META
Ad system bug causes massive overspend
“What happened last night?” —advertisers everywhere on Sunday morning
Oh no: Apparently a bug in Meta’s ad delivery system dramatically increased spending for a number of accounts, exceeding set daily budgets.
… And in some cases, raising costs per mille (CPMs) by as much as 500%. Ouch.
The worst part? There was no way advertisers could stop the spend. If “Sunday scaries” weren’t a thing before, they are now…
To the rescue: Thankfully Meta responded within hours, and was able to fix the problem by Sunday night.
Now, we’re crossing our fingers and hoping you’re not one of the unlucky advertisers out there. But if you are…
Can I get a refund? That seems like an obvious answer, but it’s not clear yet how Meta intends to make it up to advertisers. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out.
Should I pause my ads in the meantime? One marketer suggested not touching anything, arguing that it can muddy the data and that Meta will likely pay marketers back eventually.
But that’s up to you, and probably depends on how sore your budget feels right now.
Decisions, decisions.
Two new rules for Google Ads: one for account names and one for Merchant IDs
You know how good things come in pairs? Yeah, these two new rules might be the exceptions that are… less good.
Both are a bit techie, so if you don’t understand Google’s new rules, just make sure the dev side of your team takes a look so your ads and apps don’t run into problems.
No more URLs in names: The first update is that you’re not allowed to have a URL in your Google Ad account name. This applies when you’re creating or updating an existing account via the Google Ads API.
But this doesn’t affect existing accounts, so just keep that in mind.
It’s a 64-bit world: Also, Merchant IDs are migrating to 64-bit signed integers by June 2023.
Explain that to me like I’m five: OK, so you should definitely run this by your dev again but we’ll try to explain…
Your Merchant ID numbers will be much much longer. And if you have any apps that don’t use 64-bit signed integers for the variables that pass Merchant IDs, things can break.
Think of it like trying to fit the Earth into your back pocket. While that might not be a perfect analogy, it’s pretty darn close.
Action steps: Send this news to your devs to make sure you’re all set, make another cup of coffee or tea, and carry on with your day.
Now that we got that stuff out of the way, let’s get you a quick win. You deserve it…
SPONSORED BY WISTIA
Take your videos from “meh” to “magnificent” with this free bundle of music tracks, color presets, webinar graphics, and more
Trying to feed and scale your video marketing machine? Need to crank out content that was due… yesterday?
Our friends at Wistia have put together a bundle of royalty-free assets, and it may be just what you need.
It’s loaded with music tracks, color presets, webinar graphics, and more—and they’re all free!
You’ll find:
- Music tracks to establish pacing, drive your video forward, and evoke emotion.
- Frame overlays and webinar graphics that add impact and visual interest.
- Color presets that transform flat footage into an immersive experience.
- Motion graphics to bring your videos to life with animations, bumpers, and countdowns.
- Handy pre-production templates to set your show up for success.
Ditch lackluster colors, boring music, static images, and uninspired editing for good.
Add a professional touch your audience will love—the easy way.
MARKETING
How to build instant trust and stand out from competitors at the same time
In many industries, marketers argue that it’s better to keep things short and simple, and not to reveal too much to customers.
He points out that revealing more can help your customers “navigate information asymmetry”—or the awkward feeling of not getting the full picture.
By doing so, you make customers feel like insiders, which builds a ton of trust compared to the brands that cherry pick what they say on their website or their ads.
And Casey has a couple of examples to illustrate his claims…
Example one: You’re a coffee brand, and yep, you’re like hundreds of thousands of others.
But what you can do is add something to your website that no other coffee business has.
… Like explain how the food chain works. Or how growers in third-world countries have to work through cash-grabbing middlemen.
You can also dive into the health aspects of consuming coffee. Are there scientific studies that coffee plants treated with pesticides are dangerous, or is it all just buzz?
Peel back the curtain. Add it to the context of your brand and become a trustworthy expert.
Example two: You sell server space or data storage. However, you stand out from the crowd by actually explaining how the space works.
What are marginal costs? How do your expenses actually work? Why do some brands charge a premium for something that seems like it should be cheaper?
Then, when you sell something on the higher end after giving valuable information away for free—or cheap—you’ve gained an edge.
You can apply this concept to any industry. Selling a health supplement? A vegan chocolate? Go behind the scenes, show studies, explain the production process, walk through pros and cons, etc.
That’s what makes future customers trust you, pay more, and most important of all, return.
SPONSORED BY KLAVIYO
Where to invest your marketing dollars and where to pull back in 2023, according to 750 marketing leaders
Biting your nails because you don’t know if your marketing dollars were spent wisely in the last quarter of this year?
If so, The 2023 Marketing Mix Report may come in handy.
Klaviyo asked 750 e-commerce leaders questions like:
- Is retention the new acquisition?
- Is it time to pull back on paid advertising?
- How much should you invest in which channels?
- Which channels will turn a profit?
Check out their answers before you adjust your marketing spend.
THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
An easy way to find hundreds of potential influencers in minutes
Learning how influencer marketing works is easy peasy.
The hard part is finding the right creators to partner up with.
ChatGPT can help. As part of our recent deep dive on AI and marketing, we came up with a prompt that you can use to have ChatGPT source potential influencer marketing opportunities.
Here’s what we did:
Prompt 1: “I sell lotion and skincare products. Can you give me a list of influencers I may be able to sponsor?”
ChatGPT gave us a list of 10 influencers. A good start. But we can go one step further. In its first response, one of the influencers was Michelle Phan. So…
Prompt 2: “Can you give me a list of accounts similar to Michelle Phan?”
Then, ChatGPT gave us another list of 10 people, this time accounts which were more similar to Michelle Phan.
See how powerful this can be? With these types of prompts, you can get hundreds of influencers, separated by niche and content style, in minutes.
Other applications: If you run a blog and want backlinks, you could use prompts like this to find websites in your niche you may be able to partner with.
This is just a sample of the insights you’ll find within our latest deep dive about AI and marketing. Sign up to Stacked Marketer Pro for just $7 to start and learn more valuable tips like this.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
MARKETERS ANALYSIS: There’s lots of uncertainty and upheaval for marketers. But what if you could pick the brains of 6,000+ marketers about what’s working for them? Salesforce did. Their resulting report is packed with actionable strategies for 2023 and beyond. Get it now.*
BUSINESS: Oof. BuzzFeed’s CEO basically admitted one of the reasons behind the crumble of their news division was being too reliant on Facebook traffic. Just a friendly reminder not to build on somebody else’s land…
TWITTER: Move fast break things. And more importantly, create chaos! After the blue checkmark controversy, Twitter decided to restore the blue checkmark to large accounts even if they’re not paying. Ugh, we can’t keep up…
LINKEDIN: Apparently, you won’t be penalized anymore if you edit your posts after publishing them. So if you catch a typo after clicking the share button, don’t worry, editing the post won’t hurt your reach. Whew.
E-COMMERCE: New feature alert. Shopify Bill Pay allows merchants to schedule, pay, and manage business invoices from their business admin. Sounds like it just got easier to stay on top of your cash flow…
*This is a sponsored post
BRAIN TEASER
What is as big as you are and yet does not weigh anything?
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.
Batteries you can… eat?
Swallowing a battery usually means it’s time to call the poison hotline.
But we recently heard there’s a prototype for edible batteries. Yep. These bite-sized energizers are made with the same chemical components you find in:
- Shiitake mushrooms.
- Seaweed.
- Capers.
Sounds like popping dead batteries out of the remote and eating them in front of your kids might be possible in the near future. How fun!