ADVERTISING
Which countries like personalized ads the most?
Not the ones you were expecting.
Alex Bauer from BranchMetrics recently tweeted a breakdown of ATT statuses by geography.
The goal was to answer the question: Which countries were most and least likely to click on Apple’s “Allow personalized ads” dialog box?
The answer: India, Brazil and France were the only three countries where more than 30% of people authorized Apple to show personalized ads.
Australia, Germany, and Russia ranked first in terms of people refusing access, with more than 57 percent of users declining.
Why this matters: Strategy. Eric Seufert recently wrote an article on how Apple’s ATT will change advertising. For example, you may want to create separate landing pages for a non-personalized, non-ATT, audience vs. a personalized, tracked audience.
Knowing how much different countries agree to be tracked can help you make important decisions about whether to use different landing pages, tracking models, and so on.
Bear the pain: Yeah, things are becoming more complicated, but so is the competitive advantage of people (like you) who get this stuff.
AMAZON
The strange world of Amazon review factories
On Amazon, the name of the game is reviews. And when something is that important, people find ways to game it.
CNET wrote a recent article on the vast ecosystem of Facebook groups where Amazon sellers can get reviews and increase their product search rankings.
The scheme: There are two sides of the coin. Buyers (who get to review the products) and (Amazon) sellers.
The buyer will get the product from Amazon, review it, and then receive a refund from the seller. That way, the buyer gets a free product, and the seller gets a review.
Everybody wins…well, except for Amazon, Facebook and (ultimately) consumers.
What Amazon and Facebook are doing against this:
- Facebook reported removing 16,000 trading groups back in April
- Amazon has recently been shutting down big seller accounts left and right due to bogus reviews
The Crew’s take: Just because something works right now does not mean it’s a good long-term strategy. This whole reviews thing reminds us of buying links, which is ultimately a cat-and-mouse game. Do it at your own peril.
SPONSORED BY KONSTANT KREATIVE
Conversions! Conversions! Conversions!
That’s what you want your creatives to generate.
And that’s what Konstant Kreative designers have in mind when they produce creatives:
Images and videos made for performance.
They know what’s working right now on social media platforms. And whether you need a design for your video or images, Konstant Kreative makes it extremely easy – and economic:
- Flat rate pricing: Just pay a fee and get as many video and image ads as you wish.
- Unlimited revisions.
- Between 1 and 4 days turnarounds depending on the request.
- US project management dedicated to your requests.
- Easy communication through Slack or email.
Kynship, DIFF Eyewear, Posh Peanut, Vessi Footwear and other DTC brands rely on Konstant Kreative for their success. And here’s what Taylor from Kynship has to say:
“We run an influencer agency and are given raw assets of influencer content weekly. We were able to integrate with the Konstant Kreative’s team to manipulate assets and rethink how influencer content across Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.”
Stop paying agency rates on creatives that don’t convert.
Try Konstant Kreative for 50% off right now.
MARKETING
Do free samples boost revenue?
Short answer: yes.
But only when you do it right.
This issue of the Ariyh newsletter analyzed some studies on free samples. If you’re using free samples to generate new customers, here are some points to keep in mind.
First of all, why do free samples work? They give us a preview of the product. And how it helps us solve a problem or satisfy a desire. And if the quality of the sample is high, that’s the final push to make us buy.
How to design free samples: Make sure the free sample does not replace the paid product. Of course, this doesn’t mean it should be low quality. You can limit the quantity (e.g. 10 days free trial) or the usage (give away a strategy to generate leads, but not how to convert them). But don’t limit the quality of the sample.
Companies profiting from free samples:
- Amazon lets you read the few initial chapters of books on Kindle.
- Record labels release high-quality music videos of single songs on YouTube so you go buy the whole album.
- Microsoft, Adobe, Netflix, and Hulu, offer full access to products and services for a limited time period
- The New York Times offers free access to its content, but you can read a limited number of articles.
Free samples work, both to increase sales or generate leads. However, many businesses, even large established companies, give away fluffy lead magnets to get users’ emails.
People aren’t stupid. They might leave you their email out of curiosity. But once they find out your sample has absolutely no value, they’ll feel tricked and sayonara!
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
ADVERTISING: You’ve probably heard of SKAdNetwork if you’ve been following Apple’s ATT changes. This post delves into the strange and mysterious world of Apple’s SKAdNetwork and how it works.
FACEBOOK: Threads are coming to Facebook. The social network is testing this feature with a few influential accounts.
INFLUENCERS: If you post a retouched photo on Instagram, you must disclose it. Otherwise, you might get fined or imprisoned. Yes, this is happening in Norway.
INSTAGRAM: The best way to get people to shop is to… Give them money for shopping. This is what Instagram is doing apparently for their Shops product.
SEO: Ahrefs is nearing the completion of their own search engine. But why would anyone want yet another search engine? Ad revenue split. Ahrefs promises to pay 90% of profits to creators while keeping 10%.
TWITTER: The social network is experimenting with different ways to tweet. Tweet to friends, tweet under different personas (for those who feel like they have a different personality today…) and so on.
BRAIN TEASER
A classic today: I have 30 cows and 28 chickens. How many didn’t?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
U.S. Soldiers will live forever (sort of)
The US military will test an anti-aging pill next year on its soldiers.
No, it won’t make them live forever. Rather, this is “about enhancing the mission readiness of our forces by improving performance characteristics that typically decline with age”, according to Navy Commander Tom Hawkins.
So it’s more about living longer, so soldiers get an edge. So your 50-year granddad soldier can flex and shoot like his 20-year old grandson. Now that would be a weird scenario to be in…
While the US is still a bit shy about anti-aging, France is really going full-blown into it. They recently got approval for bionic soldiers, prosthetics, and enhanced cognitive abilities.
It seems like the future of warfare won’t be man vs. machine, but machine vs. machine.