Google wants you to play in the sandbox
With third-party cookies fading away, advertising on the web is certainly at a turning point and this is a possible solution from Google.
It uses Federated Learning of Cohorts (aka FLoC – seriously, it’s like they made the acronym first to have it similar to “flock”) which proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with targeted ads. It clusters large groups with similar interests so that people can “hide in the crowd”.
It’s still work-in-progress but this does bring a slight silver lining in a period where advertisers are scrambling for solutions for the iOS 14 impact.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Three from three… Updates about social media apps
It was eerily silent yesterday on the news front, but there are three quick new updates from three different social apps:
- Instagram adds a “professional dashboard” for businesses and creators to make life easier. Shortcuts for branded content, tracking ads, shopping features – they are all there. The features aren’t new to IG, they are just centralized under one dashboard.
- Twitter launches Birdwatch. It’s their community-based approach to handling misinformation on their platform. The feature is currently tested in the US so if that’s where you live, you can check it out!
- TikTok faces more scrutiny, specifically in Italy. The country’s data protection agency told TikTok it must block users whose age it can’t verify following the tragic death of a 10-year old who took part in the “blackout challenge” on the app.
That mostly wraps up the social media updates. We’re still thinking about Google’s Sandbox though and if that’s good news for media buyers.
SPONSORED BY REVCONTENT
Imagine your grandad doing $300k/month online selling CBD
If your grandad was an American actor and his name was Tommy Chong, you wouldn’t have to imagine.
Back in 2019, Tommy Chong launched his CBD brand Tommy Chong’s CBD (TCC). With social media platforms still blocking advertising for these products, TCC’s marketing team turned to Revcontent to make some sales… and hey… they made it rain.
Revcontent became their most profitable traffic source, with ad spend scaled up to $100k/month with a 533% ROAS.
Wanna know what other verticals work well on Revcontent, aside from CBD? Financial, Health & Wellness, Insurance and Political.
Now, whether you sell CBD or other products, Revcontent can be a great platform to unlock new audiences thanks to its industry-leading features such as:
- Granular targeting: You can bid by site, placement, device, operating system, country, zip-code, and more.
- High-quality traffic and premium publishers: Put your content in front of audiences on premier, tier 1 publisher sites across the web – Barstool Sports, Nexstar Digital, Salon, and more.
- Around the clock support with access to campaign management and support teams.
- Automated creative split testing: Revcontent algorithms optimize to drive traffic and ad spend to creatives that are driving engagement to your marketing funnels.
- Eliminate bot clicks: Their built-in technology detects and eliminates bot clicks to your landing pages.
NEWSLETTERS
Huge mistakes
Newsletters are the hottest thing lately. They’re cropping up virtually everywhere, but many of the fresh newsletters are still making some key mistakes.
Paul Metcalfe, a guy who helps newsletter owners find sponsors, recently posted about the biggest mistakes he frequently sees. Let’s jump in:
- Bad landing pages. Many newsletters don’t make the sign-up box easy to find, or are ugly and hurt conversion rate. Paul holds a particular disdain for Substack landing pages, which are about as nondescript as possible.
- Poor onboarding flow. You don’t need to make it fancy, but be specific with your automations and make them count! A great way to do this is customizing your confirmation pages to communicate with the reader.
- Generic welcome emails. Your welcome email is a great opportunity to give your readers a great first impression, but so many welcome emails are generic text (looking at you, Substack people)!
Paul’s got a little more juice in the full Twitter thread, which you can check out here. He hit the nail on the head with these warnings – if you’ve got a newsletter, consider taking these tips to heart!
PS: If you send any emails and want to get better open rates, have a look at our email deliverability guide here. Maybe we’re biased, but we’ve been told it’s extremely helpful.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
GOOGLE: Dark mode SERPs, anyone? Seems like it, according to Daniel Abromeit.
SEO: If Australia’s new law comes into full force, Google might not be available anymore. And then Bing is the alternative. Brodie Clark looked at the differences between the two from an SEO perspective.
NATIVE ADS: After the merger with Outbrain fell through, Taboola is looking to go public via a SPAC (aka, special purpose acquisition company).
FACEBOOK: Yesterday the company started rolling out Facebook News in the UK. The feature will show news from hundreds of leading national, local and lifestyle outlets.
BRAIN TEASER
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Stop being a complete unknown – write for Rolling Stone
You know all those “As Seen In” badges brands and influencers have. Well, you probably know they are often not totally organic.
The next publication to join the party of asking “thought leaders” to pay to write for them is Rolling Stone.
They are calling it the Culture Council and it costs $1.5k per year plus a $500 upfront fee.
So yeah, if you want to write for Rolling Stone, you have a chance. Of course, officially there are vetting processes in place, but looking at other publications that practice this, we have to say we’re not convinced.