[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Neverending troubles for FB
It seems that turning down parliament summonings didn’t work for Mark Zuckerberg. Why?
The UK parliament said that this reluctance to testify had forced MPs to explore other options for gathering information about Facebook’s operations.
This led the Parliament to use all its powers to seize internal Facebook documents. The material they found is hot news! And pretty worrying for the social media giant.
These documents were obtained during a legal discovery process by Six4Three. This software firm took action against the social media giant after investing $250K in an app.
The documents prove that Facebook was not only aware of the implications of its privacy policy but actively exploited them, intentionally creating and effectively making the loophole that Cambridge Analytica used to collect data much more visible!
This proves that Facebook helped Cambridge Analytica steal the data. We told you it was hot stuff…
But how did the Parliament get these documents?
They compelled the founder of Six4Three to hand over the documents during a business trip to London. And they even went further.
UK Parliament members sent a serjeant to his hotel with a final warning and a two-hour deadline to comply with its order.
When the software firm founder failed to do so he was escorted to Parliament. He was told he risked fines and even imprisonment if he didn’t hand over the documents.
Fortunately for him, the files are subject to an order of a Californian superior court, so they cannot be shared or made public, at risk of being found in contempt of court. Bureaucracy stuff…
It‘s unclear what Facebook’s next move will be to avoid having the UK Parliament use those documents.
One certainty is that there will be more content for the WTAFF Crew. Thanks, Mark!
Campaign Budget Optimization Tips By Depesh
Depesh Mandalia is now a frequent guest in this newsletter. All the credit to his great content and insights!
This weekend, he shared his thoughts on when and how you should use “Campaign Budget Optimization”, if at all, as a fellow marketer experienced increased CPA’s when casually testing it out.
CBO isn’t something you should just jump into when testing your campaigns. It’s recommended to use this feature mostly after you have done the initial testing with your ad-sets to further fine tune the performance.
Imagine running a new, un-tested campaign using CBO, targeting several countries, gender breakdowns, age group breakdowns, interests together. It could lead to Facebook spending most/all of the budget on what it found to be working the best initially.
This doesn’t allow all targeting options to be tested fairly with each other, as a few late bloomers could prove to be a winner in the longer run.
Also, worth a shot to try it for single audience based ad sets that are already working well and splitting the placements, gender and age amongst other factors.
Using the above practices, you can allow Facebook to decide how and where to spend most budgets on, depending on the performance of the ad sets.
How people’s judgement will influence your ROAS
If you are running Facebook Ads, which most of us do, this should be of utmost relevance to you.
And no, we are not talking about Ad Relevance Score or Negative Feedback on your Ads. That hurts too, but this one is relatively new.
When you run Facebook Ads, selling a product or service using Facebook’s platform, some of your customers are asked for their feedback on the overall buying experience, an average of which becomes your Page Score.
The Page Score can be accessed here by adding your page_id at the end of the URL. Let’s hear from you all on the highest and lowest scores you came across!
Starting 22nd Nov 2018, as Steve Tan mentions in the Ecom Elites group, FPCBS (Facebook Page Customer Feedback Score) is being officially rolled out, where your Page could receive penalties if your customers leave a negative/low feedback score on their buying experience.
These penalties could result in affecting your ads performance in terms of low ad delivery and insanely high CPMs to name a few.
So, make sure to work on keeping your page scores consistently good or improving them by improving the overall shopping experience like product quality, shipping time, customer support etc. May the force be with you, if you are casual-dropshipping from China.
Your Business/Ads Manager will notify you of your page score!
We recommend keeping your Page Score above 2.5 at all times.
For pages that receive an average score of below 2, here are some probable penalties that your ads could experience.
Score 1.51 – 2: Reduced delivery and/or more expensive CPMs
Score 1.1 – 1.5: Temporary ban for 45 days (Able to appeal within 45 days for manual review)
Score 0.5 – 1: Temporary ban for 45 days. (Ability to appeal is gone)
Score <0.5 : Permanent ban
If you are not doing anything wrong and are creating a great shopping experience for your buyers, you have nothing to worry about!
Honestly, the number of advertisers on Facebook are just growing so much each day and an average user sees thousands of ads every year. It’s an understandable move by Facebook to keep out advertisers that hurt user experience on its platform.
This also means users continuing to use the platform with a better experience and trusting the ads they see.
Though this update was pushed out a few months ago, it’s now clear what the penalties are for pages.
GENERAL
Most common complaints about ads
Now that people have the power to judge your marketing behaviour, here are a few great insights that will help you understand “What Not To Do” as far as ad communication is concerned.
Sure there are tons of guides out there that tell you how to create “good” ads, but you also have to think about What Not To Do simultaneously, right? We don’t want a perfectly good concept ruined by an unnecessary avoidable faux-pas.
With this mindset, we’ve had a look at some of the most common complaints about ads. Let’s see if we can derive some general guidelines from that material.
The most complained of the first half of 2018 is apparently Sportsbet’s Manscaping Ad, which depicts a naked man, who appears to be shaving his privates, with a voice-over praising the product.
A large number of people misunderstood and thought the man was… spanking the monkey, ending in complaints about the ad being on at a time of day when children could be expected to see it.
So, what does this tell us…?
Probably that if it can be misunderstood, it will be misunderstood. Also that a lot of people are uncomfortable with (implied) nudity in many contexts, so it probably pays to pay a bit attention to that.
Last year, this ad from KFC caused outrage, depicting chickens “dancing” and walking to an upbeat song. Even most of the YouTube comments are users voicing their disagreement, one of the top comments saying “Is this meant to be cute? Funny? This is a chicken dancing to its death.” Quite self-explanatory.
To keep with the topic of KFC for a while, this ad got put into the racism category by people due to their depiction of the “black people love fried chicken so much they can be controlled by it” stereotype.
In the same vein, Nivea’s “Re-Civilize Yourself” campaign got pulled for showing a black man with a shaved head “throwing away” a version of his own head with grown-out, natural hair.
Because people with afros can’t be civilized, huh? Basically, watch your sarcasm. Something we can learn too, right?
Lastly, Ultra Tune’s ad, where three helpless women in revealing costumes get rescued by convicted sex-offender Mike Tyson unsurprisingly raised some voices for obvious reasons earlier this year.
Given that from now on, viewer reactions will have a direct influence on your advertising performances aka ROAS, never forget these reactions and keep up with high-quality ads!
Time to count stacks
Shopping online gets more and more popular – you already knew that. This means it’s little surprise that this Black Friday, online sales hit a record high.
How are your numbers? Satisfied with the big shopping day earnings?
Well, we really hope so, because people spent $6.22 billion in online sales, that’s a plus of 23 percent compared to last year.
More than one third came from mobile devices, in 2017 this number was only 29 per cent.
It was also reported that traffic at many shopping malls was lighter than in the past years.
Today’s Cyber Money is even expected to set a new record for online sales. $7.8 billion, which would also mean an increase of 18 per cent year over year.
Hopefully you out there are responsible for these numbers. Now it’s time to…
SPONSORED
Private BH Meet-Up @ AWABangkok Hosted by Converting Team
Did you know that one of our early supporters is organizing an exclusive meeting for BH Marketers during Affiliate World Asia in Bangkok this year? You do now!
If you would like to attend, all you have to do is follow the link below to apply for your invite. Yes, you have to apply. And this is why…
It will be a highly specialised event and only the most advanced BH marketers will be invited. The event will take place on 5th December in a secret location, which will only be revealed to successful applicants!
Fair warning: Only apply if you are a marketer! Applications from networks, advertisers and affiliate managers will be rejected.
If you think you have what it takes and can share your knowledge with some of the best marketers in the industry, apply now using the link below!
Let me in!
PS: If you want to join their team they are looking for a senior media buyer.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Paying taxes has never been so cool
Got a few bitcoins lying in one of those crypto-wallets? McD, Target or Costco won’t accept them, right?
Yet, if your biz is registered in Ohio, here’s the good news! And we bet, you never would’ve imagined it happening!
Aiming to position itself as a more tech-friendly state, Ohio becomes the 1st one to accept Bitcoin for tax payments. For white-collar businesses only, yeah!
The Gov’t is working with BitPay to handle these payments who will convert these coins into dollars for them.
And yes, The WTAFF Crew is thinking of accepting BTC from our Sponsors too, if that’s what held you back previously.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]