FROM THE CREW
This is A VERY IMPORTANT clarification!
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been told some of you seriously misunderstood our email from 30th July.
PeerFly is shutting down, yes. But Big Bang Ads, our newsletter sponsor for that day, has no such issues.
We’ve re-read it, and the only thing we can think of is that we announced that the main story of the day was an affiliate network shutting down after we included the BBA logo.
We’ll bear this situation in mind and remember that things can sometimes be unclear at a quick glance.
Could you also do us a favour though? Assume nobody will sponsor our newsletter to announce that they’re shutting down. So, if their logo is in the newsletter, they’re definitely not announcing their shutdown here!
Big Bang Ads shares its take on FB lead generation. FB’s good deed
Why do your leads get rejected? FB shares its harmful-content-catching algorithm with the world.
The latest challenges with lead-gen on Facebook that nobody talks about!
OK, so maybe we’re talking about it, but nobody else!
In fact, The Crew is talking about it because Big Bang Ads was nice enough to bring it up with us.
The situation: Facebook is great at targeting, right? No arguments there. That’s because, among other things, Facebook knows what sort of ads people like and what pushes them to convert… but this is where the the lead-gen issue begins.
The problem: The lead acceptance rate from social (FB especially) has declined. What this means is that BBA’s clients don’t accept the leads, even though BBA pays its affiliates for them.
It seems that Facebook might be sending the exact same users to all affiliates, which results in too many duplicate leads and subsequently means that they don’t get accepted by the advertiser’s clients.
In other words, Facebook sends the exact same pool of people to all affiliates who run similar offers. Over and over and over again.
The solution? Well, we actually don’t have one right off the bat. In fact, we were hoping to call upon the power of the WHAT THE AFF readers to see if we can all figure this out together.
The Crew’s Ideas:
- Vary the interest targeting if you’re an affiliate. Sure, there are some interests everyone has probably found to work, but remember that this might end up sending the same people to all the different affiliates. There are only so many people out there that qualify for certain interest targeting.
- Work with Lookalikes Audiences, and perhaps make them broader. Tougher if you cannot use the Pixel, but we’re just brainstorming here, right?
- Ask the advertiser if they can give you an audience you can exclude, such as previous leads. Probably not directly as a list, but maybe as a shared custom audience?
- If the advertiser(s) that own those lead gen offers can share lookalikes that you can target, it might also help. Combining lookalikes and excluding existing leads could be a good combination if it’s actually possible with all the flows in place.
Have you run into this problem? Maybe you have a solution that you can share? Hit us up at cre[email protected] and we’ll share it with everyone so we can all learn!
FB open sources its algorithm
Maybe this is just a move to start wiping its reputation clean, but whatever their motives it happens that FB is open-sourcing its Photo- and Video-Matching technology. Why?
To make the internet safer.
Essentially, FB is sharing some of the tech they use to catch harmful content and combat abuse.
Now, every company will be able to use these algorithms in their own systems.
Well, whether this is just a strategic corporate reputation move or not, it’s surely a good deed by Facebook. It will almost certainly help other companies to fight the spread of dangerous content across the webz.
One up for Mark!
SPONSORED
📝 AffloSpark can write all the content you want in record speed with high-quality SEO in mind!
Content can be a big pain. Writing good stuff takes a lot of effort. We should know, right?
Well, Kulwant Nagi, the founder of AffloSpark noticed that many online entrepreneurs struggle with content. Whether they are bloggers, publishers, e-commerce entrepreneurs, etc. just about everyone can use content marketing.
That’s why he started a high-quality writing service where you can order professionally written articles every single month.
We know you’re already asking yourself “… but how does this work?”
Simple!
- You go to AffloSpark’s website here.
- You choose which package you want, starting at $69/month for 3 articles (800 words each) every month. You can get 15% off your first order with the code “wtafflove”.
- Fill in the form and pay.
- You’re all set – someone will get in touch for the details to make sure things go the way you want them.
The WTAFF Crew actually tested this service and you can see some of AffloSpark’s work on our Jobs in Digital Marketing blog here. You can also see another collection of their articles here, on Pitchground’s wesbite.
How did it go for us?
“Within a couple of weeks, we already had 12 great articles with over 2000 words written without having to lift a finger. The team did the topics research as well, researched images to feature in the articles and delivered very quickly from the time we placed the order!” to quote Manu from The Crew.
If content marketing for that SEO-juice and user engagement is something you want to do more, AffloSpark is a must-try!
SEO
Another algorithm update
Google announced a new algorithm update that will keep Featured Snippets timely, fresh and relevant whenever the query demands it.
The thought behind this update is to ensure that the answers users get for certain questions are not just accurate, but also timely.
Here are a few example scenarios:
When searching for upcoming holidays, users don’t want to see the dates of holidays from the past.
Whenever more accurate information is available for a topic, Google prefer to show the new information.
Where recalls on food, cars, safety issues etc are involved.
Here’s what Google announced:
“As part of our ongoing efforts to make Search work better for you, a new algorithm update improves our systems’ understanding of what information remains useful over time and what becomes out-of-date quickly.
This is particularly helpful for featured snippets, a feature in Search that highlights pages that our systems determine are most likely to have the information you’re looking for. For queries where fresh information is important, our systems will try to find the most useful and up-to-date featured snippets.”
When is this update launching?
Apparently, it already went live in late February. If you weren’t aware of this, don’t worry…
When it comes to SEO, Google has a mysterious way of doing things.
MARKETING
Wondering where all the bad clicks come from?
A couple of days ago, we featured a post on how to get rid of bad clicks, including the dreaded bot clicks.
Now, we’ve found another video shared by Loz Green showing a Chinese click farm. The video is going viral, and if you scroll down in the comments you can see a close-up of the endless sea of the endless sea of smartphones in operation.
Over 8k devices working hard to create fake ad clicks and impressions, defrauding advertisers and advertising platforms day in, day out.
Back in the day, farms used to host cows and pigs. Now, it’s all about smartphones and AI.
This isn’t exactly fresh news. You’ve probably already heard about these farms. Still, it’s always interesting to see these things live and in operation… and the music in the background makes everything even more weird
However, this isn’t just a Chinese phenomenon. It seems that click farms are becoming a popular side business for Americans.
Yes, reading this article from Vice, it seems that people are switching from brewing beer in their garages to farming clicks.
Ordinary people setting up farms in their living rooms, their garages or under their beds. (We invented this last one). Most of these are making just a few bucks per month, but others are generating a modest income ($2k) from this venture.
And yes, it’s a scalable business! You can start with your phone and then scale it by buying used-ones on eBay.
This is becoming a viable alternative to Uber or Grubhub in order to take home more bread.
There are people taking this “biz” one-step further though: Joseph D’Alessandro, a 20-year-old guy, created a Youtube channel where he talks about his progress and explains how to set it up.
Maybe this will be the next class of goo-roos. Click-farm gurus.
Well, after analyzing this problem we think The WTAFF Crew have just two choices: Organize an Area 51 style invasion to these Chinese farms… Or join the dark side and make a course on how to build a click farm.
We’ll keep you informed!
New ad spaces for advertisers, monetization tools for publishers
Think Games at ChinaJoy, one of the biggest conferences for game developers, is currently underway in Shanghai this week.
Where are we going with this, you ask?
Well, Google leveraged this event to announce new inventory and features for app publishers and advertisers.
After all, mobile gaming is a $68.5B market, with 80% of that comes from smartphone games.
Updates for advertisers
App campaigns are now expanding to the 3 new placements:
- Discover feed on the Google homepage on mobile and Chrome on desktop.
- YouTube’s search results on mobile devices.
- Display in-stream ads inventory, the skippable video ads that run before, during or after a video on a site or app in Google’s mobile display network.
These updates will be first rolled out to the US. In the coming months, they will be made available in Malaysia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia, with plans to make the roll-out global by the end of the year.
Updates for Publishers
For publishers using AdMob to monetize their apps, new updates include a new ad placement test, smart segmentation expansion and more metrics.
Ads on app loading pages: Google is testing a new placement to show ads when users are waiting for an app to load after opening it. If you’re interested in joining the test, contact your AdMob account manager.
Smart segmentation on rewarded ads: Only those users who are unlikely to make an in-app purchase will be shown ads in their apps. The users deemed likely to make a purchase won’t be shown any ads in their apps.
AdMob dashboard insights: Expect to see more alerts in your AdMob dashboard when inconsistencies in key metrics such as eCPM, impressions and revenue are detected.
If you are currently running any App campaigns, monitor them closely as you might see a spike in the impressions and clicks.
SNAPCHAT
“Instant Create” your ad campaigns on Snap
If you’ve been waiting for the right time to quickly test some Snapchat traffic, now is that time.
Snapchat has introduced a new tool called Instant Create, which allows you to create Snapchat-optimized campaigns in just 3-steps.
- Select an objective
- Enter your business website.
- Select your targeting.
Bam! Your ads are ready to go live.
You don’t even need to design your own creatives. It’s all done automatically! Just enter your business URL and Instant Create will pull in photos directly from your website.
Instant Create is available to all advertisers from the self-service Ads Manager.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Surefire way to get on the rich list!
Today, we have a fantastic piece of news for you, dear marketer!
Sociologist Rainer Zitelmann conducted a piece of research to discover the most common traits among rich people. He interviewed 45 individuals, with each having a net worth between €10M and €3B, to discover what these self-made millionaires had in common.
Most of these people started their ascent with a sales job.
More importantly, two in three said that their talents as sales people had been a “significant” factor in their wealth. More than one in three said they owed 70% or more of their success to their sales talents.
Why is this a fantastic piece of news? Everybody imagines a sales job as a man in a suit and tie going door-to-door selling stuff, or closing deals over the phone.
However, the salesman and saleswoman of this century conducts all business online.
Don’t you agree? Pretty much all purchases are going to move online in the near future. And, if you’re subscribed to WTAFF, chances are that you sell stuff online as well. So…
You’re on the right path to the Forbes list.
Here’s what you can get if you share us with your marketing friends!
