META
Why your ads might be inaccurate 33% of the time
You know how Facebook sometimes shows you ads for things you hate?
Now we know why…
What’s going on: Researchers at North Carolina State University released a study showing that Facebook interest profiles are missing a key ingredient: context.
For example, a user could post something about hating the flavor of cheese, and Facebook would target them with cheese ads.
Even scrolling a page gives Facebook the wrong idea.
Not only that: A lot of the study participants didn’t know Facebook has an ads preference manager, which means many users probably aren’t recording their interests for Facebook anyway.
To be fair… The study was based on a pool of 146 participants out of 2.9B monthly Facebook users. But it’s worth keeping these findings in mind, especially since people understood something was off long before the study happened.
In the meantime: If your Interests aren’t performing well, use Lookalike Audiences instead, as they might be more accurate.
Google is gearing up to trash cookies for good
You probably heard.
Google faces enormous pressure from the EU and other privacy advocates to change how it processes data.
So the search giant is moving fast and breaking things… probably for advertisers.
Bye FLoC, hello Topics: Google recently messaged developers about its plans to test two new tools:
- Google Topics, which would enable interest-based advertising.
- FLEDGE, which would show ads on websites based on visitors’ prior browsing history.
When will these tools go beta? Expect them to go live when Chrome 101 Beta makes its debut March 31.
Our takeaway? Cookies are on their way out, and for better or worse, new solutions are coming hard and fast.
Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
SPONSORED BY ACTIVE CAMPAIGN
How to visualize the value of your marketing campaigns with confidence
Do you know the ROI of your marketing campaigns? Does your team?
Whether you want to get promoted or to land higher-paying projects, you need to be able to show the value you’re creating.
It helps when you know the 8 areas that belong in every analysis.
It’s even better when you have professional templates that lay it all out for you.
These templates by Active Campaign do exactly that, equipping you with reports that make you look good in front of a room.
Show your team marketing milestones, monitor benchmarks, outline market conditions, and much more.
Best part is, these templates are free.
Instead of spending hours creating your next report, why not try these templates now?
“Sure, I’ll try out these marketing report templates.”
TIKTOK
How e-commerce marketers can succeed on TikTok… without learning a single dance move
TikTok has been adding 650,000 new users every day and recently became the most-visited domain in the world, beating Google, according to a Cloudflare report (not a perfect report but shows the trajectory of TikTok).
Yes, you should start taking advantage of this beast. And no, you don’t need to dance to acquire customers with TikTok.
Nay Cook from Common Thread Collective shared a helpful guide on how to succeed on TikTok.
Here are some of his tips:
TikTok influencers. Creators are the lifeblood of the app. They shape trends, create communities, and define the culture of the app.
And since TikTok users prefer authentic, native video, user generated content (UGC) performs better than anything else on the app.
Creators already have an influence on a community and know their audience well, so plug them into your TikTok strategy.
Live streams. These are a great way to establish direct contact between your brand and the user. A brand live stream can be structured as product FAQs, educational content, interviews with industry experts, demos, or “behind-the-scenes” content.
Shopping features. If you have a Shopify store, you can create a tab in your TikTok account where users can browse and buy your products.
All good, but maybe you’d like to see some examples? Nay Cook included some:
- Ruggable consistently reaches hundreds of thousands of views by creating videos based on relatable topics.
- Purple is a bed and mattress company, and their TikTok strategy is characterized by two points: A) Themed videos, in which they feature the color purple, and B) natural ways to showcase products without looking too promotional.
See that? You just got some great ideas for TikTok, and you didn’t even have to tap your foot!
SPONSORED BY GROWTH HACKS WEEKLY
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Here’s a good deal that we think you’ll enjoy.
Meet Max. He’s a marketer who built and managed high converting campaigns that generated over $40M in revenue.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
A quick way to increase conversions from paid media
Paying for ads can be an uncomfortable business.
You shell out dough, usually to one of a handful of powerful tech companies which may or may not be run by lizard people.
And sometimes you see results… sometimes you don’t.
One way to increase your chances—quickly? Don’t ask people to buy your product.
Yes, it’s what marketing teams at well-funded companies often do.
They want people to book a demo for their SaaS solution or buy their product.
They brainstorm creative and build the ads.
And they send the ad clicks to their demo page or the product page.
But here’s the problem: The user sees they’ve been dropped onto a product page or demo page, and they leave.
Because chances are they don’t know anything much about the business.
That’s what happens when you rip people from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
And the odds they’ll convert after being dropped directly on a bottom-funnel page are, unfortunately, low.
How to solve this: Create interesting top or mid-funnel content. Something exciting, what a normal person would want to see.
Run your ads to this content. In the content, include a CTA to your real goal, your product or demo request.
In many cases, you’ll see your conversion rate increase.
If you’re not doing it now, it’s at least worth a try.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
AD FORMATS: Here’s something to help your website make more money. This new ad format by PropellerAds gets up to 65% higher CTR and has a solution to bypass ad-blocking, for both mobile and desktop. Learn more about the Vignette Banner.*
ADVERTISING: It’s official. Google Ads Editor 2.0 is now live. Performance Max campaign support, organizing conversion actions, and more await you.
PINTEREST: Morgan Stanley’s worried. With a continued decline among US users and stiff competition in the creator video space, stock analysts say there’s “too much uncertainty” in Pinterest’s future.
SEO: What exactly do “more visual results” look like for Google? The search giant just rolled out new results for certain mobile queries, and CEO Barry Schwartz says “more visual” is an understatement. He might be right.
ADVERTISING: Big news. Comcast is making its TV ad inventory available for the first time. If you’re in political advertising, you get first dibs. Everyone else has to wait until the end of the year.
TIKTOK: Did making videos just get easier? TikTok’s new Library feature connects the app to GIPHY, clips from popular shows, memes, and more. Sounds fun.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
A man rode out of town on Sunday, he stayed a whole night at a hotel and rode back to town the next day on Sunday. How is this possible?
You can find the answer here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
How much would you pay for an NFT… of a soul?
We already knew Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) were making people do crazy things, but we thought that was mostly on the buyer’s side.
An art student in the Netherlands is selling the most unique NFT of all: his own soul.
It costs about $372 USD, and you can ask the seller any questions you like.
We have lots of questions, but we’ll keep them to ourselves.
For now we’ll smile and say, “Just browsing, thank you.”