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GENERAL
Because the (advertising) world didn’t end on the weekend, we are back in your inbox… Or are we?
If we’re not in your inbox but want to make sure you don’t miss the latest (and possibly greatest) news from the affiliate industry, could you move us there, pretty please?
Aside from the regular stuff that we hope you enjoy, there will also be bonus entries for our giveaway, like today!
Don’t know what we’re talking about? Go here and you’ll get all the info about our giveaway for December 2018. It’s worth the 30 seconds to check, we promise.
Those who are already signed up, check again because we have a bonus entry available for you for 8 hours starting at 11 AM GMT.
We’ve also increased the bonus on the referrals. For each new person you refer to giveaway, you now get 7 entries!
OK, now let’s go into what happened over the weekend.
Q&A with Mo Ali Aguel
Over the weekend, Mohamed went on a quick Facebook Live to answer questions from his followers.
What we find quite interesting is that Mo is someone who went from standard affiliate marketing into e-commerce. He has been into e-commerce for many years but although he hasn’t made the switch recently, he knows both sides quite well.
He is still in touch with many affiliates so he knows what is up. And he actually does talk about the transition from affiliate marketing to e-commerce store owner.
He also touches on how he manages his time, how people who have a job or studies going could start an online business can make both go together.
Hint: it’s about hard work and discipline, not about temporary motivation.
Snapchat ads, building (and keeping!) a team, managing your relationship with dropshippers from China are all part of the video as well.
There are more very specific questions so if you have about 40 minutes to watch it all go ahead. If not, go through the comments and see if there’s any question you wanted to ask, then go to that timestamp in the recording!
5 of the most misleading ad campaigns from your favourite brands!
The affiliate industry is known to champion some of the most misleading types of advertising out there.
But it is always interesting to discover how even big companies sometimes get tempted to use not-exactly-true slogans and phrases to influence consumers to act in a way they might otherwise not.
Thus, we bring you some of the most misleading ads from outside the affiliate industry.
Smartphone camera campaigns
These days, the smartphone industry has a trend of “shot on smartphone” campaigns intending to show off their respective phones’ camera. In that light, Samsung messed up a bit when they were revealed to use stock photos, trying to pass them off as shots taken on their smartphones.
Meanwhile, Apple apparently tends to go into the “shot on iPhone” social media tags, and obtain licensing for media to use in campaigns.
However, even their “Shot on iPhone” commercial has “Additional equipment and software used” as its small print, making you think twice about what exactly you can do with an iPhone alone.
There are some handy accessory gadgets if you want to upgrade your phone’s camera though.
Food and science
Moving on to the food category with Dannon’s Activia yoghurt campaigns, that were marketed as being “clinically” and “scientifically proven” to help to regulate digestion and boost your immune system.
They were sold 30% more expensive than other yoghurts because they claimed to contain special bacterial ingredients.
A court ruled that the company was making unprovable claims, and Dannon had to remove phrasings like “scientifically proven” from their advertising.
Beauty is also on the list – an affiliate favourite!
In 2014, L’Oreal got in trouble for claiming that their new anti-ageing products directly targeted the user’s genes and would cause “visibly younger skin in just 7 days”.
While it would be great if cosmetics were able to “crack the code to younger acting skin”, L’Oreal now aren’t allowed to claim that their products affect genes unless they have competent and reliable scientific evidence of such claims.
The power bunny is not honest
Then there’s Duracell, who, in attempts to boost the sales of their then-newly released Ultra Advanced batteries, claimed they had “up to 30% more power” than their lower-priced alkaline batteries.
Then when they released their Ultra Power batteries, they claimed that thosewere the “longest lasting” ones. Neither of them was found to actually last longer than regular batteries.
And our favourite… The shoes that get you fit just by wearing them
Shoe company Skechers once paid $40 million after they got sued for deceiving customers by advertising their “Shape-ups” as helping people to lose weight and granting stronger and more toned buttocks, legs and abdominal muscles.
As in all our previous examples, Skechers is also banned from making health- or fitness-related claims unless backed up by scientific evidence.
Although whether those things are believable in the first place when you use Kim Kardashian as your model leaves room for discussion.
IGTV is not a superstar
Instagram TV, aka IGTV is not a smash hit. The numbers show an extremely high drop in new app installs for it.
As users, we also haven’t been thrilled with it but we also aren’t IG power-users. This article from TechCrunch goes into a long rant looking into what went well and what didn’t go so well for IGTV.
If you want to crack IGTV, you should read it all, but for those who are just paying attention, here’s what you need to know.
Instagram Stories are huge and probably changed expectations when it comes to new Instagram features and products.
Here’s the difference though. Stories are a borrowed feature from Snapchat where they were already successful, and content creators had plenty of time to learn how to work with this concept.
Instagram TV, however, is quite new. It’s not YouTube, and most content creators have a struggle with building content for this.
Users will only start using it more when they have a big reason to always follow creators there.
So, the first thing to solve is incentivizing creators to invest their time and money into building high-quality content for it.
This also means it’s a chance for smaller, up and coming creators. If you crack the code for this, you can be among the first “stars” of IGTV.
We don’t have exact suggestions for now but we’re definitely keeping our eyes on it and plan on testing some of our own content there.
Facebook account bans and Myanmar
People in FB groups are busy finding solutions to getting their Business Managers and ad account back but FB is not done yet.
The social media giant removed 18 Facebook accounts and 52 pages in Myanmar, including from military officials of the country.
Why are we bringing this up?
Because it shows everything that has to do with Facebook’s priorities right now. The message is clear – play by the rules, don’t do bad things and you can stay.
Otherwise, they will kick you out.
E-COMMERCE
The next big thing in e-commerce?
Heard of Fortnite? If you haven’t you are probably in the minority…
To quickly get you up to date, it’s probably the biggest game right now, on track to do $2 billion in revenue this year.
It’s popular because it’s fun to play but also creates very funny and catchy content to watch (and share).
So, what’s the opportunity?
Well, the company behind it, Epic Games, has chosen IMG to license the brand.
You might have already seen some copyright infringing stores around but now you can actually start a legitimate store for this. You have to apply for a license and you won’t be taken down if you get approved.
It’s probably not extremely easy to get approved, so we wouldn’t recommend it to beginners.
If you are someone with an established business, you should look into it. Especially if you have a good reach in certain non-English speaking countries.
If you do apply, let us know how the process goes!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Does Mt.Gox ring a bell for you?
If the answer is yes, you’ve been around the cryptocurrency space for a long time and there might be some good news for you.
If you don’t know it, they were probably the most popular BTC exchange in the early days. Back then, the industry was smaller and even more prone to scams… thus the Mt.Gox events.
The good news we mentioned is that you can now file claims and possibly get some of your lost crypto or dollars back.
If this matters to you, go here to see the announcement in English and follow the steps described there to file your claim.
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