Was that one Super Bowl crypto ad a blunder? Or a 'big brain' move?

This year's Super Bowl was pretty darn scarce of crypto ads.

But there was at least one, for a Web3 game called 'DigiDaigaku' - and it's drumming up some controversy.

The ad featured a QR code, promising users the opportunity to grab one of 10,000 free NFTs available.

Though when folks followed the link, it didn't take them to a landing page, but founder Gabriel Leydon's Twitter profile, where they were encouraged to follow him.

So what's the deal?

There's a rumor floating around that ol' Gabey baby tweeted out the link before the commercial actually ran - draining the available NFTs.

(Which is why the Twitter redirect was activated).

And this may well have been the case...

But here's another option for you to consider:

Maybe the ad placement aired at different times, in different locales, and the first folks to see the ad snapped them up?

(We were getting everything in New York ~2 minutes ahead of our friends in South Jersey).

And with ~100M concurrent viewers - those 10,000 NFTs would go fast.

Either way, this was no blunder - it was planned.

Since the ad ran, Gabe has offered up another 5,000 rarer NFTs to anyone that registers DigiDaigaku account and retweets the post announcing it.

So rather than: spending ~$7M on an ad spot → giving NFTs away → hoping some of those people come back to register a DigiDaigaku account...

The process instead looks like this:

• Giveaway 10K NFTs.

• Redirect anyone that missed out, to Gabe's Twitter profile.

• Anyone that follows him can now be reached for free.

• Offer that captured audience a selection of even rarer NFTs (requiring a retweet, and a DigiDaigaku account to be created).

• Users' retweets then advertise DigiDaigaku even further.

• Which brings in even more users...

Is this tactic worth $7M in ad spend? No idea!

But it was well thought out.