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NATIVE
Taboola’s partnership with Sony Network Communication
Someone out there buying media on Taboola? A good piece of news for you!
The native media network announced a partnership with Sony Network Communications, meaning that Sony Network Communications will integrate Taboola News into Sony News Suite services.
Basically, new ad slots.
Of course, this means more revenue for Sony Network Communications.
For publishers, it means that you can now promote your content on a new pool of editorial websites. Particularly, into the Sony News Suite services.
What is the Sony News Suite? In short, it’s an Android app that organizes articles from thousands of feeds into two tabs, making it easier for users to find what’s more relevant for them.
We couldn’t find out the precise user base of the app. On Google Play, you can see over 50M installs and 100k reviews, so it’s not bad, is it?
Complete $84k FB Ads lead gen funnel
Ayo Bakare shared his entire lead generation funnel that made him $84k in just one month.
The strategy is broken down like this:
- Top of Funnel (TOF): Brand building and appealing to unaware/problem aware audiences. (20% of budget).
- Middle of Funnel (MOF): Lead capture. (50 – 70% of budget).
- Bottom of Funnel (BOF): Retargeting to capture as many leads as possible. (10-30% of budget).
TOF strategy: 3 ad sets.
- Ad set 1: Video views campaign targeting, using 1% Lookalikes audience of: Last 180 days purchases, Add to carts of the last 180 days, Page Views and opt-ins. Board interest audiences.
- Ad set 2: Engagement campaign with an authority/testimonial video. Audiences tested: 3 secs video viewers, 10 secs video viewers, 25% and 50% video viewers.
- Ad set 3: Engagement campaign with self-identification content. You want your audience to feel like they are at the right place.
Ayo says memes work great for this. Because they are polarizing and get a lot of engagement. This is a meme that could work with teeth whitening products.
MOF strategy: 4 ad sets.
- Ad set 1: Conversion campaign targeting the audience warmed up in the TOF phase. Test different kinds of audiences such as 3-second, 10 sec, 25%, 50% VVs, FB and IG Pages engagers. In Ayo’s case, the conversion was subscription to a webinar.
- Ad set 2: Here you target people that visited the opt-in page but didn’t convert. The copy used here should address the pain points of the audience and tell them they can actually solve their pain points by subscribing to the webinar or downloading the lead magnet.
- Ad set 3: Engagement campaigns to leads that signed up. Why this campaign? To warm them up for the sales and keep your brand in their minds. Use a “thank you” style ad.
- Ad set 4: Another engagement campaign targeting leads. But this time with a testimonial style ad.
BOF strategy: 3 ad sets. Go for a reach campaign with 1-day frequency. This will ensure all the people will see the ad at least once per day.
The audience targeted in the 3 ad sets are: Last 7 days sales page traffic, last 3 days ATC, last 3 days lead. Buyers obviously excluded.
- Ad set 1: Carousel ads addressing 5 most common objections.
- Ad set 2: Testimonial seeding.
- Ad set 3: Price. For e-commerce, you can use a discount here.
Make sure to run three different ad sets, so people will see all the different ads once per day.
That’s Ayo Bakare’s entire strategy. Definitely not rocket science. But still, quite challenging to implement.
However, this is the first time someone talked about using memes in ads. And it’s quite interesting. They surely have good engagement. Plus, it makes the user identify with a tribe, a community.
Have you ever used meme ads?
Good ROAS? Let us know! The Crew loves memes!
Check your Google Ad accounts right now!
If you are using Google Ads, you must have noticed sudden spikes in irrelevant traffic coming from locations that you are not targeting in your campaigns.
Most people are confused as to what is causing this. Well, it’s not a bug.
Google has quietly updated their location targeting options for Search, Display and Shopping campaigns.
At first, it might sound like a small update but it will have a huge impact (mostly negative) on all accounts.
What has changed?
“People in your targeted locations” has been updated to “People in or regularly in your targeted locations.”
What does this mean?
Instead of showing ads only to people who are physically located in your targeted locations, it will now include people who regularly commute or travel to your targeted locations even when they aren’t physically there when they perform a search.
WHAT THE AFF? Basically, Google wants your location-targeted campaigns to reach people to their work locations even when they are home and vice versa.
An unwanted update most marketers will be furious about. It would have been great to provide both options and let marketers choose for themselves.
What can you do now?
Closely monitor all your location-based campaigns, especially with high budgets. There is no other option but to make it a standard practice to manually “Exclude” all countries, states, cities that are outside of your service area.
It’s funny that Google is giving more control to machine learning and at the same time, more manual work for marketers. Ironic!
There has been no formal announcement by Google so far, but we hope they provide an explanation soon.
YOUTUBE
Hacking the ‘Recommendation Engine’
Are you running a YouTube Channel? Or planning to run one but aren’t sure if the efforts will be worth your time? Or will your content just get overshadowed by the countless other videos out there on the platform?
YouTube’s algo and how it works is not really a secret anymore. You just need to allow its recommendation engine to work in your favor.
70% of all YouTube views now come through this recommendation engine (via YouTube’s homepage and “recommended for you” suggestions).
YouTube engineers break down the signals they use to rank videos for YouTube recommendations:
- Click-through rate (Number of people clicking on your video after seeing it).
- Watch time (Amount of time viewers spend watching your videos).
- How many videos the user has watched from your channel.
- How recently the user watched a video about this topic.
- What the user has searched for in the past.
- The user’s previously watched videos.
- The user’s demographic information and location.
PS: First three signals are the only ones you can influence directly. The rest depends on factors outside of your channel.
Sounds all plain and simple, right? But here’s the thing:
Using a great thumbnail to get people to click on your videos is something we are all aware of. That does help in people clicking on the videos and increases the CTR. But if it generates a low watch time, then YouTube considers it as clickbait.
If those attention-grabbing thumbnails and titles get people to click through AND watch your videos, then that’s not only fair in YouTube’s eyes, it’s ideal.
The crux of the point? If you want to get more views through YouTube’s recommendation engine, you need to optimize your channel and your videos for both click-through rate and watch time.
Here are some recommendations offered by YouTube:
- Stick to a consistent format and content type. Most people struggle to gain traction because they treat their YouTube channel as a place to upload all their video content, rather than as a home for a consistent video series.
- Feed the recommendation engine with other sources. If you have a relatively new YouTube channel, you can’t rely on the recommendation engine.
In that case, you might want to share your videos with your email list, partner up with PR influencers and promote your videos on social media.
- Note that “the most important signals are those that describe a user’s previous interaction with the item itself and other similar items… “
For example, consider the user’s past history with the channel. How many videos has the user watched from this channel? When was the last time the user watched a video on this topic?
- Create thumbnails that get clicked. How? Use close-ups of emotive faces or action shots wearing expressions that speak louder than words or elicit an emotional response. Add text in thumbnails and add an element of branding to stand out from the competition.
Check out the detailed article for more recommendations and insights here.
FROM THE CREW
WTAFF Crew’s favourite spare time activity
As writers of this daily briefing, we spend a lot of time scraping the interwebz looking for those hot pieces of news and juicy case studies.
But what do we do in our spare time? Health experts suggest that after hours of working in front of a screen, you should go out, exercise and spend time with people and nature.
But The Crew doesn’t care at all. As soon as we finish, we shift our mode from “searching valuable content” to “searching entertaining content”.
And well, lately we found a guy that is putting out some high-level marketing memes. His name is Andy Batuchi. And his stuff is so funny we thought he deserved a spot in this email.
In the end, work is also about fun. So, have a look at his memes on his FB Page and personal profile. You will not regret it!
PS: This is one of our favourites.
PPS: First we talked about meme ads. Well, this might be a great source of inspiration.
Let’s celebrate memes with a meme!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
It went up in flames…
This is probably the worst thing you can hear on a Friday, right before the weekend kicks in.
“We are out of booze.”
Worse than the worst nightmare…
And if you’re a whiskey lover, this piece of news is probably going to make you cry.
Especially if you enjoy sipping some Jim Beam. It’s an American bourbon whiskey.
And right before the weekend, a warehouse in Kentucky, containing around 45k barrels of whiskey, erupted in an inferno.
The cause of the blaze really makes it look like an inferno: Lightning!
Is this a sign from the Gods? “Alcohol is ruining humankind!” Or maybe it’s just Mother Nature that wanted to get some sips to enter the weekend in the right mood?
Nobody knows!
What we know is that if you want to have some shots with The WTAFF Crew and get sloshed on the streets of Vienna, we are always up to it.
We are not joking!
You will see that it’s not really hard to spend an All-Expenses-Paid weekend with us. Just refer WTAFF to as many of your marketing friends as possible, and if you’ll reach the right spot, well, the party begins!
Just don’t take any incriminating pictures of us while we party! Let’s keep it private 😉
Here’s what you can get if you share us with your marketing friends!
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