Digging into the numbers behind Coinbase’s QR code ad

The Rams won the Super Bowl this year — but the real champion might be Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) with its ingenious 60-second ad of a bouncing QR code — which took down its app and led to a 309% jump in app installs.

The numbers behind the ad: Let’s analyze the returns behind CB’s Super Bowl ad, taking the following into consideration:

• Growth: Drove 20M users to its website in the first minute.
• Sales: Assume each customer makes the platform $150 over their lifetime.
• Costs: CB spent ~$14M on the Super Bowl placement, less than $100K on ad production costs and gave $15 to new users that joined by Feb. 15.

Here’s what we get…

• Scenario #1: Assuming 10% of those users converted into customers (2M new users), CB will make $300M from $44M in costs (7x return).
• Scenario #2: Assuming 5% of those users converted into customers (1M new users), CB will make $150M from $29M in costs (5x return).

But considering all the media exposure, we could expect these numbers to be on the lower end. By all metrics, the ad was a success — but does this translate to a higher stock value?

Stock price impact: One single marketing campaign rarely moves a stock — but from this case, CB may report an unexpected jump in users in the coming months.

It’s uncertain whether these users will stick around — which also depends on the trajectory of the crypto markets over the next few months…

• Coinbase is reporting its earnings this Thursday after the market closes — but the impacts won’t show on this report.
• Investors will be closely watching the impacts of the recent crypto market volatility on Coinbase’s stock.

Tomorrow, we dive into what investors could expect from the crypto markets in March/April…