I think I've seen ads for Splinterlands in the Brave browser. They have managed to get a lot of users, but many do not use other aspects of Hive. Mind you, it's hard to find mention of that on their site.
I've no idea what a marketing campaign costs these days, but I know you can target them on some platforms to a very specific audience. We ought to be aiming at people who are already into crypto.
I agree on targeting people into crypto, however I also think there's opportunity to get people who aren't into crypto depending on the DApp and what it offers. For example I think @3speak and @dtube should be targeting anybody who's anti censorship and don't even bring up the rewards in that campaign, as it doesn't have to be the primary attraction.
I was sort of interested in crypto when I joined, but I'd also been turned off it and got bored of the idea. The rewards did hook me though
Some people are actively anti-crypto, but Hive has more to offer. Being open source and decentralised could appeal. I am sure the 3speak guys have targeted people who get censored elsewhere. I did once see someone in a shirt with their logo in the paper, but they were hanging out with some right wing extremist who had been causing trouble. One guy I recruited to Hive gave up as he didn't like that extremist content could be tolerated. It's all a balancing act trying to attract people who will make it more appealing to a general audience.
I'm not a marketing guy, but we have some Hivers who work in that area and they need to cooperate.
That's sad that they couldn't tolerate their existence. To me that's wilful blindness because people like that (extremists left & right) exist in the real world like it or not. Better to know what they're up to than pretend we live in a land of cotton wool.
Totally, I'd love to see a collaborative initiative to build Hive's marketing team!