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SNAPCHAT
Post WTAFF expose, Snap’s new CFO and head of IR both quit.
So, we heard yesterday’s news about Snapchat being the new playground for affiliates, created quite some ripples around our beloved affiliate community.
While some were playfully mad at us for breaking it down to everyone, others admitted they have already been quite a long way down the Snapchat street for the last several months.
Well, in not-so-unrelated news, Snapchat officially reported its CFO Tim Stone and VP of Investor Relations Kristin Southey to have bowed out from their positions.
Closely related sources say they find it odd that Head of IR and CFO both left abruptly for no clear reason after super short stints at Snap.
Well, how will this affect Snap’s growth plans in 2019? Will our affiliates continue to see the luxurious ROI for their nutra ads? That’s for all of us to wait and watch!
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Mastercard killing auto-rebills?
New policies, new updates, err’day! If not for us at WTAFF, how would you keep up with it all? Moving on…
Especially important for those offering CC trials and recurring subscription models.
As per the new policy, Mastercard will require such merchants to request an official authorization for any such recurring payment requests.
For each subscription a user has opted into, Mastercard will send an email and a text notice every time the subscription is due for renewal. Including the transaction amount, payment date and merchant name. Plus, clear instructions if users want to cancel the trial.
But wait… that’s not all: For every payment thereafter, it will continue sending receipts (again, by email or text) containing the payment amount and how to cancel service — because maybe they liked your product for the first month or so, but may have since decided otherwise.
How did we get here:
Auto-rebills have been doing worse and worse over the last year. And they were the bread and butter of many affiliates, because they pushed the boundaries of compliance, often too far.
More customer complaints, more pressure on those processing payments and we got here. If you want a longer version of the story, check out this post by Nate Lind.
The Crew’s Take:
This might be great news for consumers who always forget subscriptions… So for most. Or for those who simply don’t want to continue with some services/products.
On the other hand, it’s obviously different for business owners and affiliates. It will likely mean a revenue drop for subscription offers, CC trial offers, rebills and that stuff.
But it also means everyone will be out testing new things. Straight sales could see a positive impact for example.
Political transparency, 2019 trends and a probable data gathering.
After the breakdown of yesterday, today we got a lot of updates about Facebook.
First, Facebook follows the podcasts trend and starts a series focused on entrepreneurship.
Does Mark host it? Ehm, unfortunately not… Besides, Facebook has got an announcement about Political Ads. We also bring you the top-trending topics on Facebook for 2019.
Finally, someone has whistled out that this 10-year challenge is about another big data harvesting, but in the quiet background!
But let’s start with your favourite topic: political ads. That’s the one, yes?
Bringing More Transparency to Political Ads in 2019
After a sad and troubled 2018, Mark doesn’t want more distractions this year. He needs to stay focused on his podcast! That’s why the Facebook team is working on an effort towards political transparency. Starting with the UK, US and Brazil.
However, they’re also preparing to roll out new transparency features in EU, India, Ukraine and Nigeria. But by the end of June, they will assure transparency all around the world. Quite an ambitious statement!
Political advertisers in these countries must confirm their identity and location before they can run ads. And their ads will be housed in a public, searchable Ad Library for up to seven years.
Why should you care? After those Cambridge Analytica troubles, Facebook will do everything to keep its users happy and avoid other scandals. And it’s in our interests too that Facebook stays away from problems! Let’s hope for a peaceful and smooth 2019!
What else is coming from Facebook?
2019 Topics and trends: Countless conversations happen on FB every day. That’s what the blue social giant is about. And this is why we marketers need Facebook: All those conversations tell us what to expect from the future.
And based on these conversations from 2018, Facebook tries to predict trends for 2019 in this long report. And as a marketer, you can’t afford to miss out on knowing what people will talk about this year. And what they will look for.
What do we think about this report? Facebook knows a lot about people. And they have the best information, greatly useful for product researches. And for brainstorming new angles and ad copies. You need to know what people want, if you want their attention!
Facebook launches an entrepreneurial podcast: Everyone is launching podcasts. And Facebook is joining the gang. The show is called “Three and a Half Degrees” and will focus on entrepreneurship. Specifically, the lessons learned, challenges faced and other insights from successful business leaders.
Who will host the show? David Fischer, Facebook’s VP of Business and Marketing Partnerships. Who will be the guests?
Gary Vaynerchuck, Chris Kempczinski from McDonald’s and Stephanie McMahon from WWE are among the guests.
Well, “Three and a half degrees” is set to be an interesting podcast. However, expect the WTAFF podcast to come out in the future: Three and a half (thousand) ROAS.
#10YearsChallenge could be just another data affair. Did you notice this “10 Year Challenge” that is trending on every social platform? Of course, you did!
Kate O’Neill from “Wired” shared a tweet pondering that all this data could be mined to train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition.
Basically, with all the pictures gathered from this challenge, Facebook, or any other tech/social media, could discover how we will look in the future.
However, Facebook denies having any hand in the #10YearChallenge. “This is a user-generated meme that went viral on its own.”
Whatever it is, all our data is on Facebook, Instagram etc… The only way to avoid these companies from gathering more of our data is to stay away from all the social networks!
E-COMMERCE
$16.5M tech to bring AI to e-commerce stores
What if you could bring AI, ML, automation, integrations and much more enhanced functionality for your e-commerce stores? Making your life easier and bringing you more rev!
What if adopting machine learning could run your stores better than yourselves? Does this sound cool? Yeah?
Say hello to “Bold Commerce”, who just raised $16.5M to help you do just that! They currently have 86K customers globally, including the Obama Foundation, Zippo, NPR, the Bon Jovi Official Store and DJ Khaled’s Goldition.
Their new app Bold Brain app is designed to help merchants automatically display personalized product recommendations to each of their customers, based on prior shopping activities, browsing and search history, previous purchases and more.
It’s similar to the way Amazon’s recommendation engine works.
Bold Commerce currently develops 20 other apps that can be integrated with a number of major e-commerce platforms, including Shopify and Big Commerce. These apps enable features such as:
- Subscriptions.
- Bundles.
- Upselling.
- Multi-currency checkouts.
- Quickbooks.
- Xero integrations.
- Loyalty schemes and more.
It also works directly with merchants to integrate its apps into any other platform — including Magento, Demandware, and Woo Commerce — through an API. You just have to contact Bold Commerce to request access.
Apparently, this is the same company who created the 1st ever Upsell app on Shopify and it has been revolutionary for e-commerce stores ever since.
Historically, the average conversion rates of upsell offers are between 11-15%. But with the tests done by Bold Brain users, they are seeing conversion rates of 23-67%.
How to get started with them?
Well, if you already have their product upsell app, just install Bold Brain for free and see what it can do for your store. If you never heard about them, you must! Check them out here.
Google is Partnering With WordPress to Develop a News Publishing Platform
It’s been almost a month of continuous updates and new launches from Google. And to keep the creative juices flowing, Google is now partnering with Automattic and WordPress to develop a low-cost news publishing platform. It’s called Newspack. Specifically designed to help small businesses publish local news.
“Publishers should be writing stories and covering their communities, not worrying about designing websites, configuring CMSs, or building commerce systems. Their publishing platform should solve these problems for them.”
Newspack publishers will also have access to all the plugins created by the WordPress developer community. Helping them focus on publishing more stories, without any need to focus on things that divert scarce resources.
They like to call it “An opinionated CMS”, which knows the right thing to do, even when you don’t.
Ah well, okay!
SPONSORED
Get 50% more commission for referring affiliates to ClickDealer!
Going the extra mile has always been a priority for the ClickDealer Team – from supplying exclusive offers and ensuring there is a bonus program running at any given moment in time, to throwing classy private parties and developing an in-house tracking platform for their partners’ convenience.
We should know, we attended a few of their parties…
Their partner referral program has always been a vital part of this strategy, and the arrival of 2019 has prompted ClickDealer to adjust it accordingly – by raising the rewards!
For this year’s Q1, the referral commission rate has been increased from 2% to 3%!
Unlike many CPA networks out there, ClickDealer doesn’t require any thresholdto be met by your referred affiliate before you can receive your reward – any payable amount is included into your referral stats and is available for withdrawal within your payment cycle!
Here is how the referral program update is going to affect some payouts in Q1 2019:
- $25 000: $500 + $250
- $50 000: $1000 + $500
- $100 000: $2000 + $1000
- $150 000: $3000 + $1500
Keep in mind that this is just an illustration of some common milestones. If your referral does as much as $1000 with ClickDealer, you’ll still get $20+$10 added to your referral commissions!
It’s very easy to check your referral terms, stats and get your unique link in your ClickDealer dashboard – all you have to do is log in and go to “Tools” -> “Referral program” to conveniently access all those in one place.
Sign up in case you haven’t done it yet and hurry to tell your friends to earn extra with ClickDealer!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Australia doesn’t exist and people who live there are actors paid by NASA
To all our readers from Australia: You may be great actors but stop playing out, pliss!
Well, that’s not coming from us. It’s flat-earthers who believe that Australia is a big hoax and people who stay there are just actors hired by NASA.
The so-called Flat Earthers had a gathering in Birmingham recently. And over 200 of them came together to confirm to each other that the Earth is nothing more than a giant pancake. And all Australians are nothing more than computer generated personas. Not just that, they claim gravity doesn’t exist too.
Rational thought, anyone?
We even feel stupid to ask, but what do you think about this?
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