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WHAT THE AFF goodies
OK, we’re gonna keep this announcement short.
We’ve been told that we’re not the only ones who laugh at our jokes – you ladies and gents reading this actually get a kick out of it too!
Well, we put together something you might like – a wide array of designs for you to sport whether you are at the beach or at the office.
Oh, and to be transparent, we do make a bit out of each sale but it’s TeeSpring so you can check exactly how much in their table.
Spoiler: It’s not even enough for all the Red Bull we drank to keep this on time so many months.
OK, so enough build up…
People in the Americas, especially USA and Canada – go to this link.
People anywhere else, especially EU – go to this link.
Those are the cheapest options for both – including shipping and VAT. And they all have a bunch of colours, not just white.
No big launch or irresistible marketing angle, unfortunately. It’s a fun side-project, and we’re definitely looking for your suggestions for it! Reply to this email to let us know what you think!
Expanding Fact-Checking to Photos and Videos
Since two years Facebook is working with independent, third-party fact-checkers to reduce the spread of false news on its network.
To date, most of FB’s fact-checking partners have focused on reviewing articles. Now Facebook is expanding fact-checking for photos and videos to 17 countries around the world.
A machine learning model that uses various engagement signals, like feedback from people on Facebook, identifies potentially false content. Then those photos and videos are sent to third-party fact-checkers.
According to Facebook their third-party fact-checking partners have expertise evaluating photos and videos and are trained in visual verification techniques, such as reverse image searching and analyzing image metadata, like when and where the photo or video was taken.
We’re a bit more sceptical and are curious if Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners will do a good job on that, or if we will read more stories about funny false positives, like a photo of a 30,000 years old statue of a naked woman that got banned…
Some tips from FB groups
We’ve found a handful of smaller tips in the past couple of days, from different FB groups. Standard practice for us to bring them to your attention, maybe some of them make your life easier or your campaigns better!
DPA product debugger
Running Dynamic Product Ads? Then make sure you have the debugger for them bookmarked. You can find it right here.
Thanks to Anthony Stratton for the tip in the Facebook Ads Experts Academy group!
Building custom audiences when starting out
One word: Instagram. It’s cheaper than FB, it’s growing much faster and fewer people are using it, even though the engagement is very good.
Sure, it will depend on your products as well but Instagram only custom audiences are worth testing.
David Dundas goes through explaining why and how in this post in the Ecom Empires group.
When someone says “Anyone can make a FB campaign”
If you run campaigns for others, you probably ran into the quote above.
So what is a good answer when a potential client says “… anyone can make a FB campaign”?
The question was asked by Stefan Carter in the Facebook Ad Buyers group. Our favourite answer that mixes humour and reality really well is from Garrett Carter.
“Tell him anyone can bake a cake too. Is it gonna be different if a chef or say I were to try to bake a cake from scratch? Absolutely!”
FB will delete your drafts this weekend.
Facebook has notified many, if not all advertisers that on this weekend they are making changes to the Ads Manager and that your drafts that have not been reviewed and confirmed will be gone.
Yep, they will just delete it so make sure you confirm changes or you will have to do everything over again after this update.
Thanks to Depesh for bringing up to everyone’s attention!
Bold text is technically allowed
Last but not least, making your text bold for FB ads is technically allowed, according to Depesh Mandalia’s rep at the company.
Essentially, it’s not the styled text that is an issue but building it in such a way that it looks spammy – same as with emojis.
That said, in an initial test, Depesh saw that styled text could increase CPMs anyway so might not be the way to go.
If you wanna test it for yourself, most people use Yaytext to style it.
Also, the styled text won’t work on all browsers and devices – some will just show empty squares.
E-COMMERCE
How to run campaigns on Amazon
We’ve been a broken record on how Amazon is not messing around in the ads business.
Well, Steven Black has a treat for everyone in the Facebook Ads Experts Academy group!
He wrote a nice guide on how to do PPC on Amazon. From what info you need, to what search type, to structuring your campaigns and, of course, optimization!
If you’ve done paid search on Google, you will probably see some similarities.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear, this is for Amazon based businesses.
TOOLS
Is this the Holy Grail for coders?
If there’s one thing all coders have in common is their hate for software bugs that always creep in.
Fixing a bug can be a tedious job and it’s the least favourite part of software development for just about any coder.
But it has to be done… Or does it?
Well, yes, someone or something has to fix the bugs – and Facebook’s engineers have come with a tool called SapFix.
It’s an AI hybrid tool that can help you spend way less time debugging your code, and should also speed up the process of releasing new software.
We’ll let you get all the nerdy details straight from the announcement here.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
“Deep fakes” are actually considered a national security threat
So, in case you’re wondering why all this attention to combating misleading news and doing so much fact-checking, it’s because Facebook, as the biggest social media company, has an impact far greater than a regular company when it comes to information and how its spread.
It has so much impact that some three-letter-boys are probably looking at them closely.
And if the standard “fake news” wasn’t enough, the new trend with so-called “deep fakes” makes things much more difficult.
Like most technologies, the adult industry was first to test out these “deep fakes” to create videos of celebrities.
But, what US lawmakers care about is this sort of fake videos
Put other statements in a much more tense context and you have a recipe for political disaster.
So, in case you thought misleading ads with celebrities, politicians and such are still gonna work, and you’ll run them ‘til the end of time… You might wanna get a good lawyer.
WHAT THE AFF… is reading
Here at WHAT THE AFF we enjoy reading books on business, economics, psychology, marketing and the likes.
We basically always have one book we are reading and very little off time. The ones we find very good, we’ll share with you.
Thomas is reading Skin In The Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“The WTAFF crew read all books by Taleb and we also got our hands on his latest publication called Skin in the Game.
Having skin in the game means to have a stake in the outcome. He describes situations where theorists (journalists, politics, academics) use wrong models of reality inapplicable to the real problems. Taleb illustrates their mistakes in a very direct, sometimes harsh, but entertaining language.
He calls those people hypocrites that have nothing at stake. He argues we should listen to those instead who operate their own money and have skin in the game.
One of the terms he uses is “intellectual yet idiot” (e.g. professors). They are isolated from the outcome of their decisions and they don’t learn from their mistakes. We enjoy his direct and sometimes entertaining language. However, it can at times be very hard to follow when he goes into his particular philosophical mode.
What can we learn for our industry? Avoid taking advice from someone who gives advice for a living (hello gurus!) and follow those who have skin in the game and own resources at stake.”
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