Fundraising Transparency
​A GoFundMe campaign was established in early 2022 to raise funds to spend on advertising, explicitly for the purpose of generating a greater awareness of the benefits of the Direct Registration System, as well as the GameStop stock.
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A total of $15,780 was raised for this effort, and 100% of all proceeds (after deducting fees from GoFundMe) have been used to pay for the advertising expenses. Below you will find information on the ad campaign, and transparency around spending and budget allocation.
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For any questions, please send a message via the contact form, or email hi@drsgme.org.
2022 Q4 Awareness Campaign
Campaign Impact
Beginning on October 24, a new ad campaign was launched for the fourth quarter of 2022. Weekly reports on the campaign's progress can be found below, as well as a record of funds and expenses used in connection with the GoFundMe donations.
Media Plan
Why run the campaign?
DRSGME.org is determined to get the facts about the Direct Registration System (DRS) out to the masses. The larger goal of the site and the campaign is to advocate for investor sovereignty, and to deliver free knowledge to the public about their rights as investors and active participants in the stock market.
Who was the target audience?
This being the first major awareness campaign for the effort, meaningful data points must be gathered to establish a baseline of the most likely individuals to be reached, but who are not already aware of the DRS and/or $GME as a valuable stock investment.
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To help establish that baseline, the audience targeted will have characteristics similar to those of people who have already been engaged with the phenomenon of DRS and GME on Reddit and elsewhere. This new audience is being considered “lookalikes” of the existing community.
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The targeting tactics to reach this new audience will overlap interests and engagement in the areas of finance and investing as a broader category, as well as gaming, web3-related topics (such as crypto and NFTs), and concerns with corruption in finance and economic systems at large.
Where did the ads run?
Various advertising platforms have been scrutinized to decide where the ads will best be served in their formats, in light of the current community-approved versions being static images with text. Considering the demographic attributes of the target audience and the total campaign budget, as well as ad cost, ad performance, and user reach by platform, Twitter and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) have been identified as the locations where the ads will be run.
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Given that the ads are written for English-speaking users and that GameStop is a US-based company listed on the US stock market, the ads will be targeting people 18 years and older in countries where English is spoken as the first/primary language, as well as countries where there is strong proficiency in English as a second language. These countries include:
English as a first language:
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Australia
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Canada
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Ireland
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United Kingdom
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United States
English as a second language:​
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Belgium
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Denmark
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Finland
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France
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Germany
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Netherlands
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Norway
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Sweden
What was the budget?
The total campaign budget allocation for 2022 Q4 was just under $14,000. The budget had an initial split of 80% for Twitter and 20% for Meta (Facebook and Instagram). Performance was monitored closely throughout the campaign, but especially in the first two weeks to evaluate whether these platforms and the budget split are appropriate for achieving the metrics we expected to see.
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Comparing the most recently published social media advertising KPIs (key performance indicators) from 2021 for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram globally, across all campaign objectives and industries, it is estimated to receive around 3 million total ad impressions (ad views) and over 20,000 ad clicks.
When did the campaign run?
The campaign ran for 60 days starting Monday, October 24, and going through Wednesday, December 21.
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Weekly updates for campaign spending and performance have been provided here to keep the generous donors and community at large aware of the progress. Additionally, this is for transparency around any shift in spending that may have happened, or approach for the campaign.
How was success measured?
There is no way to directly tie the performance of this campaign to actual direct registration of GME shares. Some of the more useful data points to measure the success of this effort were: how much time users spent on DRSGME.org due to ad clicks, demographic attributes of those users, how many views the tutorials receive on DRSGME.org, trends in site traffic, and other metrics as the campaign grows.
Overall, this campaign also helps inform where and how a likely qualified audience can be reached for any potential future outreach efforts, and what improvements can be made to ease the experience of new site visitors and investors in direct registering their shares.
What did the ads look like?
Below are the eight ad variations that ran in the 2022 Q4 campaign, which are the result of a collaboration of community members and the volunteers at DRSGME:
"Ringo"
"Ethel"
"Couch Man"
"Lady Yellow"
"Grandma's Recipe"
"Seedling"
"Whisper"
"Crypto Padlock"
The volunteers at DRSGME are excited to continue educating the public about the power of DRS, help them through the process of direct registration for themselves, and grow the larger community of stock investors and GME enthusiasts who hold their assets in their own name through the transfer agent of the company they invested in.
2022 Q2-Q3 Awareness Campaign
In June and July 2022, a small budget of just under $1,000 was allocated for an initial run of the ad campaign through Google search ads and Meta (Facebook). The campaign was halted early, and the results of that campaign can be found here.