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Where have the low CPMs gone?
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that FB (and Google for that matter) reported that traffic costs are no longer dropping.
There’s an interesting discussion about this going on in a Twitter thread started by Cory Dobbin. When it comes to the average, the CPMs are actually higher for him than pre-COVID-19 prices.
Aaron Orendorff chimed in with data from ~$10M spent after 7th March and, while it does show a lower price, it’s not that much lower.
“We’ve been using Mar. 1-7 as a baseline: avg. CPM was $10.86. Last week was $9.43. This week it’s $9.06. (Of course, the weekend will be a big factor in how that shapes.)”
The consensus seems to be that, while CPMs are rarely higher than pre-pandemic levels, they are certainly rising so it’s only a matter of time until the “low CPMs” are gone.
Crackdown loading… on data & battery draining ads
Google Chrome will start cracking down and blocking resource-heavy ads, starting August 2020.
+ What are resource-heavy ads? Poorly programmed ones that aren’t network-optimized or mine cryptocurrency, affect users’ devices, hog network data or drain users’ batteries.
“We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it.”
+ What’s gonna happen? Chrome will start reducing the resources a display ad can use before a user engages with it.
For ads exceeding the limit Chrome will unload the ad, something called using Heavy Ad Intervention. Users will see a message such as “Ad removed” instead of the ad.
+ What are the resource thresholds? Chrome will filter ads based on the following thresholds:
- 4MB of network data.
- 15-seconds of CPU usage in a 30 second period.
- 60-seconds of total CPU usage.
+ Why is this happening? This is one of the many efforts Chrome is making to filter and block ads that don’t adhere to their Better Ads Standards. While only 3% of ads exceed these thresholds, they account for 27% of network data and 28% of all ad CPU usage.
If you’ve been running Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns, now seems to be the best time to start looking at your ad builds by following the testing resources here.
FROM THE CREW
Did you know you can get prizes for sharing?
OK, the grand prize we put up for grabs can’t be claimed right now because it’s a trip to Vienna, Austria to have a schnitzel with The Crew. But hey, things should get better soon!
What can you still get? Well, most of the other things…
It all starts with access to our invite-only Facebook Group, where we share exclusive interviews, reports and breaking news. From there the prizes evolve into swag (including our favorite one-of-a-king Stacked Marketer token) and conference tickets.
CONTENT MARKETING
Creating a cascade of content as big as Niagara Falls
Putting tons of content pieces out there isn’t that hard if you have the right processes in place. But getting these processes in place is the difficult thing.
Brian Dean outlined all the steps that helped him to put out 326k words of blog content in a single year. He didn’t stop there though, also producing a course, dozens of social media posts, email newsletters, YouTube video scripts, and more.
Here are the steps
1) Break your writing process down into tiny steps: Creating content involves a series of small steps. Breaking them down will help you to understand which steps are critical and which can be outsourced.
2) Create a content calendar: You need to create a very detailed calendar, outlining not only the posts to write but even the individual steps needed for each one of them.
3) Plan out your content schedule for the next 6-8 months: Yes, you gotta go that far. This also helps to reduce the stress about what future posts should be. That being said, make sure to remain flexible as well.
4) Create outlines for upcoming posts: Before you start hammering out the words in freestyle, outline the structure of the piece you’re going to write.
Not only does it make the writing process faster, but it makes your content more organized and structured. Plus, it ensures you’re not missing any important points.
5) Write content based on first hand knowledge and experience: Writing about topics that are already in your head makes the process faster and easier, as well as making the finished article of much higher quality.
6) Hire writers with experience: The suggestion here is to hire experts rather than random writers on Upwork.
How can you find them? Find people that run blogs in your industry or people that contribute to other sites in your niche.
7) Staff up your content: This is about creating a world-class content team.
Brian Dean went deep into each one of these steps and you can check the whole long post to find more details.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
- GOOGLE: An explainer video released by Google walks you through different types of security issues reported on Search Console and what causes them.
- PRIVACY: A cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in “Login with Facebook” makes a security researcher richer by $20k.
- SEO: Is Google copying Reddit’s upvote and downvote features with this new test? Do you see any potential scope for negative SEO for it?
- LINKEDIN: LinkedIn announced that its algorithm will take “Dwell Time” into consideration when ranking posts on the feed.
- YOUTUBE: The platform just launched four new features for video creators that will help them enhance their videos and moderate their channels.
BRAIN TEASER
I start with a “P” and end with “O-R-N” and I’m a major player in the film industry.
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.
What were you planning to binge on this weekend?
The spring of 2020, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned into the season of binge watching TV series. Do you prefer consuming the new ones or your favorite old ones?
If you’re planning to invest some time in a new series but aren’t sure whether you should commit or not, here’s a cool tool to guide you in your quest.
It tells you exactly when a TV series starts losing the plot or getting boring by using the ratings of each episode from IMDb to create a chart line.
There are even more stats such as the average rating and standard deviation being added up, as well as a list of the shows with the best and worst trend lines.
We gave it a shot and had a look at what it says about the last season of “Game of Thrones” and it did a good job.
But let’s not get into that discussion. We have a weekend ahead of us (lol, are weekdays and weekends even a thing anymore), so this might be a handy tool before you commit yourself to a TV show.