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SOCIAL
Those rather annoying reminders, FB Memories, now have their own section
Facebook introduced a dedicated page called “Memories”, where you can see everything you shared with your friends over the years.
It is similar to features like “On This Day”, which lets you look back on this date over the last years, or “Friends Made on this Day”, which includes a list of friends you made on this same day in the past.
It looks a bit like a desperate attempt to get people to engage more on Facebook since over the last few years organic sharing is declining.
These days most people prefer to share personal content on other platforms like Snapchat and Instagram (helps to own this one as well) over Facebook.
Facebook also notes that the Memories feature includes controls to adjust what content you want to see, since not all memories are something you want to revisit.
Facebook sends 454 pages worth of answers to Congress
You know what Mark said most often in his hearings?
“I’ll get my team to follow up with you on that”.
And that he did. 454 pages worth of answers to questions that weren’t answered during the hearing. If you have time to kill, or really wanted to know the answer to some of them, go nuts!
PS: They run ads.
Snapchat ads CPMs going down… A lot!
We try to keep you in the loop with other platforms aside from the big ones, and Snapchat is certainly one of those that affiliates haven’t figured out.
There’s some good news there… Kinda. Snapchat’s prices for ads have gone down significantly.
How low? Average of $2.95 CPM in the first quarter of the year. In comparison, Instagram had $4.20CPM and Facebook $5.12 CPM on average.
This is according to 4C, a marketing technology firm that is one of Snapchat’s biggest sources of demands for ads. So they should have a good idea about their prices.
The drop could be also from lowering barriers from direct-sales to fully automated programmatic.
We think the audience also has something to do with it… Under 25-year-olds are not people who have a lot of money.
E-COMMERCE
Mohamed Ali Aguel talks e-commerce funnels
There’s a reason why you should #alwaysListenToMo.
The guy has been in the online marketing space since 2006 and since then he has built several successful e-commerce brands, plus started Momentum Marketing Tribe – a great e-commerce focused FB group.
It’s hard for us to summarise a conversation so we’ll just tell you what it’s about, then you can go read the whole thing yourself.
In one word – “funnels”. When doing e-commerce it’s really about how much each customer is worth to you because if you can pay more for acquiring a customer you will get ahead of the competition.
When asking “Where are you pushing your ads?”, Mo got people to discuss their funnels. What sort of offers, what upsells, what downsells, discounts, what targeting for the ads, etc.
Very detailed breakdown of an e-commerce funnel. Check it out by clicking here!
PSYCHOLOGY
The Prisoner’s Dilemma and what it has to do with scrubbing
Are you familiar with the concept called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”? It’s a game theory example where two completely rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it’s in their best interest to do so.
You can check this 5-minute video that explains it in more detail.
So what does this have to do with scrubbing? First, let’s acknowledge that the practice is standard in the industry.
Now, most people hate it and think all networks and advertisers are scumbags. That’s quite far from the truth, we think at least. And the Prisoner’s Dilemma brings up a more likely scenario.
Say you are a network that doesn’t scrub and offer $10 payout for a lead. That sounds alright and you know that there’s not much more you can do to increase the value on the backend.
In comes network number two. They also know they can’t increase the value of the lead but they offer a $15 payout. How can this be?
They scrub a part of the leads. In other words, they don’t pay for them, so effectively they pay less per lead they receive.
And you know why they do this? Because them offering $15 payout brings them more affiliates. That’s right, it’s marketing.
Now, network 1 is stuck either trying to convince affiliates that $10 is fine or also increase it to $15 and scrub. Which do you think they are going to do?
In other words, if no network or advertiser would scrub (they would cooperate), there would not be a need for it.
But they know that unless they trust each other completely, scrubbing is likely to be the better ROI, even if it complicates things and sometimes damages some relationships with affiliates.
If affiliates acted rationally, they would ignore payouts, test for EPCs and base their decisions on that.
Too many don’t do that, and even those who do get attracted by high payouts initially.
The solution? Stop worrying about factors you don’t control, focus on EPC. And here’s a small tactic you can try.
This only works if you actually run traffic consistently. If you see a decrease in EPCs, test more offers from other networks, and tell all networks you are actually doing that.
Now, you have networks competing for an affiliate who has proven to have quality traffic and has shown he is focusing on EPCs, not payouts. That means the way to get your traffic is to not scrub anymore.
SPONSORED
Which affiliate network would Warren Buffett hate the most?
Our best guess is it’s probably Converting Team.
Why?
Well, unless you haven’t read our newsletters before, or haven’t read finance or crypto news in the past 6 months, you know that Warren hates crypto.
But you know what? Others love it!
Affiliates have gotten on this train too, buying coins, running ICOs and running crypto offers. The vertical is probably the one that grew the most in the past 6 months.
Back to Converting Team. In case you haven’t connected the dots already, the guys are specialists in crypto affiliate offers.
They have their own direct crypto offers.
There are some nice advantages to that. They can make you prelanders, they can use the powerful Facebook Pixel and generally help with all things a regular affiliate network couldn’t do.
Basically, if you have ideas on how to bring traffic to their offers, they’ll work together with you to make it happen asap. No beating around the bush – time is of the essence in our industry!
They can also give you info on what traffic sources work best, what angles, what targeting… The works!
And as a WHAT THE AFF subscriber, you can get in touch directly with Jan – over Skype or email!
Skype: joh.abc
Email: [email protected]
He’ll tell you all about that good stuff, show you the best offers and guide you to money-town.
But don’t worry – he won’t tell Warren you run crypto 😉
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
After UberX, UberBlack and UberVan comes… UberAA?!
Seems Uber wants to patent a system that analyzes if a rider is drunk or not.
If you didn’t know already, the way you use your phone is different when you are drunk.
Uber wants to throw AI at it and give drivers the option to refuse rides if the rider is too buzzed.
The idea sounds good but there are 2 bad things that could happen.
First, if people can’t get an Uber or another ride home, they might resort more often to driving themselves.
Second, they might become a target. If you’ve travelled a bit, you know that prices for anything tend to increase multiple times over, proportionately to levels of intoxication.
In other words, drivers might try to pick you up if you’re drunk and scam you, or even worse, assault you.
It will take some time for this to even be tested so in the meantime, continue enjoying the rides.
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