It was an eventful weekend for Facebook
First of all, Facebook apps were down for under an hour on Friday. So, if you see something weird in your campaign reporting, check if the outage is what caused those issues.
Since it was less than an hour, you might not have noticed it from the user side. But, you never know what happened to those campaigns.
Facebook also has some bad news from the UK. They could be faced with an antitrust investigation from the UK’s competition watchdog.
On the feature front, Instagram is testing new labels that show when a feed post is shared to Stories.
Now, let’s move to the other big player in the ad world: Google.
SEO
Google clarifies a cryptic message, plus a note on search algo updates
Many site owners received an email from Google Search Console about new requirements for SharedArrayBuffers. It was confusing, so Google added some clarifications here.
If you got the email, this is what you have to do:
- Determine where SharedArrayBuffer is used on your website.
- Decide if it’s necessary.
- Fix the issue by either removing the functionality or by enabling cross-origin isolation.
Speaking of search, there were talks about another Google Search Algorithm update on the weekend and John Mueller had some thoughts on Twitter.
To summarise what he said: Google regularly makes updates, usually small. But even small updates can have a significant effect. There were no updates that should cause strong fluctuations… Well, “strong fluctuations” might be relative.
SPONSORED BY INSIGHTS
Check out what’s going on with Insights this week.
+ We had Rutger Thole, aka The Botfather, live on Friday for a Q&A. These are three of the main questions Rutger answered:
- How should your first chat bot look like and what should be its purpose?
- Why are chatbots a good way to stay in the driver’s seat with the new privacy and tracking changes coming to all platforms?
- Real examples (shared screen) for how to segment your audience and deliver the right message for the right person to take the best action.
+ Next Friday, on 26th March, we have Jim Banks joining us live for the weekly Q&A. Jim has more industry experience than the whole Crew here put together. He’s worked with over 1k businesses, helped generate over 2M leads for B2B and over $1.6B in e-com sales.
This session is excellent whether you have questions around social ads, search, display, analytics and tracking or running an agency.
+ Last but not least, our new deep dive has been announced. It’s going to be 100 pages of growth strategies and tactics that Morning Brew is using (and used) to grow from zero to over 2M subscribers.
We don’t think calling that upcoming deep dive a complete guide to newsletter growth is an exaggeration.
Check out the preview for free here.
Wondering how to get the full one, not just the preview? We’ll release it on Insights on 1st April, 2021.
If you want to get it for only $49/month, subscribe to Insights today, using the code STACKED49. On April 1st, the code expires and the normal price is $99/month.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Is affiliate marketing dead?
Let’s preface this with a caveat: You see marketers running around on Twitter and everywhere else these days proclaiming that all sorts of tactics are “dead”.
This isn’t one of those posts. But with the current state of affiliate marketing, it’s a tough question, isn’t it?
Well, an affiliate marketing veteran decided to answer this uncomfortable question.
We’re talking about Charles Ngo. And to cut it short, here’s what he states:
For the vast majority of people, it’s not worth entering the affiliate marketing industry in 2021.
Now, let’s see why he thinks that.
- Many affiliate networks are going out of business.
- The level of activity in famous affiliate marketing forums has dropped.
- All the past “super-affiliates” moved toward e-commerce, investing, agency, and other fields.
Then he goes on, analyzing how affiliate marketing has changed from 2010 to 2020:
Competition: In the early days, media buying was a skill that few people mastered. Now companies like Samsung and Disney run ads on Facebook and Google. It became easier than ever to launch a campaign.
Plus, e-commerce and dropshipping became popular business models, making the competition even tougher.
Rules and regulation: Getting a Facebook campaign banned has become as daily a habit as brushing your teeth. Back in 2010, you could be more aggressive and run certain kinds of offers that nowadays are banned. This is true for every other traffic source, not just Facebook.
The viability of alternatives: Today, it can be hard to get your ads approved on Facebook. But it’s easier than ever to have your own offer. You can set up a store in an hour on Shopify. You can use Amazon FBA or ShipBob to handle fulfillment. You can outsource the customer service to Zendesk.
You can become an influencer. There are opportunities in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. And you don’t need to be a coder to create a SaaS company or launch an app.
So, should you get into affiliate marketing?
Charles listed several reasons why affiliate marketing is still awesome. But you should get into it only if:
- You love media buying and hate everything else.
- You want to market certain verticals that have high entry barriers. Like insurance offers, for example.
- You don’t like the commitment involved with starting an agency or an e-commerce store.
For more serious talk on the current state of affiliate marketing, read Charles Ngo’s post here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
FACEBOOK: We all knew it was coming… The social network is joining the rise of audio social, looking to launch a Clubhouse-like feature.
TWITTER: Remember we mentioned you might soon be able to undo sending a tweet? Well, that’s planned to be a paid feature by the looks of it.
MICROSOFT: The new Defender update should help prevent Exchange server exploits so make sure you update if you use Microsoft’s service.
ADVERTISING: The Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting piece on how the pandemic boosted Google’s, Facebook’s and Amazon’s ad business.
BRAIN TEASER
I have 11 friends, and I am the shortest out of all of them. What am I?
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.
A tip for Windows users that have color blindness…
This is a somewhat different kind of tip but we just thought it’s way too useful not to share it.
It will certainly not apply to everyone but for those people it can help, it’s extremely useful!
The tip comes from Jen Gentleman on Twitter.
What is it? Well, Windows has color filters that can help you if you are color blind.
All you have to do is go to Settings -> Ease of Access -> Color Filters and you will have three different options to choose from.
Some users said they went from “strong protanopia” to “normal color vision”… Pretty awesome!