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AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate marketer bribes Facebook contractor to get his ad accounts back
Jeeez! The struggle is real here!
This is just a follow up of the investigation BuzzFeed did regarding Asher Burke and his BH affiliate business, Ads Inc. They discovered how he and his team used celebrities to promote subscription traps. Well, it was a very long story with a tragic ending, and you can find it here.
However, BuzzFeed continued investigating and found some chat messages between Ads Inc. employees and a Facebook contractor named Ryan. These messages seemed to outline a conspiracy to reactivate banned ad accounts.
The “deal” was this: A bribe of $5k or $3k every month, was asked by the FB employee to reactivate all banned accounts and allow Ads Inc. media buyers to run their BH campaigns smoothly.
Not only this, but Ryan also gave Ads Inc. a special tool that would allow them to reactivate ad accounts en masse.
It turns out that Ryan wasn’t the only one either. An Ads Inc. employee told BuzzFeed that the company had more than one person inside Facebook who would work with them to reactivate banned accounts.
Facebook’s response to this story?
“This behavior is absolutely prohibited under our policies and the individual is no longer working with Facebook. […] We’re continuing to investigate the allegations and will take any further necessary action.”
Well, what else could they have said…
Stop using last-click attribution model. Now!
What attribution model are you using to track your ad campaigns?
Most of you, including some of the top marketers out there, are using last-click attribution. You need to stop doing that. Immediately! Like, now!
Imagine this: When was the last time you searched for something and purchased immediately? Never, right?
Your buyers are the same. They conduct extensive research and browsing across multiple devices before making a purchase.
Also, with Google’s efforts to push automated bidding such as maximize conversions, maximize conversion value, target ROAS etc, using non-last click (NLC) attribution becomes even more important.
Why? Because these algorithms work to optimize the ad spend based on specific criteria. This means you could be missing out on valuable traffic and giving too much credit to lower-funnel searches, such as brand terms.
What can you do about it? The Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics analyses your historical data and provides estimates for the number of conversions you would have had if you leveraged a different model.
It also helps you decide which model (Position-Based, Linear, or Time Decay) aligns best with your user flow.
How much difference does it make? Well… a lot. For a lead gen client in a competitive industry, they saw conversions increase 16% and CPA decrease by 12% after just 1 month of using linear attribution.
On the e-commerce side of things, an account saw a 5% increase in ROAS just 2 weeks after switching from last-click to position-based.
PS: If you are already using automated bidding, moving to NLC might affect your campaign performance for a few weeks while the algorithm adjusts. Be patient and remember that things won’t improve immediately.
SPONSORED
💣 What will blow up next in social media marketing in 2020? Experts give their insights!
TikTok or Facebook’s new creation, Lasso? Or maybe Byte, the app made by the creators of Vine? What about Snapchat?
What about content? Images or videos? Recorded or live video? Short-form or long-form?
These are just some of the questions tackled by Matt Navarra, Ian Anderson Gray, Paul Ince, Chris Strub, Lucy Hall, Lilach Bullock, Shelley Grierson, Fi Shailes, and Lenka Koppová in this piece by ContentCal.
- Why you have to start preparing for AR (augmented reality) ads.
- Why TikTok might have created Facebook’s next big thing, Lasso.
- Where LinkedIn is actually going to be better than any other platform out there.
- What kind of videos are getting the most return (Hint: it’s not 5-min professional videos).
- How to create a more “human brand” that is authentic and which features from each platform you should use.
- What the next step is in AI for marketing.
Small spoiler: Different platforms have different demographics and work well for different types of brands and products. This post tells you which platforms are strongest in which case!
This awesome breakdown comes thanks to ContentCal who contacted 9 experts and made them spill the beans on their 2020 social media predictions.
Not familiar with ContentCal already? Well, it’s one of the fastest-growing social media and content management tools on the market! It’s now used by over 25,000 customers in over 140 countries.
Sign up to ContentCal’s 14-day trial right here.
Become an affiliate to promote ContentCal right here.
Time-saving Automated Scaling Rules
Helping you achieve the Tim Ferriss’ lifestyle, here are some automated rules to help you scale without blowing up your budget and save you a whole lotta time. They were shared by Franzisko Sanchez.
Let’s have a look at them:
3 days KPI kills: This decreases the budget of ad-sets that weren’t in the target ROAS in the last 3 days.
Decrease budget by 100% – Last 3 days If:
- Amount Spent > 3x BE CPP (Breakeven cost per purchase) or whatever you feel comfortable spending, AND
- ROAS < Breakeven ROAS
Accelerated scaling: The name speaks for itself. Franzisko applies this several times in a day: 4 AM, 9 AM, 12 AM, 4 PM and 8PM. Set the cap at $1k.
Increase budget by 10-25% TODAY if:
- Amount Spent > (BE CPP), AND
- ROAS > (BE ROAS), AND
- Purchases (Facebook Pixel) > 3
Stop Loss: This doesn’t need much back up either. It’s about limiting spend.
Shut off Ads – TODAY
- Amount Spent > (B.E. CPP), AND
- ROAS < B.E. ROAS, AND
- Purchase (Facebook Pixel) < 1
Restart: Turn on ad sets | Custom run at 00 AM (midnight) – YESTERDAY
Amount Spent > 5
That’s all of them. We’re not sure they’ll get you to the holy grail of the 4-hour workweek, but they should help you save a bunch of time checking stats and making changes.
ROUNING UP THE STACK
- BUSINESS: How a San Diego based surfer built a sunglasses e-commerce and exited for $90M. Some useful lessons to help you build a sellable e-comm store.
- SECURITY: Google will start warning you if your passwords have been stolen as you try to log in to a given website.
- YAHOO SHOPPING: Yahoo Shopping will be the hub powering commerce-related experiences across Verizon Media brands and publishers.
- PINTEREST: Pinterest published “Pinterest 100”; a full list of all the rising trends that are likely to be big in 2020.
BRAIN TEASER
What goes up but never comes down?
You can find the solution by clicking here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Domain on sale for 14 years in prison
Would you risk 14 years of your life for a domain name? We’re guessing you wouldn’t, right?
But social media influencers are built a bit differently. You know they are always over committed to their work, and they often end up doing weird stuff to get ahead of the competition.
For example, Rossi Lorathio Adams II. Since 2015, he’s been running a series of platforms called State Snaps and NSFW Insta accounts, often featuring college girls and eventually amassing 1.5M followers.
A good business, right? However, he was bugged by one thing: He didn’t own the domain doitforstate.com, a reference to a popular hashtag #DoItForState.
He initially tried to purchase the domain from the owner, but that plan failed after the owner demanded at least $20k – way too much for Rossi.
Instead, Rossi turned to intimidation. He sent a gun emoji to the owner and even showed up at his door. Following that, he started getting violent with face-to-face intimidation.
He hired his cousin, a convicted felon, to break into the owners house and force him to transfer the domain at gunpoint.
Things turned ugly, and Rossi was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty.
It’s important to be a risk-taker in entrepreneurship, but maaaaan. You went too far.