Following our initial proof-of-concept studies on the measurement of online brand prominence (looking at the top twenty fashion brands[1] and the 100 most valuable global brands[2]), we apply the same methodology to an analysis of the relative prominences of the top twenty cryptocurrencies[3]^,[4], to determine which currencies are referenced most widely on the Internet, and determine whether this measure of prominence is correlated with their overall market capitalisation (i.e. total value).

The analysis is based on a set of approximately 500 webpages which are highly ranked on Google in response to one or more of a set of queries designed to return pages relating to cryptocurrency generally[5], but without specifying the name of any given currency specifically. An individual cryptocurrency is deemed to have been mentioned if a reference to either its name (specified as a ‘match string’), or its currency abbreviation, are identified on the page, and a brand content score is then calculated for each individual cryptocurrency name on each page, based on the total number of mentions and the prominence on the page of each mention. The overall prominence score for each cryptocurrency is then calculated as the mean of the brand content scores across the set of pages analysed[6].

where ‘.?’ denotes any or no (i.e. optional) additional single character

Table 1: Top twenty cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, and the terms used to identify a mention of each cryptocurrency on a webpage

In order to treat all currencies identically as far as possible, each classified reference requires the match string or currency abbreviation to be preceded and succeeded by a character other than an alphabetical letter, for all currencies considered, to avoid false positives (e.g. for ‘matic’, we would not want to match words such as ‘automatic’, etc.). We also avoid the use of keyword-based filtering[7], working on the basis that the names are relatively distinctive, and all pages considered should relate to cryptocurrency and that the names are therefore unlikely to arise in unrelated contexts.

On the above basis, the relative online prominence scores for the twenty cryptocurrency brand names are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Overall online prominence scores for the twenty cryptocurrencies

Figure 3 shows the relationship between these overall prominence scores and the market capitalisation of the cryptocurrencies in question.

Figure 3: (Log-log) plot of overall online prominence score against market capitalisation for the top twenty cryptocurrency (with best-fit trend line as defined by a power series)

For the cryptocurrency brands, the correlation between online prominence and market capitalisation is striking (correlation coefficient = +0.984). Overall, the cryptocurrencies which have the greatest degree of online presence are those which are most valuable overall. It is also noteworthy that this is a much stronger relationship than was seen in the ‘top 100 brands’ study, where the brands were in a range of different industry sectors, and it was therefore much more difficult to assemble a set of webpages for analysis on which the brands could be compared on a like-for-like basis (as is much more the case for the cryptocurrency brands in this study).

In future studies, it will be interesting to determine whether similar relationships hold for other groups of brands in different industry verticals. Additionally, the methodology presented in this study will allow trends in prominence over time to be measured on a like-for-like basis; it will be instructive to track how closely the changing popularity of cryptocurrencies over time (and the emergence of new ones) follows variations in their value.

[1] https://www.iamstobbs.com/measuring-brand-prominence-of-fashion-brands-ebook

[2] https://www.iamstobbs.com/online-brand-prominence-and-sentiment-ebook

[3] https://coinmarketcap.com/

[4] https://cryptoslate.com/coins/

[5] ‘crypto’, ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘cryptocurrency exchange’, ‘cryptocurrency invest’, ‘cryptocurrency market’, ‘cryptocurrency prices’, ‘cryptocurrency trading’

[6] Findings are based on searches and analysis carried out on 21-Dec-2023

[7] ‘Searching for Google Gemini: A case study in handling false positives in brand monitoring’, forthcoming Stobbs e-book

[8] References to ‘Bitcoin Cash’ will also be counted as references to ‘Bitcoin’ unless the brand is referenced as ‘BitcoinCash’ (with no space) or ‘BCH’. If we wanted to add a ‘correction’ to account for this double-counting, the worst-case scenario would be where allreferences to ‘Bitcoin Cash’ are double-counted in this way. If this were the case, we can adjust the brand content score for Bitcoin for each page, by subtracting the score for Bitcoin Cash for the page, before calculating the mean. This adjustment gives an overall prominence score for Bitcoin of 10.500 (i.e. a difference of under 2% from the original value) – and, in reality, the most representative score for Bitcoin will actually be somewhere between these two values. In this final study, however, the adjustment has not been applied, since it is also reasonable to make the case that any reference to Bitcoin Cash should also be counted as a reference to Bitcoin, since the name of the former cryptocurrency is derived from that of the latter (https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bitcoin-cash-cryptocurrency-roger-ver-a8346816.html).