The Crypto Bowl's Sketchiest Ad

Plus, tapping payroll power for loans.

Number of the Week: $37.3 billion (explanation below)

The Crypto Bowl’s Sketchiest Ad

The spot came late in the game, featuring thousands of flying people that are somehow supposed to make viewers want to invest in crypto. eToro’s ad was one of several in what has been dubbed the Crypto Bowl. The company’s chief marketing officer said that the ad was the beginning of a $25 million global ad campaign. AdAge panned it: “In an ill-advised attempt at injecting some humor into the proceedings, one guy in the swarm is shown accidentally bopping his head on the window of some random woman’s apartment, leaving him looking stunned and destabilized. So not only does this spot unflatteringly compare eToro’s ‘community’ to a vaguely menacing swarm, but it actually suggests that this all might end really badly.”

You have to wonder how far in advance these decisions are made. After all, millions of people who saw the ad will not be able to set up accounts on eToro: the service is not available in Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New York and Tennessee. Moreover, when the ad was being planned, there is a reasonable chance the Israeli company thought its SPAC would be concluded by now. At the end of 2021, however, the vehicle that is supposed to merge with eToro (and is backed by Betsy Cohen) filed a note with regulators, stating that it was not able to meet the closing conditions required for the sale. According to Reuters: “One of the conditions that could not be met was an effective submission of filings by eToro with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that are required for the registration of certain securities by foreign issuers.” Presumably eToro will be able to figure this out before the new deadline of June 30. But the delay mean that eToro faces a challenging SPAC market, and the company is now valued at $8.8 billion, which is 15% below the $10.4 billion announced a year ago.