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FROM THE CREW
What is this place? Where are we?
Is this not your inbox? OMG, it must be why it feels so strange… We might not be in your inbox but in your Promotions tab or something. Could you drag this email to the inbox, please?
That way we make sure to be on time at 1pm CET from Monday to Friday as we promised. We had to ask because some of you mentioned that we sometimes don’t show up in their inbox like you want. Dumb filters, what can we say…
For Gmail users – Move us to your primary inbox to make sure you receive our newsletter every time.
- For mobile: In the top right corner of the app, hit those 3 dots, tap “Move to”, “Primary”
- For desktop: Go back, then drag and drop this email into the “Primary” tab. It should be the first on the left.
For Apple mail users – Tap on our email address at the top of this email and then “Add to VIPs”. That’s it! Thank you! Let’s get on with our daily briefing.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Messenger vs Email: Who wins, who losses?
We start with news from The Crew. Rutger Thole, a chatbot expert and someone we’ve featured regularly, will sit down on a Facebook Live event with Manu, the founder of WHAT THE AFF.
They plan to talk about using Messenger and email together. They’ve both seen how people often think of Messenger replacing email and both think they actually go together.
It’s going to be two geeks who like their topic but are also extremely curious to learn from the other.
When is this happening? July 13th at 5pm CET. Respond with “Going” to this FB event and we’ll see you there!
you! Let’s get on with our daily briefing.
David Schloss brings goods straight from his rep for June 2019! All FB targeting options in one place
June seems to be an eventful month for FB marketers. There are some huge updates rolling out which were shared by David Schloss’s FB rep. We also found a cool infographic that can be helpful for keeping track of all targeting options available.
Let’s start with David Schloss and his updates!
Expanded Features for the Video Creation Kit
This tool was introduced to Ads Manager over the last year. It allows advertisers to convert static images and text into engaging video ads optimized for mobile, on both Facebook and Instagram.
Based on advertiser’s feedback, more features have been added to this tool.
- Video optimization for different placements: You can now convert a single video into multiple videos with various aspect ratios to optimize for different placements, such as feed and stories.
- New Templates: More templates have been added to help businesses meet their brand and advertising objectives. This includes a set of new single-image templates.
- New Fonts: 20 new font options have been added, allowing advertisers to customize their content and create text overlays that align with their brand guidelines.
- Video Drafts: You can now save drafts of videos you’ve created within the Video Creation Kit. So, you can get started whenever you have a minute and finish up later without having to start from scratch.
- Seasonal Stickers & Templates: Holiday and other event-specific stickers and templates have been added. You can use them in your video ads to keep your creatives relevant and fresh throughout the year.
Improvements to Playable Ads and New Metrics for Interactive Ads
Playable ads were launched last year in August and have been driving great results for advertisers. Now, these ads have been extended to Audience Network, in both rewarded video and interstitial formats, in the latest Audience Network SDK.
Three new metrics have also been rolled out in Ads Manager to help you better understand the engagement on your interactive ads.
PS: This is not just for Playable Ads, but also for Lead Ads, Ads with Instant Experience destinations, Instant Games (click-to-play ads), and AR (augmented reality) Ads.
Check out David Schloss’s post for more details here.
All FB ad targeting options in one infographic
The Crew came across an all-in-one ad targeting infographic from Wordstream.
It contains an extensive list of all the possible ad targeting options offered by Facebook, all in one place.
You can use this as a quick reference guide while planning your targeting options for new campaign launches. We know we will!
Check out the infographic here.
SNAPCHAT
The tables have turned: Snapchat now copying FB’s Events and IG’s group sticker
Nothing is sacred in social media companies these days. It feels like all platforms become more and more similar as they continue to copy features without any remorse.
Latest news on that is from Snapchat. The teen-magnet social media app is developing an Event Invites feature, similar to Facebook.
Users will be able to register for events straight in the app and this will integrate with Snap Maps too. You can check out the leaked screenshots below, courtesy of Jane Manchun Wong on Twitter.
As you can see, you can also check Insights on your audience and you can swipe up to join a group chat for the event. It’s probably a matter of time until FB copies the “upgrades” but we first have to wait for Snapchat to roll this out.
That’s not the only thing Snap is copying from the company at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park. They are also adding a “Join Group Chat” sticker that’s “inspired” by Instagram… Or at least it was seen on IG before Snapchat.
What this means for marketers: Running events targeted at a Snapchat audience should be much better now. You can rest assured that FB, IG and any other social media platform will closely watch and “learn”, aka develop their own features if a competitor has something great.
This sort of competition should be good for advertisers and users alike. It means both sides will have many choices for where to allocate their budgets to reach their target audience.
AMAZON
Speaking of copying… Here’s something from Amazon!
We told you it’s happening everywhere, right?
Amazon’s re:MARS 2019 conference took place last week. Machine learning, artificial intelligence and robots were all part of the talk. It even featured Jeff Bezos using robot arms and making an evil laugh.
What’s perhaps less spectacular but interesting for shoppers is the “StyleSnap” feature that Amazon launched, inspired by Pinterest’s Lens.
The way it works is pretty simple. Users can take a photo or upload a screenshot of a clothing item and the app will show them similar products.
We can’t wait for the time when users take out their phones, point the camera at a stranger on the street and order their exact outfit on Amazon which will be delivered by a drone in a matter of hours.
We’re pretty sure that’s going to allow for a lot of guerilla marketing strategies, but we’re not quite there yet.
SEO
The aftermath of June 2019 Core Update
Well, it’s been more than a week since Google’s June 2019 core algo update took effect.
How’s it going for you?
We noticed a lot of SEOs and site owners seeing a huge decline in website traffic after this update.
In fact, the SEO Director of DailyMail publicly admitted that the site took a massive hit and lost 50% of its daily traffic because of this Google update.
So, what could be the possible reasons for that?
Schieler Mew analysed around 65 local and 25 national websites and came up with some observations, which shed a light on this issue.
Site Diversity Change: This change was announced around the same time as the core update. It was aimed at reducing duplicate site listings in the search results.
Long gone are the days of being able to rank for multiple keywords. As Google’s AI becomes smarter, it is now able to understand the topics of websites and pages, and we can no longer manipulate the SERPs to come up for multiple searches around different keywords having to do with the same topics.
Takeaway: Start creating pages with long form content that contain multiple topics around a broad topic. Google has stated that you will now be incredibly lucky to get more than two pages into the SERP going forward unless it is for a long tail phrase.
Backlinks but no referral traffic: If you have a website with a good number of backlinks but no referral traffic, this might be one of the reasons why your site took a hit by this update.
For example, if you have 10 backlinks from Wikipedia but are not getting any referral traffic from there, you might experience a hit because of such backlinks.
Why?
Because this most likely signals Google that there is an unnatural PBN (private blog network) practice taking place on your website. The point of backlinks is not obtaining the link itself. We all want the juice but the first priority should be to provide educational resources to similar audiences of different websites.
Take away: Backlinks are still the number one ranking factor but as time goes on, your backlinks will need to have certain attributes to actually matter and must not be affiliated with a link buying scheme or PBN.
Site Speed: Schieler observed that websites that scored 60% or lower on GTmetrix were the ones that took a severe hit. With Google’s recent announcement around mobile first indexing taking priority on all new websites, you can see why this will be extremely important.
Schieler recommends making sure that your site results are as follows:
- Load time: Under 2 seconds
- Page size: Under 1MB
- Requests: Under 80 requests
Remember Google uses 3G network speeds to measure your website speed. You need to remember to make it accessible for 3G speeds with the metrics above.
Optimizing your images is a huge must, and decreasing JavaScript queries will play an integral role. This is not becoming an option any longer and must be adhered to.
Take away: Optimize your website for speed ASAP!
Schema: Websites with on-page Schema through item prop positioning (not JSON TLD) and adhering to other SEO factors mentioned above saw an increase in rank.
Take away: Learn how Schema works and implement it asap.
GMB (Google My Business) listings: A lot of GMB listings also saw a nose dive due to this update. Especially the ones where locations were over-optimized for more than 3-4 surrounding areas.
Take away: Make sure your GMB’s are optimized while keeping it as natural as possible. Do not over optimize any of the sections and use your keywords on a topical basis so Google clearly understands what your business is about!
These were some of the most probable reasons that Schieler found as a common trend for websites that were affected by this core update release.
If your website is missing out on any of the above factors, implement them and you might have a chance at recovering pretty quickly from this update.
In the meanwhile, you might want to have a look at Schieler’s detailed post here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Gamers gather, guess what happens next?
It’s simple. Companies make big announcements. We talking about E3 2019 that is taking place right now.
Sure, if you’re a true gamer, you know all about this.
For the others, we wanted to give you a brief update on what the hell is going on in gaming. Maybe you need to upgrade your office perks, right?
The E3 conference is about half-way through. You can check a recap right here.
There’s been some big launches, with Keanu Reeves also making a surprise appearance at the Microsoft Press Conference as part of the Cyberpunk 2077 launch.
When we got hit with nostalgia: Real talk though, the reason we included this is because a game that has us nostalgic is getting a big reboot. Do you get the reference from the image below?
Then you should know Age of Empires 2 – Definitive Edition is going to launch this fall. It’s a remastered version of the most popular installment in the franchise.
Why did Microsoft bother? Because the game is regaining popularity fast. It still has a very active and growing community.
In other words, the game started to attract more and more eyeballs, at least based on some of its most popular Twitch streamers that can gather over 10k viewers during important events.
Wololo!
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