AMAZON
Amazon has a bigger advertising business than YouTube
Our suspicions were correct.
Amazon published its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2021, disclosing for the first time the revenue from its advertising business.
So what’s the revenue? $9.7 billion. That makes Amazon’s advertising business the same size or larger than:
- YouTube (which generated $28.8 billion in ad revenue in 2021. In comparison, Amazon made $31 billion.)
- The same size as the entire global newspaper industry.
Who’s bigger than Amazon Ads? Online, it’s Google and Facebook (generating $61.2 billion and $32.6 billion in ad revenue in Q4 2021, respectively). When comparing Amazon to the entire advertising industry, this diagram by Benedict Evans should give you a good idea of where they stand.
Why we care: If marketers spend billions of dollars on a marketing channel, there’s a good chance the channel is working (at least for some of them). We’ve always suspected that Amazon Ads was big, and this statistic confirms that they’re one of the “top 3” online advertising networks.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The future of social media looks like TikTok, according to Meta and Snap CEOs
We’ve all heard the news about Facebook/Meta’s disastrous user growth results.
What is Mark Zuckerberg planning to do about this? Double down on video. ““People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” said Zuckerberg on Meta’s Q4 earnings call.
Snapchat agrees: Snap also published its earnings report. In contrast to Facebook, Snapchat’s user base is expanding (they added 13 million daily active users in Q4 2021).
What’s interesting is Snapchat’s fastest growing feature: Spotlight, which is essentially a TikTok clone. People are spending less time watching Stories from friends and more time watching Spotlights, according to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel.
Furthermore, “the number of Spotlight viewers subscribing to a Creator more than doubled relative to the prior quarter”, according to Snap’s earnings report.
Will these platforms become more like TikTok in the future? Probably yes. If you own a social network and release a TikTok-clone feature, you’ll probably keep doing it if it’s the fastest growing feature on your network.
What this means for you: Short videos are likely to become even more popular as a content format in the future. Don’t be surprised if you see more and more competitors experimenting with short videos, especially if you’re in B2C.
SPONSORED BY SEMRUSH
Fortune 500 companies trust this tool to uncover high-intent keywords
Tesla, Forbes and IBM use it. They have a database of 20 billion keywords. They’ll return you 20 million keyword ideas for a single keyword.
You haven’t clicked that link yet?
Alright… Let us tell you why you should have clicked it already.
It’s Semrush’s Keyword Research Tool.
It will instantly discover your audience’s search intent and filter for the right keywords. So you can optimize your content and beat your competitors in search…
How?
- You can upload a list of your keywords and analyze their intent or sort your list by various metrics.
- Discover high-intent buyers keywords with low competition. And filter them using metrics like Commercial (C) & Transactional (T) intent.
- Analyze the informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional intent of a competitor’s top pages.
- See which type of keywords are driving traffic to your competitors’ pages.
Discover your audience’s search intent.
BUSINESS
Eight steps to source and flip a SaaS business in less than 18 months
We lied.
The thread shared by Joe Speiser on Twitter is actually made of 17 steps.
But here’s the TL;DR version of it that is only 8 steps.
Looking for some biz?
1) Go to any app store and find a category you’re interested in.
2) Sort the apps by worst reviews, and focus on the ones that have negative reviews due to poor or non-existent customer service. Throw out any app with less than 100 reviews, apps that don’t charge, scams, or broken ones.
3) Reach out to the owners and negotiate a deal. They’ll likely be desperate because their business isn’t doing well, so you’ll have more leverage in the negotiation.
4) Analyze the market and the competitors, missing features and what could be improved. Then, once you have a deal, start surveying customers on missing features and what can be improved. Hire a developer and start improving the app.
5) Offer outstanding customer service from the first moment. And do it yourself. This will give a glance of what customers need. Reply fast, even if it means working on weekends or late in the day.
6) Invest in SEO: Take care of both the technical and content side. Joe suggests putting two pieces of content every week.
7) Review your pricing, analyze your competitors, and look for areas where you can offer more value and raise your prices.
8) Once you improve your churn rate and the app is growing, get a valuation of it on online business marketplaces.
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THE CREW’S INSIGHTS
Dealing with Meta’s “bad quarter”
The big news last week was how FB’s daily active users number shrunk by one million. Definitely not great news for the company, and also not great news for the average marketer who uses Meta Ads (yes, we said it!).
We do have some suggestions for you to look into to “deal” with the bad news…
1. Try TikTok Ads. Seriously, it’s what is eating Meta’s lunch at the moment so you should certainly put some budget to work there.
2. Maybe look into newsletter ads. Apple’s changes hurt Facebook’s ability to target and get conversions. But newsletters are great for targeting based on strong interests.
3. Experiment with conversions within the FB app. In other words, don’t drive users to your site, try to find good conversion events directly within Facebook’s properties. For example, lead ads are a good test for many businesses.
Is there a bright side about this bad quarter? Well, Facebook could decide the best thing to do is improve advertiser relationships since it cannot dominate in terms of ROAS as much as before.
And we’ll see in another three months where things are…
ROUNDING UP THE STACK
INFLUENCER MARKETING: Who’s better than your customers at promoting your brand? Upfluence identifies potential influencers in your customer base and helps you nurture a relationship with them. Maybe you’re just starting out? Access Upfluence’s huge database of vetted influencers.*
PINTEREST: Bad news and good news from Pinterest. Although the company’s user base is declining, advertisers are figuring out better ways to monetize the existing user base.
PPC: Google is testing a global site tag that automatically collects information submitted by users on the website.
APPLE: They won’t budge that easily. Apple has proposed a mere 3% reduction in commissions for Dutch developers who use alternative payment methods.
SEO: Will Web 3.0 kill Google? “Not so fast”, says the search engine.
*This is a sponsored post.
BRAIN TEASER
How many seconds are there in a year?
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.
The Tinder Swindler
Ladies, beware: the 2022 adaptation of a popular scam takes the form of attractive men on Tinder.
Meet Shimon Hayut, an Israeli man who swindled hundreds of women on Tinder. Shimon catfished the women into believing that his name was “Simon Leviev”, the son of an Israeli diamond tycoon Lev Leviev.
You can probably guess how the story goes from there.
Recently, Netflix released a film about this story, featuring three women who were conned. And it seems that everyone is interested in peering into other people’s dating lives, as the film has already reached Netflix’s Top 10 lists both in the U.S. and in the U.K.
FROM THE CREW
And the winner is…
Dana W. from Wisconsin, US. A big congratulations from The Crew, and we can’t wait to see you get your hands on this new business thanks to Flippa. We will update everyone on the business you chose later.
Didn’t win the $25K business on Flippa?
It’s not all doom and gloom! We got you. You can still own your future by registering as a buyer, attend a live webinar for first time online business buyers or work with Flippa’s concierge service, Flippa Finder, to match you with a curated list of digital businesses that meet your experience, industry, business model criteria, and funds.
You’ll get the professional guidance and expert tips to set you up for business ownership success.
Have an online business and wonder what it’s worth? Get a free valuation of your business on Flippa.
And stay tuned for more (and hopefully, even better!) giveaways in the future!