TIKTOK
Self-serve ads platform rolls out globally
Facebook used to be the one to move fast, but now TikTok is joining the party and going full steam ahead to make its platform as advertiser friendly as possible.
One of the key steps to achieve this is a self-serve ads platform, and that’s now rolling out to businesses globally.
The look of the platform will be familiar to you if you’ve ever played around with Facebook’s Ads Manager. The highlights include creative tools, flexible budgets, performance targeting and the introduction of business accounts.
But will there be any countries left to target?
We mentioned that this was a possibility already. But now it looks probable that the US will ban TikTok, at least temporarily. That’s according to Gordon Chang’s interview with Fox News. Trump himself said “Yes, it’s something we’re looking at”.
Banning TikTok is a topic in the UK as well, albeit a much less likely scenario than in the US and Australia.
India might have been just the beginning of a rather long list…
AMAZON
Amazon to make seller names and addresses public
On September 1st, Amazon will be rolling out a new update that should be a breath of fresh air for brands and marketers. Bill D’Alessandro, on Twitter, reported that business names and addresses will no longer be private and that this information will be available on the Seller Profile page of each business.
Why does this matter?
If you or the business you work for sells physical products, on Amazon or elsewhere, you’ll know why this is such a big deal. Counterfeiters and unauthorized resellers have long been an issue on Amazon, and the upcoming update will make it easier to take these fake businesses down.
Time certainly seems to be running out for fraudsters on Amazon, as this announcement comes on the heels of Amazon’s new counterfeit crimes unit, created to help brands pursue legal action against counterfeiters.
In other words, we can all celebrate knowing that – hopefully – Amazon is going to be a safer place in the coming months!
SPONSORED BY ARAGON ADVERTISING
Let’s talk about affiliate offers with the #1 Pay Per Call network
There are some niches like TV/Internet, life insurance, medical, tax debt, pest control which are currently booming.
And they all have one thing in common…
They all work great with Pay Per Call (PPC) flows. Offers in these niches average $6 earnings per call (EPC) with Medicare and Auto-insurance reaching as high as $20!
And who is the award winning industry leader in PPC offers? Aragon Advertising!
Here are just some of the most interesting offers you can run as an affiliate on their network:
- Gold IRA Bundle: Payout: $48 | EPC: $8.57 – Run This Offer
- Home Service Pest Control US: Payout: $16 | EPC: $7.38 – Run This Offer
- Satellite TV Generic US: Payout: $15 | EPC: new – Run This Offer
- Home Warranty US: Payout: $12.80 | EPC: $8.10 – Run This Offer
- Credit Repair US: Payout: $14.40 | EPC: $7.10 – Run This Offer
You can learn how to promote these kinds of offers with the pros at Aragon Advertising, voted the #1 Pay Per Call Network for the last 3 years running by mThink BlueBook.
Perform with pay per call and Aragon Advertising. Sign up here.
Honey, why are you not sleeping?
CCPA is still keeping marketers awake at night, or maybe it’s the mosquitos?
If it’s the former, here are some useful points shared by Cory Dobbin. Hopefully, you’ll have a nightmare-free sleep.
There’s a big grey area in the wording when it comes to compliance, and even companies such as Facebook and Shopify have different takes. But what can you do to be compliant?
- Add a geo-targeted pop up to your website specific to Californians that will allow them to either opt-in or out of tracking. Sounds very similar to GDPR…
- Enable the LDU (Limited Data Use) on August 1st if you’re not compliant.
Side note: If you’re not sure what the Limited Data Use is, we gave a full explanation in this previous newsletter.
How to get around CCPA
Here are some ideas to continue delivering ads to Californian users:
- Actions within Facebook’s ecosystem still track. A few examples of these are Page/Post Engagements, Video Viewers, IG Shopping. So, you can still use this data for retargeting and to create audiences.
- Lookalikes Audiences can still be built using data collected before July 1st.
- You can run prospecting campaigns optimized for Reach/Brand Awareness in California with a frequency modifier. The idea here is to hyper-segment by Interest, etc in California and get those rookie frequency numbers up to near retargeting levels.
- You can use UTM tags in Google Analytics for reporting.
SEO
A little-known Google My Business secret to ranking higher
Can you rank a local business higher simply by linking to a different URL? The answer might be yes, according to Toronto-based agency Sterling Sky.
The case study was done on a personal injury law firm in New York, and a few interesting findings came from it:
- By linking to injury-specific URLs instead of the home page, they found a significant increase in rankings and coverage for specific search queries about those injuries.
- It took a couple of weeks to see results, but the results eventually showed and the boosts were significant. Just like with most things in SEO (yes, even local!), things take time.
A word of caution if you’re thinking about trying this out: the law firm used for this case study has multiple practitioner listings, which is why they were able to experiment with URLs. If your business doesn’t qualify for multiple GMB listings, we recommend being cautious about making any URL changes.
As with anything, experiment and see what works! It might take a couple weeks to see results, but there’s no harm in trying.
If you’re interested in diving into the details of the full post (spoiler alert: it’s not very long), you can do that right here.
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
AFFILIATE MARKETING: At least 9% of transactions in affiliate marketing in 2020 are affected by fraud, which means $1.4B in damages for companies who have affiliate programs.
DOMAINS: It seems that Blogspot.in is no longer under Google ownership and the blogger community is left with countless broken links, at least for now.
SEO: A June 2020 update from Google gave a big boost to Gov websites according to Marie Haynes, whose article was shared by Brodie Clark on Twitter.
FACEBOOK: An update on FB’s efforts in fighting coordinated inauthentic behavior shows that 41 FB accounts, 77 Pages and 56 Instagram accounts have been removed.
GOOGLE: A new feature lets users learn quick facts about the images they see on Google Images. The goal is to make the user better understand if the website is relevant.
ADVERTISING: According to Nick Peroni, if you’re getting thousands of visitors per day from your campaigns, then you should run a Google Search campaign targeting keywords such as “store name + reviews”.
TWITTER: Be careful about what jobs you list, because it might just leak your roadmap. In Twitter’s case, a job listing strongly points towards a subscription based platform being in the works.
BRAIN TEASER
Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain on Earth?
You can find the solution here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things marketers like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
43 unexpected but valuable lessons from different fields
How many life lessons have you learned since being in business?
And how many things has being a marketer taught you? A lot, right?
But what else could you have learned if you were, for example, an astronaut?
How about a poker player? What could have you learned?
Luckily you don’t have to guess, because David Perrell has listed 43 different lessons you can learn from 43 different fields. Here are some of the most interesting ones:
- Poker: Life is probabilistic. We can do everything right and still lose. Some of us have a poker background so we can certainly relate to this one the most!
- Sports: Momentum is the great equalizer. It strengthens the weak and weakens the strong.
- Coding: Don’t underestimate the power of a computer with internet access.
- Comedy: The deepest truths are hidden behind a veneer of humor.
- Cooking: Your outputs are only as good as your inputs. Damn true!
- Airplanes: Humans are quick to adjust to their new reality. An activity can go from impossible, to marvelous, to mundane faster than you think.
- Tour Guide: People don’t just want to learn, they want to be entertained.
- Public Speaking: Laughter is the fastest way to create trust and connection.
We are sure you had at least one “…so damn true” moment. And this 43-point list will give you more.