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Let’s welcome WhatsApp Payments
After announcing this feature around a year ago, Facebook is finally bringing WhatsApp payments to Brazil.
People will be able to send money or make purchases from a business without leaving the app.
After the initial tests in India, this marks the first time that users can use WhatsApp for payments.
How much will it cost? It will be free for consumers to send and receive money, but businesses will pay a 3.99% processing fee.
What does this mean for businesses? Facebook recently introduced Catalogs to WhatsApp, making it easier for stores to showcase their products via the messaging app.
WhatsApp Payments take things to the next level by allowing customers to find out about the product and make the purchase within WhatsApp itself. It’s definitely a big plus for businesses, especially those that rely on WhatsApp to communicate with their customers.
Unfortunately, it’s only available in Brazil for now, but it’s just a matter of time before WhatsApp rolls this out worldwide. After all, this is a way for Facebook to monetize its messaging app without introducing ads, so it might come sooner rather than later.
E-COMMERCE
Shopify and Walmart join forces in the e-commerce race
Walmart and Shopify just signed a partnership that will allow Shopify stores to sell on the Walmart Marketplace.
This opens up access to a pool of 120M potential monthly buyers.
The benefits for Walmart: The company is looking to compete with Amazon, so welcoming 1M Shopify sellers is definitely a step in the right direction as it expands its offering on the Marketplace.
The benefits for Shopify sellers: Aren’t 120M monthly visitors enough of a benefit? That’s a lot of traffic for your store.
In addition, sellers will be able to manage payments and catalogs from their Shopify dashboard.
There will be some restrictions: Not all sellers will be qualified to sell on the Walmart Marketplace. For example, your business must be based in the US and your products must meet Walmart’s service requirements.
As stated by Walmart, they’re looking for US-based small and medium-sized businesses with an assortment that complements Walmart’s own, as well as a good track record in terms of customer service.
So don’t go expecting Walmart to accept every man and his dog onto the platform.
But you can find out more here.
SPONSORED BY MAXIMUS
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Critical policy updates for Google Ads and a revelation
Google has been utilizing the slowdown to review their policy documents and, unsurprisingly, they’ve been making new edits every time they open their notebooks.
What are the new policy updates this time?
+ Account Pausing: If Google detects any potentially harmful advertiser behavior they might temporarily pause such accounts to conduct investigations.
The same action can also be taken for advertisers that have not completed the identity verification process.
Needless to say, paused accounts won’t be able to run any campaigns.
If you haven’t already done that, go ahead and get your business verified with Google.
Oh, and identity verification is rolling out to four new countries: Canada, India, Russia and Ukraine.
+ Misrepresentations: Starting July, a new policy will come into effect to address issues related to sensationalized content that forces the viewer to click in order to understand its context.
Here are some examples of that:
- Claims of secret or scandalous revelations.
- Language that implies the click will give context like “click here to find out”.
- Imagery featuring altered body parts, mugshots and disaster photos.
- Negative life events that evoke emotion such as accidents, illnesses and arrests.
- Use of imagery to provoke fear or shock.
You can find the tapestry of all the policy updates here.
Revelation from the future
What do affiliates need? Upcoming versions of Chrome to roll out asap, which will hide all parts of a website’s URL in the address bar and show only the domain name.
Good for some, not so good for others.
Why this change though? Google says there are two reasons:
Security issues: “Showing full URLs in the address bar may actually make it more difficult to determine if a site is genuine.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Consistency: Many other browsers already follow this practice, so it will bring consistency.
AndroidPolice said that it’s a senseless move. What’s your take on this? Will hiding those long URLs help affiliates? And is it fair for users to not know what’s cooking in the full URL?
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- FACEBOOK: Nah thanks, we’re good. – FB to the Australian govt as the blue giant rejects their proposal to pay news publishers.
- BUSINESS: An Apple-backed study reveals that the Apple Store ecosystem facilitated $519B in sales in 2019.
- SECURITY: A massive DDoS attack is making headlines, but it’s not what you think. As the Cloudflare CEO stated, it was just a T-Mobile network configuration change that went bad.
- PINTEREST: The company shared a report on new emerging e-commerce behaviors. More specifically, a report on how Pinners are shopping for groceries online more frequently.
- AMAZON: Jeff Bezos will testify regarding the potential violation of US antitrust rules.
BRAIN TEASER
I can carry you around; you can carry me as well; not a living thing, yet, I run faster than you do but not without your help. I have as many legs and hands as every man has; round are my legs; one before and the other behind. The cycle is never out of my name. What am I?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
How to grow your Instagram account 101
Offer a lot of value. Try to solve the pain points. Understand your customers’ needs.
Isn’t this the same piece of advice every social media guru offers?
But this study by AlgorithmWatch and European Data Journalism Network claims to have figured out the secret to Instagram success.
And it’s….. Take your clothes off.
Weird?
Read here: They asked 26 volunteers to install a browser add-on which opened their Instagram homepage at regular intervals and recorded the type of posts that appeared at the top of their newsfeeds. Organic posts, sorted.
The next step was to follow shortlisted content creators who run ads on the platform. Inorganic covered too.
The result? Of the 2,400 photos posted, nearly 30% of them were semi-nude pictures.
“Posts that contained pictures of women in undergarment or bikini were 54% more likely to appear in the newsfeed. Posts containing pictures of bare chested men were 28% more likely to be shown. By contrast, posts showing pictures of food or landscape were about 60% less likely to be shown in the newsfeed.”
Now you know what to do with that Instagram account you’ve been trying soo hard to grow.
Not a big finding, maybe…