Bitcoin Forum

Do you think Airdrop is effective to promote ICO projects? I think No.
Certainly it may be useful to spread the name of the project, but will those people who know about the project with Airdrop invest in that coin?
I think that they only to sell the coin which earned by airdrop cheaply in the market and dump the price.

How do you think about this??

Airdrop is only one of the promotional ways to introduce the ICO into the market. Meaning to say, airdrop is only a starting move. There is no single way to have an effective marketing strategy. It is a collection of ways to creat such strategy. Therefore, airdrop should be part of that strategy. Other bounty campaigns and tasks are also significant.

Airdrops serve to promote projects. The more users in telegram channels and social networks, the more investors trust the project. And this is a very effective tool to promote the project.  But, it is beneficial only for the promoted project, as for the airdrop pay a very small fee.

Its effective as much as the bounty campaigns, it serves its purpose which the team can create bigger community support not just i telegram but in different channels. If later I will apply for a position i a team being marketing, I'd like to do what the marketing managers are currently doing right now because using the resources makes the promotion easier.

Yes airdrop is one way of promoting the ICO of the projects. I think the best way to promote their ICO are doing bounty campaigns like social media and others. Social media Campaign like Facebook, twitter instragram telegrams are one way of helping in spreading new to convince investors to invest from the projects.

The purpose of Airdrop is to introduce the ICO first time in public, exposing the project more widely. Every task or campaign has its own purpose. So  Airdrop is effective as it is designed to. But, the question is are the rewards worth it for the bounty hunters? That is a different topic.

I have heard about EXRN (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/exrnchain/) projects, 70% of the total supply is provided for airdrop and currently exrn has been listed on various exchanges. Indeed airdrop is one way to attract the community by giving several tasks to get reward from airdrop. Some can be effective and make it successful, but all of it is decided by the market and investor interest.

Exactly.

They are only being abused by people who have been dwelled with airdrops. There might be thousands of joiners to that airdrops but you got the question if they really are going to be interested with the project itself. Lucky those that the airdrop they claimed pump and some airdrops are also requiring KYC so think before joining airdrops that requires that.

It might not be so significant but it does. It validates that a project is not fake atleast it exists . it also makes some investors to want to buy more to hold a reasonable amount of the token

In terms of promotion, do you mean spreading the word about your ICO? If that is the case then I say NO. Investors doesn't care about airdops, only bounty whores are willing to participant in a airdrop so it just a complete waste of tokens for the project. Social media (Twitter, Facebook, to an extend Telegram) is the best to get the words out there. Plus those bounty whores will immediately sold of anyways, causing a dip in the price, so I don't think that its the most cost effective way to market your project.

Airdrop and Bounty is really the good way to promote ICO. Maybe, you just look at bounty hunters but forget that projects are benefit from it a lot. The selling of bounty hunters is just only a small influence to the price of this coin

in my opinion it helps a little, because usually they give certain conditions to claim / get their coins, like following their social media accounts and sharing their status.
I think it's quite effective, and of course plus the promotion of the team itself.

Airdrionis effective only for those who want to introduce their project to the public. You shouldn't expect investments from airdrop participants however some of them might invest if they find any good aspect in your project.
With airdrop you grow your telegram subscribers to make it look promising

Airdrop is very important move to promote a project!
I saw some project with the huge group on telegram, they airdroping for the voting contest in some big exchange, and they win.
What is better if your project listed on a big exchange, it positive impact on token prices .

Yes, effective and especially with increased competition

for me, airdrop is a bad indicator. I'm used to the fact that all airdrop is a scam. I think a good project would not do airdrop, but would spend a full-fledged iso and collect all the money

Solid project don't need airdrop to promote it's project. If project has good and solid team cheap airdrop will not be taken into consideration in  the first place, like you said the airdrop will dump the price.

I think airdrop is useful for promoting ICO projects. Because in this way people will learn more about the project and investors will become interested in them and study them.

Airdrop is one of the good advertising method to expose our project to the world that is the purpose of advertising so the user who is doing that want to make money out of it so there is no wonder that they will sell their tokens but nowadays even airdroos were useless since people consider airdrop as scam too so it will make bad impression about that project also.

I don't know how the promoting process of a certain airdrop. There is a way to promote ICO project's and it helps us to understand how really good it is, and to build up strong big community like wise of an airdrop.

Yes Airdrop helps in promoting ico's .They help in exposing ico's to a large number of people it is carried at a very early stage of  ico's to attract investors and create more awareness about the initial coin offering just as bounties do.
Airdrop are very effective in ico's promotions

The purpose of Airdrop is to increase marketing in the ICO. Company teams or developers distribute free tokens to attract attention during their ICO and to improve the investment value in their tokens

I do think that there is no effective way to promote ico projects
but there is an effective strategy and the strategy includes Airdrop campaigns

Airdrop campaigns done rightly through the right channels help any ico project to achieve a publication across the world, through every phase of social media such as facebook, twitter, telegram, reddit, medium, youtube, instagram and many more.

Airdrop is actually very effective.

Now lots of airdrops via email appear and i think this is one team strategy to promote their new project, if they think this project is feasible to develop, then they will continue their project by promoting it through this forum or other forums. And vice versa, if they think it's not feasible, then they will stop the promotion and leave it just like that without continuing marketing, and that is evident from the tokens that I got from the airdrop just become junk.

Yes, they only take a very small portion of their tokens and attract a large number of interested people on their media outlets. And it does not affect the token price when listing on exchanges.

if you wann introduce your coin than yes airdrop and bounty is one of the successful promotion Option. but only airdrop is not effect on promotion i think..

I don't think so in my own analogy the purpose of the airdrop is to gather more users and create hype or a community to call there own. That's my simple understanding because most of the Blockchain base start ups has use this method to gather more users and "Increase the Size of the Particular Community." its a common practices nowadays.

depending on the team, developer and manager managing it. we cannot conclude from one side. because there are many ico projects starting from the airdrop division first. there are many who managed to get out like ico bob, and there are still other examples.

No, in my opinion, the airdrop project does not motivate the ICO project, it's just a joke that the project creates a large community of people out of the hands of investors. that's my guess. may not be 100% accurate

You are not right. Airdrop is very good at promoting ICO projects. Many people are just waiting for the release of new Airdrops.

In an ICO that runs an airdrop, mostly people are only interested in joining that airdrop, because they can get several free tokens without investing. and usually investors become a little nervous to invest, because the number of owners of these tokens so much and they are ready to dump once that token listed on an exchange.

Short term it is great to bring some publicity to project, but as the time goes by all those people that signed up for airdrop usually just forget about the project (because there are alot of airdrops out there now) or if airdrop amount is good enough to make some profit it just ends up as a dump first day it reaches some exchange. So, short term, great to bring alot of people to projects community, but long term might have a bad impact once it reaches market.

I don't think airdrop is effective just to promote projects. When ICO is not yet rampant and only legit ICO during the early days of start up there is no airdrop known and ICOs because of its solid team behind plus dedicated devs and realistic projects. No airdrop is known yet. So ICO can be very successful yet even if there is no airdrops offering.

Sure airdrop it's very good for promote ico's, if isn't good why too many project use this method to promote their project. It will be very effective if just give a little allocation on this airdrop, if project give too many allocation in this, isn't good anymore.

Airdrops and bounty activities are all ways to effectively promote ICO, but I think airdrops are more targeted, because those who can find and participate in airdrops must be people who know about the cryptocurrency area!

The only factor that helps the project make more motivation for investors is that investors are aware that there are too many participants and that they trust the project to invest in them.

airdrop in this period only contains an awful lot of fraud and even a coin that does not have a price. This certainly gives a bad view to ICO's in the airdrop. When compared to the bounty then surely it would be better because more worthy though bounty also scam is pretty much it.

I think it is yes, airdrop is also effective to promote ICO projects but this time airdrops is not so convincing to participate because of too many scam projects and a worthless airdrop token.

Well, airdrop is really a place that helps the ico project become more popular, it promotes and spreads the project to a lot of people, attract attention and the project will get more capital, these are all the effects that airdrops bring. But that is just the past when airdrop is still good in many people's eyes, current airdrop has become ugly in everyone's eyes when it becomes a tool for cheat, instead of promoting the project, it only makes investors fear, they are afraid that someone will be dumping and they will not be profitable when investing

Airdrop is a nice way to attract attention to the project, form some sort of community behind it. But it's true that even when Airdrops are performing well and gather communities of thousands, the ICO can still fail to gather money. I am currently working for one project and we fear that the same can happen to us. I think that the project itself is pretty good and could succeed, but it will be hard to gather the funds. There are many things like ads, bounties, paid listings of ICOs, but it's hard to determine what is really worth investing in, what will truly help the project. Perhaps, you have other ideas of more effective ways to promote ICOs?

I don't believe airdrop is an effective medium of promoting ico projects reason being that a lot of people have greatly withdrawn from participating in airdrops since because it usually ends up in a waste of time. And most times it is just used to populated the telegram group and in no way does it attract potential investors.

No, I think that only bounty hunters who are ready for tokens, which are not yet available, can do a lot of advertising projects, although they still do not quite understand how to do it and in most cases they will deceived.

Airdrop programs are less effective for promoting ICO projects. I agree with you if the Airdrop project is only useful in promoting the ICO name. However, it all depends on the ICO in assessing it.

Im think airdrop and bounty program is one of a good way to talk about your project.Usually bounty is better than airdrop tells about your project as the distribution of project advertising in social networks is a good method of advertising.

Like what you say most of the airdrop users will sell their coins after they receive it. However what i see is that airdrop increase the chances of meeting potential investors but the chance is quite slim for that to happen. Even if potential investors are not acquired, at least the ICO can increase its awareness in the crypto space.

Infact,one of the best way of promotion of ICO is through airdrop.It is easier to bring people together on social group through airdrop.To promote a project, we need the people and one of the ways to get their attention is through airdrop.

Actually in my opinion, airdrops are truly helpful in ICO and other projects because it has the ability to promote the ICO easily because who would not want free money for an easy tasks because all you need to do in airdrops is like and share some of their tweets and facebook post and join their telegram and like their facebook it helps to build a community so others will also join the ICO and attract investors so airdrop is effective in promoting different projects..

I don't think there is anything different between airdop and bounty programs, they both do a task through social media networks, airdrop is one of the facilities used by the dev ico team to promote the sale of ico tokens, and I think and I think Airdrop also has its own community airdrop hunter just like Bounty Hunter

No, I do not think they are effective. I think that bounty is much more efficient than airdrop because you are doing a much more serious job in terms of promoting the project

I think that to some extent it is useful for the project as it will learn a lot of people but in most cases such projects are scams that are forced to install wallets with malware. Be careful participating in such projects

Airdrop as a means of advert can be effective tool but what we are having now is over saturation of ICO project coming to the market. The influx of ICO project is rendering airdrop ineffective.

in my opinion it's not like that, cheap price because the market trend is down and the transaction volume is small, it has no effect at all with the airdrop participants. Sales strategies with airdrops are very effective because they can expand the community with gifts. it will make the transaction volume bigger when they are registered in the exchange.

In fact, I think airdrop is a very effective advertising method. It does not target and partition into bounty investors. On the contrary, it brings significant popularity in the community. In terms of interactive efficiency, bounty is a priority. airdrop has its own purpose. Therefore, depending on the marketing strategy of the team, combine it to create greater efficiency.

You said it right mate, nowadays most of those ICO project didn't get any support out from airdrops they gain some attentions but due to so many
participants from the bounty which is not really helping promoting the project real investors are not being attracted and been pushed away before
they gain some interest to read about the projects, maybe it's better to find more effective ways aside from giving airdrops and allocate funds out
from the projects collected investment.

     It can also help the project to be popular but not quite enough to convince and gather an investor for the project so it need to have bounties for more advertising , perhaps bounties are a form of community who make a story or a discussion of the project , it make sounds for the benefits of the ICO .

Though it depend on the project and its entire team, I don't airdrop is enough to promote an ICO projects. There should be some more effective marketing means than mere airdrop.

Nah, not even close. Your regular Airdrop is just a desperate move to attract some attention from the crypto community but it mostly attracts only freeby-hungry folks that dont care about the project at all. But it can have a positive impact on the liquidity in a long run.

If the airdrop  is well organized it is a good way for ICOs to catch attention to their project.
That way, airdrop participants  are involved into the project, following it until distribution and  learn about it,
and in  some cases even investing in it.

Airdrops are risky because it will give it a temporary boost in marketing, but if they don't capitalise on it then that boost will simply fade away. Bounty airdrop hunters will simply dump them at any price or opportunity so the price will be lowered as well

Regardless it is effective or not to promote ICO projects, the fact that most all ICO are still using Airdrop as the way for advertising and promoting its projects. It means that Airdrop is useful and probably becoming an effective way. You questions probably raises as many scams Airdrop today and it raises a question on your mind about the effectiveness of Airdrop.

I think this is a good way to advertise the social networks of these projects, since one of the prerequisites is a subscription, so with the help of the airdrop, they can add many followers.

I believe that the effectiveness of airdrop is extremely small, in fact, attracting people for free mannates is equivalent to buying several thousand bots, they are of no use, they are not here for the project, but for money. But for some investors, the presence of more than 20,000 users in a project group telegrams may play a decisive factor.

Thank you for all your reply :)!

Actually I am not a member of the ICO project team, I just have an interest in your answers to this question. 
And according to my calculation, the ratio between Yes and No is 3: 1 at the moment.

But I'm still not sure about effectiveness of Airdrop. Actually there is a good aspect that an increase in holders due to Airdrops leads to an increase in users who are important for currencies, but there is no usage if products are not yet running, and I think that a team with confidence about their project will not Airdrop.
I am also not sure about the opinion that it will expand the size of community. Certainly the size of the community will grow, but in many cases they are not active in group and I do not think they are aggressive on the listing vote on the exchange.

I agree with the idea that Bounty is effective. Because it promotes the contents of the ICO project to other investors.

Airdrops are useful only to introduce the project to wider audience. They attract people, but if Airdrop is the only thing the project can offer, people will sell their tokens and move on to the other project. 
Thus, Airdrop is valid only as a part of a complex marketing campaign, otherwise it makes little sense.

Airdrops so far has proven to be very effective when it comes to the promotion of new projects as it helps to bring new people into the project. WIth airdrops more and more people get interested in your project and it is a good way to show them that you coin is one that is a very good option for them to invest their money into

Marketing strategies are unique in themselves and there's no single best strategy out there, but a combination of them all gives the best result. There are times when some projects did not do any public sale, but just private sales. They instead give airdrops in form of bounties and also give airdrops to their private investors. A classic example of this strategy is UCHAIN.

Airdrops help to create more awareness about a project and make them more popular. The much touted notion that those who receive tokens from airdrops tend to drop them at the exchange and thereby cause in the price might be true, but also remember airdrops are usually a tiny percentage of the total supply. There's a set of token holders who tend to be ignored simply because they contributed financially to the project, and these are the private investors with huge bonuses without any lock-in period. These guys have been notorious for dumping their huge bonuses at the exchanges too, thus crashing the price of the tokens massively.

Airdrop is one of many ways to promote a proeject, it will also directly adding more token holder to the project, and that can be used to gain more user to purchase the coin.

That is very inconclusive because airdrop only gives free so anyone can own it, without having to read more about the ico project itself. Maybe Airdrop works only to spread the existence of the project on the coin itself.

Most of the ICO projects have been using airdrops to promote their projects, so there is definitely some benefits, or they wouldn't have used it. They use around 5 percent of their coins for airdrop.

Spot on! The spot light is usually on the recipients of airdrops, who in my opinion receive a paltry amount of the entire token. Imagine tokens that worth a paltry $50 (exaggerated, because they worth even less nowadays), wondering how this will cause the price of the tokens to dump. A great project will do well at the exchanges regardless. I mean, DGTX is doing well in this bears market despite giving airdrops.

Not at all. I do not think that anybody is motivated to read the whitepaper or to become more familiar with a project fo 1-2 USD. Nobody is interested in a project for several bucks. Just filling the form and this is it. If you want to attract more people, give higher rewards for airdrops.

I think the existence of the airdrop quite effective though less so. at least it's become quite a good step and can convince investors if this lot has some advance interest in this social media channels they provide. but this time may be to airdrop is often taken lightly with a scam that very often even encountered. This makes the views of airdrop became bad enough though to be honest there are still some decent to airdrop championed.

As I see airdrops help to increase number of followers and subscribers of different social medias. But I don't think almost every follower pays a special attention on these projects. They only earn free coins. To gain attention on projects, ICO Companies need to find a different marketing strategy. But there is some sort of people who measure the success of a project by number of social media followers.

To show that their project is very active, they can use airdrops. But actually it does not give productive solution.

I think that airdrop is very effective, I'll give you an example, you found a good project and want to invest in it, you read the white paper and you like everything, but you go to their telegram channel, and there are only 10 users in their group, of course, you will not invest in this project, and if there will be 5000 people then you will not change your mind.

Yes it is a good way to promote ICO project. If they have start the ICOs in a good way then the project will have a many investors. But if there only a few who will know about the airdrop then in the ICO they need to double their effort to promote their project so that there will be many people who will invest in their project. If there are only a few who will invest then they will not reach the Softcap and Hardcap of the project and the value of the coin will be low.

It is partially good - you will have a lot of followers, advertising and also token holders (as i know it is good for listing on exchanges in the future). The worst thing as i see - a lot of people asking - when distribution, when exchange, when binance etc)

Now participation in airdrop seems to me a waste of time, we only increase the number of telegrams groups in your phone. What is the benefit for the developers I also do not really understand, to be honest.

I think that airdrop is effective for spreading your coins, not for promoting ICO!

can be effective, after I saw the Top ICO List, the last few months there was a project just opening the Airdrop gift program and the ICO reached Hardcap. this is proof that teams and CEOs work together well

It will not effective if you want to promote ICO. The bounty hunters will try to cheat a lot and will leave it immediately if they receive the token. Airdrop is only effective when your ICO is successful and you are in need of a larger community

I feel not too effective especially airdrop with requirements that tend to be complicated, it will make the participants think again to join aidrop, while the current airdrop with difficult conditions is only to get 1-5 usd, I don't think that is comparable to what we do

I believe that he was not promoting the project , as it attracts people's attention and thereby makes part of his reward.

Airdrop is a way to reach out to the community and create a great deal of attention to their project. If a project wants to develop a community then of course the airdrop is the best choice to make. And since then their project may be more popular with more investors

Yes it is.
Especially the referal airdrop, the project will be promoted by the airdrop hunter and the real investors will look out to the project.
At least, it's just only for promoting the project and let the investors know

Airdrop can be a very effective way to promote project if you do it correctly. The airdrops of coins like deeponion and privcy were done with absolute precision and they made sure that everybody got the altcoins that were due to them every week. That is how you can make an airdrop work for you but if you can't do it efficiently then you should just do bounties

Neither yes or not but i would still consider to have an airdrop option yet this would really be good for awareness or marketing and besides you are just allocating small portion of the entire supply .
The question is would your project will be worthy? Even if you do have an airdrop or none if you project is good it would still really make some noise on the market and will be find out by investors.

agree with your opinion, but all that has been thought of with the ico project itself, maybe they want to be better known by distributing airdrop, and that will make the token attractive to investors to invest, and when entering the market people will discuss the project and buy the token

To develop a project certainly requires a good community. One of which is through an airdrop program. This is just the first step of development. I think this is very effective as an initial step of promotion that can be done.

I do not really like to participate in Airdrop , and as it is skeptical . I may be wrong, but that's my opinion . But at the same time, any advertising for the project is its effective promotion. We must try to advertise it everywhere and in all ways

Well, I think effectively , during airdrop a lot of people repost and it's good for the project, and many who then comes!

Airdrop is not effective because most of the reward goes to a few people who use multi accounting and after listing a token on exchanges sell a lot of tokens.

There are several stages and ways to promote an ICO. Airdrop is one of the ways in the first stage of promotion. So, it is as important as the other campaigns. Each way contributes to accumulate the effect to a successful one.

Yes! Airdrops are really effective to promote ICO. If those participants ranging 20K to 100K will gather 3K investors then it help the project to cope up their soft cap and even their hard cap. However, it is not impossible for this ICO to be a scam project since most of airdrops are just a way to scam people.

Yes people in crypto space will be aware off about the token they receive. Coz first things first they search an exchange to sell the coins and then reading some white paper.

Yes I agree the one thing that will make a sell is the platform, not airdrops of course they will be attracted to free coins but if there are no platform to talk this is not going to be long term and will just die a natural death, like what happen to hundreds of coins.

I don't see airdrop to be as effective as it was before. But I think it still serves its purpose. It does attract many investors and bounty hunters into a project. Anyways, we do love free stuff don't we?

airdrop is paying for new tokens, I assume they are bullshit, their goal is marketing to attract investors with products that are not ready and have the possibility of scam
but airdrop which aims to introduce the product to the crypto community, by providing coins that can already be used, for example XLM airdrop, it is good

The airdrop is as the same as the cryptos giveaway, not effective to promote the ICO. The best promotion of the ICO project is the bounty, especially that is signature campaigns. The airdrop members should only care about the price, so that airdrop is not useful for promoting the ICOs.

ICO will not easily be great only because of the airdrop. many precisely because it looks bad for because the main problem being the scam on airdrop at the moment. the result of the airdrop could not even satisfy participants and this certainly shows that the ICO which is only open to looking less serious in what they are doing. though not entirely however many the result of airdrop bad enough.

Most ICOs use airdrops as an additional tools to further promote their project in addition to the other bounties however airdropping alone might get the desired result due to being accessed by fewer number of people who knew what is all about unlike the other social media that has a wide coverage.

airdrop is indeed one of the ways to promote ICO that is quite good, and also a lot of interest from people. however, that depends on how the dev thinks. I think Airdrop is the first step to promoting.

It is a good and effective way for teams to promote their project if it is well managed but recently the whole concept of Airdrop has been greatly abuse both on the part of lazy team and participants, there are many good projects out there with good success stories of Airdrops campaign, I was even told that there are some time that Roger Ver and some other big boys in the space were Airdropping BTC

Yeah my opinion airdrop project is more effective for promote ICO project, many airdrop have giving big effect for an Ico project investment could have many investor and could selling their coin in higher volume.

There were some projects that promote their ICO project by Airdrop  and they were successful . I think it depends on each project .
You were right when it may be useful to spread  the name of project and it will be effective when their project is really  good .

I think it's quite effective to promote an ICO project through airdrop. Usually an ICO project launches the airdrop to boost its social media followers/subscribers in order to make the project looks more legit.

Airdrop is valid only as part of a marketing campaign, otherwise it makes little sense. Airdrops are useful only to present a project to a wider audience. They attract people.

I think that it's the easiest way to promote ICO. It's very cheap to make small pool for every participant. Usually participants should make easy tasks in twitter and facebook to earn tokens.

If airdrops promote the ICO, it means that ICO would not to be a scam. There are so small chances to be true. If I were you, I would to use those airdrops.

In my opinion, there used to be a sense in airdrop. Two years ago, there were few people who knew about cryptocurrency. Now airdrops are held only to increase subscribers in social networks.

I personally think if Airdrop is not as effective as a bounty in terms of promotion, but the other goal of Airdrop is that they build a community and indirectly attract those who are members of the community to buy their tokens.

It's still a yes, airdrop help the ICO promote and spread every details of their project easily plus it make them a good foundation in their social media accounts. Don't worry about the dump of those participants because it was a small amount and not all of them are dumpers. Think of it, if there is now airdrop participant what will happen to their telegram channel and group? what will happen to their social media like twitter and facebook? If there is no participant, do you think investors will invest in such project with no people at all? airdrop participants create foundation and it is very effective in any way.

Yes I do. Airdrop is an effective way to promote ICO project, but it is used in the initial stage of promotion while bounty is used in the later stage to reach mass investors. So with airdrop and bounty many individuals or investors will be able to know about the project in question.

I think that as a way to attract attention to the project is very effective. Indisputably, this only benefits the project.

if the coin eventually goes to the stock exchange, and the airdrop gradually accelerates the growth of the coin-then in this case Yes. and in other cases-no.

In my opinion, sometimes airdrop can be very effective in the promoting of the project. But there are many other factors, which influence on success of the projects.

Sometimes ICO is the most effective way to promote particular ICO and create community around a project. Also sometimes it causes spam attack of bots and it is negative part of this method of marketing

Even though do you think Airdrop is not effective for promoting the ICO project but I'm sure this is the best way to build community on social media. Having an effect on token sales or not, I think no one knows about it, so we can't conclude it

Now it works more to attract new subscribers to the channels and to create artificial interest in the project, but for some of the campaigns airdrop can really bring benefits and as a result more investors will be interested in the project.

Airdrops are good starting activity for promoting an ICO.
Usually they are only a part of marketing activities together with other bounty campaigns.
Airdrops are good to spread the awareness of the ICOs and nothing more.
For doing airdrops you get only few coins so they cannot  affect the market by dumping them, eventually only short term.

It is effective if only the project of ICO is real, not a fake or scam ICO.
Airdrop's purpose is to make the social medias of the company crowded with many peoples around the world.
We can call them the supporters of the project, and i don't think airdrop will make price dump because the rewards is only small.