no longer actively traded.

Budgets are quoted in USD and exclude media spend unless stated.

01 · CATEGORY

Budget by project stage

Most published guidance quotes a single monthly range and stops. Spend does not work that way, because what a project needs to buy changes completely between having no token, launching one, and defending one that already trades. These are the totals by stage.

Reading the grades [A] Primary source, directly verifiable [B] Consistent across independent sources

Pre-TGE, before a token exists

[B]

The minimum realistic crypto marketing budget is about $3,000 per month, or roughly $5,000 as a one-off for pre-token projects.

[B]

A single channel handled properly costs $2,000 to $12,000 per month.

[B]

Most funded crypto projects spend between $5,000 and $30,000 per month.

[B]

Total crypto marketing spend spans $199 for a single syndicated press release to $200,000 per month for a multi-market campaign.

The launch itself

[B]

A complete token launch, counting audit through post-TGE retention, costs $30,000 at the floor and $500,000 or more at the top.

[B]

A disciplined token launch totals $30,000 to $80,000.

[B]

A typical funded token launch totals $120,000 to $250,000.

[B]

A multi-market launch buying tier-1 media and top-tier KOLs totals $500,000 or more.

[B]

A $500,000 raise supports total launch marketing of $32,000 to $80,000.

[B]

A $2M raise supports total launch marketing of $117,000 to $260,000.

[B]

A $10M+ raise supports total launch marketing of $370,000 to $770,000.

Post-listing

[B]

Post-launch marketing budgets run $10,000 to $50,000 per month for sustained growth.

[A]

Only 26.6% of surveyed Web3 teams ran a recurring monthly marketing budget in 2025.

Engagement models

[B]

Crypto marketing agency retainers run $5,000 to $50,000 per month, with most pre-launch and growth-stage projects landing at $10,000 to $25,000.

[B]

A full-service retainer covering strategy, content, PR, community and search runs $3,000 to $50,000 per month.

[A]

Published agency entry prices: NinjaPromo $3,200/mo, TokenMinds $5,000 minimum, Coinbound $10,000/mo, MarketAcross $10,000+, EAK Digital roughly $20,000+.

[B]

An in-house team of marketing lead, content, community and designer costs $28,000 to $45,000 per month fully loaded.

[B]

A fractional CMO costs $5,000 to $15,000 per month for one to two days a week.

[B]

Hourly rates across crypto marketing providers run $25 to $250.

[B]

Three- to six-month contracts are the standard agency commitment term.

INTERPRETATION

The single most useful number here is the floor. Three thousand a month buys positioning, a search and AI-search content base, a couple of placements and a small creator test. It does not buy tier-1 media or a managed community, and it does not buy paid traffic at useful volume. Any agency suggesting otherwise is selling you a package and calling it a strategy.

The stage that gets underfunded is the one after launch. Only about a quarter of teams run a recurring budget at all, which means three quarters go quiet in exactly the window where attention has to convert into holders. Launch week is the most expensive place to concentrate money and the least effective, because the audience you reach that week has no prior context for what you are.

02 · CATEGORY

How the budget gets split

Total spend matters less than sequence. A launch budget is best modelled as a series of gates, because the early money buys things that must exist before promotion works at all.

[B]

Projects raising $2M commonly allocate 6% to 12% of the raise to launch marketing.

[B]

The recommended launch-cycle split is 45% pre-launch, 25% launch week, 30% post-launch.

[A]

53.1% of surveyed Web3 teams spent mainly around launch moments: a TGE, a listing or a product announcement. They did not spend continuously.

[B]

Paid media management fees are typically 10% to 20% of media spend, quoted separately from the spend itself.

[B]

KOL agency management fees sit at 15% to 30% on top of creator fees.

[B]

Community and ecosystem allocation of 35% to 45% of token supply is the healthy tokenomics benchmark.

[B]

The institutional benchmark for team allocation is 10% to 20% of total supply.

The five gates, sized by raise

GATE	$500K RAISE	$2M RAISE	$10M+ RAISE
1. Trust assets Audit, KYC, docs, site	$8k – $18k	$25k – $60k	$60k – $150k
2. Discoverability Listings, DEX data, SEO and GEO	$4k – $9k	$12k – $25k	$30k – $60k
3. Narrative Positioning, content, PR outreach	$6k – $14k	$20k – $45k	$70k – $140k
4. Distribution KOLs, community, paid, launch week	$9k – $25k	$40k – $85k	$150k – $300k
5. Retention Post-TGE content, holder comms, second PR wave	$5k – $14k	$20k – $45k	$60k – $120k
Total	$32k – $80k	$117k – $260k	$370k – $770k

Gate model and figures: CoinLaunch, 2026. Grade B.

Five costs sit outside almost every marketing quote and turn a $100,000 budget into $160,000: media spend bundled inside the headline fee, third-party placement fees on tier-1 outlets, launchpad and exchange fees, liquidity provision, and founder time. Ask any agency to break fee, media spend and placement fees into three separate numbers in writing before signing. An agency that will not is protecting a margin you should be able to see.

INTERPRETATION

The gates are sequential for a reason, and the most common way to waste money in crypto is buying distribution before discoverability. If a paid creator post sends four thousand people to look you up and your DEX Screener pair page has no logo, your documentation is an unfinished draft and no AI assistant has heard of you, you paid for the traffic and handed it to nobody.

Gate five is the one that gets cut when launch week runs over, and it is the phase where attention actually becomes holders. If something has to go, cut distribution before retention. Fewer people hearing a story that lands beats more people hearing one that evaporates.

03 · CATEGORY

What each channel costs

These are unit prices. Keep this section open while reading a proposal.

Press and media placement

[A]

Syndicated press release distribution to 500+ outlets starts at $199.

[A]

Cointelegraph reseller placement starts at roughly $6,500 for a release where you supply the copy.

[A]

A Cointelegraph sponsored article with writing included runs around $18,200.

[A]

Cointelegraph bundled into a distribution package starts at $12,999 per release.

[B]

Tier-1 crypto media sponsored placement generally runs $8,000 to $30,000 per piece.

[B]

Tier-2 crypto outlets run in the low thousands per placement.

[B]

Earned coverage carries no placement fee but costs $3,000 to $15,000 per month in agency outreach.

[B]

Crypto PR retainers run $3,000 to $15,000 per month.

Creator campaigns

[A]

Nano accounts on X charge $100 to $500 per post.

[A]

Micro KOLs at 25,000 to 100,000 followers charge $1,000 to $2,000 per post.

[A]

Mid-tier accounts at 100,000 to 500,000 followers charge $3,000 to $8,000 per post.

[B]

A campaign series with a single 200,000-follower account runs $5,000 to $20,000.

[A]

YouTube reviewers at 300,000 to 500,000 subscribers charge $15,000 to $45,000 per sponsored video.

[B]

Telegram and Discord shoutouts in large channels run $200 to $5,000 per announcement.

[B]

TikTok and Instagram crypto placements run $300 to $5,000.

[B]

The full KOL fee spread is $500 to $25,000 per creator, paid separately from agency coordination.

[B]

Effective CPM by tier on X: micro (5k–25k) $30–$150; tier 3 (25k–100k) $20–$100; tier 2 (100k–500k) $25–$125; tier 1 (500k+) $20–$150.

[A]

84.4% of surveyed Web3 companies used paid KOL campaigns in 2025, ahead of quest platforms at 59.4% and PR or media buying at 56.3%.

[A]

When selecting KOLs, teams ranked reputation first at 66% and research or content quality second at 56.6%. Follower count ranked near the bottom at 7.6%.

[A]

For 2026, ambassadorships (45.6%) and monthly retainers (40.5%) rank above one-time paid deals (39.2%) in planned KOL strategy.

Ongoing channels

[B]

Community management covering Telegram and Discord moderation, ambassador programs and sentiment reporting runs $2,000 to $10,000 per month.

[B]

Crypto SEO runs $2,500 to $12,000 per month, with six months to compounding returns considered normal.

[B]

GEO and AI search visibility work runs $2,000 to $8,000 per month.

[A]

Crypto ad network CPMs run $3 to $15 on standard inventory and $20 to $40 for wallet-targeted premium placements.

[A]

CPM by vertical: exchanges $8–$15 standard and $18–$35 premium; DeFi $6–$12 and $15–$30; wallets $5–$10 and $12–$25; NFT and gaming $3–$8 and $10–$20; infrastructure and L2 $4–$10 and $12–$22.

[B]

Coinzilla, Bitmedia and Cointraffic charge $5 to $20 CPM, with $10,000 to $30,000 per month needed for meaningful scale.

[A]

Coinzilla brand-awareness inventory starts around €0.2 CPM; premium traffic from top-ranking crypto sites starts around €3 CPM.

[A]

Bitmedia entry-level click price is approximately $1.40 as of February 2026.

[B]

CPC for high-intent crypto traffic runs $1.50 to $3.50.

[B]

The crypto advertising market crossed $1.2 billion in 2025.

Data platforms

[A]

CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko charge no listing fee for legitimate non-priority listings.

[A]

DEX Screener Enhanced Token Info costs $299 and adds logo, description and social links to a pair page.

[B]

Rating and review platform promotion runs $500 to $5,000 per platform per month.

INTERPRETATION

Two numbers on this list are worth more than their price suggests. The $299 DEX Screener listing is probably the highest-return spend in crypto marketing, because a pair page without a logo reads as abandoned to every trader who checks it. And a $199 syndicated release and a $6,500 tier-1 placement are two different products. Syndication buys an indexable, citable page. Placement buys readers.

The KOL line has the widest spread and the most waste. Follower counts in crypto are purchased at scale, and the difference between a $3,000 post reaching real traders and a $3,000 post reaching bots is invisible until you look at referral data. Ask for click-through numbers from the creator's last three campaigns before approving any list. The survey data backs this up: teams have already stopped buying on follower count. They ranked it last at 7.6%. Reputation led at 66%.

04 · CATEGORY

What a user actually costs

Most cost guidance stops at retainer ranges. What a budget buys in acquired users is the question that actually decides whether the budget was correct, and it is where crypto expectations diverge furthest from every comparable market.

[B]

Cost per wallet has replaced customer acquisition cost as the primary Web3 marketing metric, because a connected wallet proves the visitor already holds crypto.

[A]

Top-performing campaigns achieve $1.86 to $3.12 cost per wallet.

[A]

Campaigns without wallet targeting typically see cost per wallet of $15 to $40.

[A]

A stablecoin checkout campaign achieved $1.86 cost per wallet, and most acquired users spent within 72 hours.

[A]

A Layer-2 DEX targeting users with prior DEX interactions achieved $3.12 cost per wallet and 1.7x on-chain ROAS within 14 days.

[B]

Average user acquisition cost for DeFi protocols is approximately $85 per user.

[B]

Stablecoin projects achieve an average cost per wallet of $1.86 across an analysis of 40+ campaigns.

[B]

Trader acquisition for derivatives platforms ranges $14 to $31.

[B]

Referral-channel acquisition cost in Web3 averages $150, higher than paid but with materially stronger retention.

[A]

Nearly 60% of surveyed Web3 teams targeted a customer acquisition cost below $30; more than a third targeted below $15.

[A]

Average B2B SaaS customer acquisition cost is approximately $702.

[B]

Fintech cost per acquisition ranges $50 to $150 for high-performing campaigns.

[A]

A Web3 neobank campaign reduced acquisition cost from a $100 internal comfort zone to around $50 by onboarding localized KOLs.

[A]

25% of surveyed Web3 companies did not track marketing or user acquisition costs at all in 2025.

[B]

Exchanges using wallet-based retargeting report 40% lower cost per wallet and 3x higher conversion rates.

[A]

One DeFi campaign acquired 4,600 new users on $25,000 of ad spend at 19.8x return on investment.

[A]

An exchange campaign targeting high-value APAC traders achieved 19.78x ROAS and $494,000+ in transaction volume.

[B]

Realistic user-acquisition campaign targets are $5 to $15 cost per wallet at 2% to 4% conversion, with a $2,000 to $5,000 test budget.

[B]

Realistic performance campaign targets are 1.5x to 3x on-chain ROAS at under $5 cost per wallet.

[B]

Brand awareness campaigns need $10,000 or more for meaningful reach at 0.15% to 0.25% CTR and $5 to $12 CPM.

INTERPRETATION

Put three numbers side by side and the problem is obvious. Sixty per cent of Web3 teams budget for a user costing under $30. B2B SaaS pays around $702. DeFi protocols actually pay around $85. Crypto products need trust and user education before anyone adopts them. Those are the same conditions that make SaaS and fintech acquisition expensive. There is no mechanism by which crypto should be twenty times cheaper.

The expectation is a hangover from earlier cycles, when airdrop farming and speculative demand made growth look nearly free. Those conditions distorted what a generation of teams learned to expect from marketing, and the distortion is still priced into most budgets being written today.

The finding that should worry founders most is not a cost at all. A quarter of teams tracked nothing. Directional attribution is not complicated: campaign spend by channel, referral link data, wallet cohorts, activation, and retention measured after incentives decline. Without it, a team cannot tell which channel produced attention and which produced users worth keeping. Perfect attribution in crypto is impossible. No attribution is a choice.

05 · CATEGORY

Conversion benchmarks

Cost per acquired user is meaningless without the funnel underneath it. These are the conversion rates that make the arithmetic in the previous section checkable.

[A]

Wallet-aware campaigns achieve 2% to 4% post-click conversion versus 0.5% to 1.5% for demographic targeting.

[A]

Exchange funnel: click to signup 2%–5%; signup to KYC 25%–40%; KYC to first deposit 15%–25%; overall click to deposit 0.3%–0.8%.

[A]

DeFi funnel: click to wallet connection 3%–8%; connection to first transaction 15%–30%; overall click to transaction 0.5%–2.5%.

[A]

Wallet app funnel: click to app store 8%–15%; store to download 30%–50%; download to wallet creation 60%–80%; overall 3%–6%.

[A]

NFT and gaming funnel: click to site visit 65%–80%; visit to wallet connection 5%–12%; wallet to mint 10%–25%; overall 1%–2.5%.

[A]

Display banner CTR: 300x250 0.08%–0.15%; leaderboard 0.06%–0.12%; mobile 0.10%–0.18%; rich media 0.15%–0.30%.

[A]

Native ad CTR: in-feed 0.20%–0.40%; content recommendation 0.15%–0.35%; sponsored content 0.25%–0.50%; wallet-integrated 0.35%–0.65%.

[A]

Video ad CTR: pre-roll 0.15%–0.25%; in-stream 0.20%–0.35%; outstream 0.10%–0.20%; interactive gaming 0.40%–0.80%.

[A]

Post-click conversion by publisher type: DeFi dashboards 12%, wallet interfaces 10%, trading tools 8%, crypto news 2%, general finance 1%.

[A]

Relative cost per acquisition by publisher: DeFi dashboards baseline, wallet interfaces 1.2x, trading tools 1.5x, crypto news 5x, general finance 10x.

[A]

Crypto ad networks average 0.15%–0.35% CTR against Google Search at 3.17%, Meta at 2.19% and TikTok at 0.61%, but convert at 1.5%–4% versus Meta's 1%–2%.

[B]

Bull markets bring 20% to 40% higher CPMs but 30% to 50% higher conversion rates. Net cost per acquisition often improves.

[A]

Solana captured 26.79% of global crypto mindshare in 2025, ahead of Base at 13.94% and Ethereum at 13.43%.

INTERPRETATION

The publisher quality table is the most actionable data on this page. Crypto news sites produce the highest click-through rates and among the worst conversion, at 0.8% CTR against 2% post-click conversion and five times the cost per acquisition of a DeFi dashboard. Optimising for clicks walks you directly into the worst inventory available.

This is also why comparing crypto campaigns to Meta or Google benchmarks misleads people into cutting the wrong channels. Crypto ads click at a fraction of the rate of paid social and convert at twice it. Judged on CTR, every crypto campaign looks broken. Judged on conversion, the well-targeted ones outperform.

06 · CATEGORY

Airdrop economics

Airdrops usually come out of the distribution budget. That is how projects end up paying a large acquisition cost without ever recording one.

[A]

Across 21 token-issuing protocols, the median cohort retained 6% of recipient wallets at day 90 while the top quartile retained 41%, a 6.8x spread.

[A]

LayerZero removed 803,273 sybil wallets and Linea filtered roughly 800,000 in 2026 airdrop campaigns.

[A]

One-third of surveyed Web3 teams explicitly targeted airdrop farmers as a primary audience in 2025.

INTERPRETATION

A 6% median day-90 retention means the typical airdrop pays for ninety-four wallets to leave for every six that stay. Run that as a cost per retained holder and most airdrop budgets look considerably worse than the paid campaigns they were meant to replace. The top quartile proves the mechanism works. What separates the two cohorts is design.

Farmers generate excellent surface metrics: signups, wallets created, testnet activity, quest completions, community joins. None of it predicts retained usage. The better question than "how much did this user cost" is whether the user was relevant and likely to stay once the incentive stopped.

07 · CATEGORY

Costs competing for the same money

None of these are marketing. All of them draw from the same pool, and leaving them out is the most common reason a launch budget breaks in month two.

[A]

Smart contract audits cost around $5,000 for a simple token contract, $25,000 to $100,000 for most DeFi protocols, and past $250,000 for enterprise multi-chain systems.

[B]

Binance charges no official listing fee, but total cost including ecosystem fund commitments, integration, marketing obligations, market making and liquidity typically runs $1M to $5M+.

[B]

Tier-1 exchange first-year total cost runs $500,000 to $5,000,000.

[B]

Exchange-side fees run roughly $15,000 to $30,000 on entry-level CEXs and $300,000 to $500,000+ on tier-1 venues.

[B]

Market maker deposits run $250,000 to $1,000,000.

[B]

Legal and compliance work for a listing runs $50,000 to $200,000.

[B]

Integration development runs $20,000 to $100,000.

[B]

IDO launchpads take 1% to 5% of capital raised, sometimes plus a token allocation.

[B]

IEO fees are commonly quoted in the $100,000 to $500,000 range before allocations.

INTERPRETATION

The audit is the line founders most often leave out of the marketing budget, then discover it has eaten the first third of it. It belongs in the plan, because no amount of promotion survives a project that cannot show one.

Liquidity provision is the largest number on many launch spreadsheets and is not a marketing cost at all. Budget it separately or it will quietly consume the marketing line while nobody is looking at that row.

08 · CATEGORY

Market context

Why the cost of visibility rose. The denominator changed.

[A]

53.2% of the roughly 20.2 million tokens launched since 2021 are no longer actively traded.

[A]

2025 alone accounted for 86% of all token failures. That wiped out 11.6 million projects.

[A]

2024 saw 1.38 million token failures against 11.6 million in 2025.

[B]

The failure rate for projects launched since 2021 has risen nearly 4,500%.

[B]

The October 2025 $19 billion liquidation event wiped out 7.7 million tokens within three months.

[B]

Over 540,000 tokens launched on Ethereum, Solana and Base in the first two months of 2026 alone.

[A]

63.3% of surveyed Web3 teams plan to invest in founder personal branding in 2026.

[A]

44.3% of surveyed teams plan to explore answer engine and generative engine optimisation in 2026.

[A]

76% of surveyed teams plan to explore creative or viral marketing in 2026.

[A]

Coinbase spent $654 million on sales and marketing in 2024 and $247 million in Q1 2025 alone.

[B]

DeFi total value locked fluctuated between $116 billion and $171 billion across Q4 2025 and Q1 2026.

[B]

Solana dominated DEX volume in 2025 at over $1.5 trillion year-to-date against Ethereum's $938 billion.

INTERPRETATION

Half a million tokens launched in two months explains the entire cost curve on this page. Competition for attention multiplied by orders of magnitude between 2021 and now, and price followed. A budget calibrated against a 2021 launch is obsolete.

The two channels teams say they are moving into for 2026, founder branding and AI search optimisation, are both attempts to escape rented attention. Both compound, and neither can be bought outright. That is why 63.3% of teams are moving budget into founder branding and 44.3% into AI search.

APPLIED

Three budgets, worked through

The benchmarks above turned into three concrete allocations. Every line is defensible to an investor, which is the only real test of a marketing budget.

$5,000 total · pre-seed, no token yet

LINE	AMOUNT	REASONING
DEX Screener Enhanced Token Info	$299	Only if a pair exists. Highest-return spend available.
Listings on pre-sale and launch platforms	$800	Discoverability before distribution.
One syndicated press release	$199	Tied to a real milestone. Buys an indexable, citable page.
Positioning and 15-page search / AI-search content base	$3,000	The only asset at this stage that compounds.
Two to four micro-KOL test posts	$1,000	Chosen on audience quality.
Total	$5,298	Skip Discord, paid media, tier-1 placements and conference booths entirely.

$45,000 total · seed stage, TGE in twelve weeks

GATE	AMOUNT	REASONING
Audit and trust assets	$12,000	Non-negotiable. Nothing downstream works without it.
Listings, DEX data pages, search and AI-search base	$6,000	Gate two before gate four, always.
Positioning, content, PR outreach, one tier-2 placement	$9,000	Narrative before distribution.
Six vetted mid-tier KOLs plus a small paid test	$12,000	Vetted on referral data from prior campaigns.
Held for the eight weeks after TGE	$6,000	Ring-fenced. This is the line that must not be raided.
Total	$45,000	A launch that will not trend, and will still exist in six months.

$180,000 total · Series A protocol, multi-market

GATE	AMOUNT	REASONING
Audit and compliance packaging	$45,000	Multi-jurisdiction review before any asset publishes.
Discoverability: listings, ratings, SEO, GEO	$22,000	Including AI search presence, which most budgets still omit.
Narrative: two tier-1 placements plus sustained earned outreach	$40,000	Earned coverage is the half that survives scrutiny.
Distribution: 15 to 20 KOLs, community, paid	$50,000	Attribution configured before the first post goes live.
Post-TGE retention	$23,000	Roughly 13% of total. Under-weighted if anything.
Total	$180,000	Sits inside the 6–12% of raise band for an $8M–$15M round.

QUESTIONS

Frequently asked

What is the minimum realistic budget to market a crypto project in 2026?

About $3,000 a month, or roughly $5,000 as a one-off if you are pre-token. That covers positioning, a search and AI-search content foundation, one or two placements and a small creator test. It does not cover paid traffic at useful volume, tier-1 media or a managed community. Below $3,000 a month you are buying individual items, which is fine as long as you know which items you need.

What percentage of my raise should go to marketing?

Projects raising $2M commonly allocate 6% to 12% of the raise to launch marketing. Below roughly 5% you will struggle to be visible at TGE. Above roughly 15% you are usually buying reach you have no mechanism to convert. The percentage matters less than the sequence. Money spent on discoverability before anyone is watching determines whether the launch-week money works at all.

How much does a crypto press release cost?

Syndicated distribution starts at $199 and reaches several hundred low-authority sites. Placement in a tier-1 publication is a different product entirely, at $6,500 to $30,000 depending on outlet and format. Earned coverage carries no placement fee but costs $3,000 to $15,000 a month in agency outreach, and is the only version that survives a reader checking whether the piece is labelled sponsored.

What is a good cost per wallet?

Top-performing campaigns using wallet-aware targeting achieve $1.86 to $3.12. Campaigns without wallet targeting typically pay $15 to $40. For an early-stage user acquisition campaign, $5 to $15 at 2% to 4% conversion is a realistic target. Anything under $5 with positive on-chain ROAS is strong.

Why do two agencies quote such different prices for the same brief?

Three reasons, in order of size. Seniority, since hourly rates across the market run $25 to $250, which is the difference between a strategist and a coordinator forwarding your brief. Scope hidden inside the headline number, particularly media spend and third-party placement fees. And market timing, since KOL and paid inventory reprices 30% to 50% upward in a strong market, so a quote written during a flat quarter is not comparable to one written during a rally.

Should I hire an agency or build in-house?

A minimum credible internal team of marketing lead, content, community and designer costs $28,000 to $45,000 a month fully loaded and takes three to five months to assemble. That team will be excellent at the three or four things those four people happen to know and absent everywhere else. Below Series A the arithmetic rarely favours it. Past Series A, when product marketing becomes a permanent function instead of a launch project, it usually does.

How should I measure whether the budget worked?

Directionally. Perfect attribution in crypto is impossible, because users move across wallets, exchanges, communities and social accounts, and a creator post may convert weeks later through a different address. A workable model combines campaign spend by channel, KOL spend by creator tier, referral link data, wallet cohorts, quest and onboarding data, on-chain activation, and retention measured after incentives decline. A quarter of teams track none of this, which is the single most expensive decision in the dataset.

REFERENCE

Sources

34 sources cited across this report. Attribution is report-level. Where a figure originates with one organisation and reaches us through another, both are listed: CoinGecko data reported by CoinDesk, DeFiLlama data reported by HypeLab, Clutch pricing compiled by CoinLaunch.

01 research.greendots.agency

02 hypelab.com

06 rgray.io

11 forkoff.xyz

12 coinlaw.io

17 tbpmedia.io

22 blockchain-ads.com

23 flexe.io

24 kaito.ai

25 defillama.com

26 thesignal.directory

28 nadcab.com

33 clutch.co

34 openpr.com

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This report was compiled by the crypto marketing team at Blockchain App Factory, which has run 500 campaigns and supported more than $1 billion in client raises since 2013. Figures on this page are drawn from public sources and are cited individually.

If a figure here is wrong or has moved, tell us and we will fix it and note the change. Accuracy on a page built to be cited matters more than being first.

Crypto Marketing Budget Benchmarks

How this report was built

01 Source

02 Grade

03 Exclude

04 Re-verify

WHAT THE DATA SHOWS

Budget by project stage

Pre-TGE, before a token exists

The launch itself

Post-listing

Engagement models

INTERPRETATION

How the budget gets split

The five gates, sized by raise

INTERPRETATION

What each channel costs

Press and media placement

Creator campaigns

Ongoing channels

Data platforms

INTERPRETATION

What a user actually costs

INTERPRETATION

Conversion benchmarks

INTERPRETATION

Airdrop economics

INTERPRETATION

Costs competing for the same money

INTERPRETATION

Market context

INTERPRETATION

Three budgets, worked through

$5,000 total · pre-seed, no token yet

$45,000 total · seed stage, TGE in twelve weeks

$180,000 total · Series A protocol, multi-market

Frequently asked

Sources

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