Why Performance-Based Models Work Better in Web3
How onchain verification changes the economics of performance pricing
In traditional web2 advertising, moving from CPM to CPA meant taking on significant tracking risk. Did the conversion actually happen? Can attribution be reliably proven? Privacy regulations and platform constraints have made these questions increasingly difficult to answer with confidence.
When a wallet that was exposed to an ad later executes an onchain action on a protocol, that action is publicly observable and independently verifiable. This does not, on its own, prove causality — but it does establish that a defined outcome occurred after exposure, without relying on cookies or third-party tracking infrastructure.
This shift makes performance-based pricing (CPA) more practical in web3 than in web2. Both advertisers and publishers can anchor pricing to outcomes that hold up to independent scrutiny. When incrementality testing is applied, these verified outcomes can also be evaluated for causal impact. This transparency benefits everyone:
- Advertisers pay for verified outcomes rather than inferred activity
- Publishers are rewarded when they deliver quality traffic
- Users see more relevant ads (higher-quality targeting supports more efficient pricing)