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SNAP
The Numbers:
Loss per share: $0.14
Revenue: $262 million
Net loss: $353 million
Daily active users: 188 million (2% lower than Q1 2018)
Snap’s stock pretty much stayed where it was but it had an interesting spike before going back down as you can see on the graph.
The Crew’s take on it
We’re probably too old and European for Snapchat but we do have some thoughts on it and its potential.
Not gaining users is obviously not good and from our point of view, it was clear that their strange decision to more or less ignore Android users (by providing a very buggy app for them) has an effect on their international presence and growth numbers in general.
Instagram doing Stories better also didn’t help Snapchat’s case but oh well.
The good side for the company is that it’s making good progress on its advertiser tools and it shows in their increased revenue (and decreased losses).
As a user, not our cup of tea. As an advertiser, if you want to target people under 30 years old in the US (and a few other geos), absolutely worth it testing. Still very early days for the platform on that front.
And if you’re wondering if we’d invest in it… Didn’t we tell you do not listen to randoms on the Internet, like us, about this sort of stuff? Stop wondering!
Maybe another reason Snap is not doing amazing
Someone was able to swipe Snapchat’s source code and publish it on GitHub.
It’s a pretty big security leak, and it just goes hand in hand with our experience that Snapchat is not exactly a marvel of technology.
The idea is good, it’s catchy. We actually wanted to use it more. But the overall clunky feeling and updates to force us to use what we don’t want made us quit and stick to boring old WhatsApp in private and Slack for business.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing has a fake followers problem
A study by independent campaign measurement firm CampaignDeus found 12% of UK influencers to have bought fake Instagram followers in the first six months of 2018.
Those accounts got identified by low UK following rates, inexplicable jumps in follower count and below average engagement rates.
Engagement rates on Instagram for sponsored posts are on average 11 percent lower than for organic posts.
The engagement gap between organic and paid content is smaller for micro-influencers and reaches 44 percent for influencers with more than one million followers.
People connect with micro-influencers because of their authenticity and honest perspective.
Brands are desiring authenticity as well and therefore started looking more toward smaller influencers.
45 percent of marketers in Europe and the US cited micro-influencers as the most effective tier of influencers.
INTERVIEW
WHAT THE AFF interviews – where we bring you short and sweet interviews with the top online marketers on this side of the Milky Way.
Today we’re bringing you our very first video interview with Sam Frost as our guest.
A few weeks back, when the Brexit ads were published by Facebook, Sam reached out to us because he was a digital marketing strategist for the VoteLeave campaign.
He managed about £7 million in ads on Facebook, and you can imagine he learned a lot from it.
Here are some takeaways we thought are interesting to read:
- Running political campaigns is very different to running performance. The goal with political ads is to reach as many people as possible and you don’t really have a clear “conversion” point
- Policy back then was much more relaxed, and of course, they had a rep. Ads were put live within minutes – timing was important, having to react to the latest news. Wouldn’t really work these days.
- Simple stuff still works for getting attention and initial engagement.
- Lookalikes are an extremely powerful tool, both for performance and political ads, but you need much more data than the minimum FB suggests.
In the video, we go into what exactly worked, why it worked, what Sam is doing now, and more lessons so check out the full 40-mins-interview by clicking here, or on the picture above.
Give us your feedback and questions in the comments! Keep in mind this was a quickly scheduled interview, without professional equipment.
We know there’s plenty to improve and we will if you tell us you want to watch more such content!
Oh, and if you want to reach out to Sam, you can email him at [email protected]
Facebook’s the 3rd most popular mobile browser
When it comes to the web browser market share people usually only have Google Chrome and Safari in mind, maybe Firefox.
According to analytics provider Mixpanel, many sources are overlooking a major contributor of mobile web browser events in the U.S.: Facebook.
The social networking app has achieved a mobile browser market share of around 10 percent in many states. This means many people are using Facebook as their main point of consuming online content.
And it makes Facebook rank 3rd in mobile browser market share, in the US. First is Safari with 58%, followed by Chrome with 32.5% and then Facebook is 3rd with 8.8%.
With Facebook relying on its algorithms to customize the News Feed, which allowed fake news, hoaxes and clickbait to spread, its growth as a mobile browser is also a bit of a concern because of its influence on the flow of news and information.
But of course, Facebook is aware of that problem and started to implement measures like downranking fake news and fact-checking programs. Unfortunately, it’s not really working…
Facebook not acting on user reports
Jeremy Horwitz from VentureBeat tried putting Facebook and Instagram to the test.
Nothing too crazy but he just made sure to report content that clearly is against its policy. To his surprise and disappointment, he was faced with what we’re sure were automated messages.
The kind we, as advertisers, are pretty much sick of. And those messages said “thanks, but you’re wrong”. Except he wasn’t!
So Facebook has quite a bit of work to do… it is gaining more control, as its browser also gains a significant market share in the US but its tools seem to not keep up.
We’re sure some of you take this as good news because it means you can sneak in some offers on Facebook.
One thing we’d like to say is that the author oversimplifies the difficulty of policing content on a platform, at least in our view.
He forgets how many fake reports content can get, that policy is not as black or white as he thinks, and finally how hard it actually is to train someone to enforce it.
Everyone can struggle with context. One clear example is parody content…
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
It all started with a tweet…
This tweet specifically, where all of a sudden Elon Musk says he is thinking about taking Tesla private.
Usually, companies go public as they grow but Tesla is in a strange position.
It went public, the stock did well (20x) but the company is not profitable. And many investors are short Tesla, hoping the company fails completely.
Because of this, according to Elon at least, there’s a disproportionate amount of negative press against the company. Which then adds more pressure. And more people shorting Tesla… and you see where this is going.
For those who are supportive of Tesla, either because they like their goals, or think they can be a great company, they can keep their shares as the company goes private.
Not long after some tweets in the morning, there was a blog post explaining Elon Musk’s position more.
If Tesla does go private, it’s probably the biggest name to do so since Dell (the computer company) back in 2013.
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