#4: All-time highs
I hope you are enjoying a merry Christmas. Before the year draws to a close I wanted to touch upon a few highlights.
You’ll find my personal highlight at the bottom of this newsletter.
Facebook CPMs throughout the year:
US sample data from https://commonthreadco.com/blogs/coachs-corner/coronavirus-ecommerce
Facebook has been sued by the US FTC and a few US states, claiming the acquisitions of Instagram (2010) and WhatsApp (2014) were anti-competitive and led to privacy infringements, and that Facebook uses access to user data APIs selectively to squeeze out competing networks. They call for Facebook to be split up, as this is supposed to help competition across a number of areas, not least privacy and content moderation.
I just wouldn’t bet on anything here, really. This will take years to be worked out and is still not solving what to do with Apple and Tiktok or Amazon. It needs a general solution in the form of legislation and regulation that can be applied more broadly instead of taking it case by case. As a result, Facebook’s stock price hasn’t moved at all.
Apple postponed its deprecation of IDFA until some time early next year, replacing it with SKAdNetwork - which is, as the naming already suggests, a conundrum of attribution, including random timers, which I personally find intriguing as a general idea. In short: Things will change, there will be winners and losers:
More tables here: https://mobiledevmemo.com/idfa-deprecation-winners-and-losers/
Growth loops are the new funnels, claims a blog post over on Reforge.com. A very insightful article, focusing on how creating compound interest across domains (e.g. media, website, app) can substantially drive product adoption. In the example of Pinterest:
User signs up (or returns)
They activate you on the product with specific/relevant content
You save new content or repin existing content which gives Pinterest quality signals
Pinterest distributes the quality content to search engines
A user finds the content via search engines and either signs up/returns (see step 1)
Imagine how this plays out in a big org, how to get all those interests aligned to make sth. like this happen.
I tested Pencil, an AI tool that turns assets into ads with the help of machine learning, with Manitober, one of my clients. You upload images, videos and copy and it creates video ads you can then edit and export to Facebook.
The results were instantly on par with our regular ads, albeit we needed to tweak the videos a little bit here and there. With a few more improvements - mind you, we were early to the platform - Pencil will be a boon for businesses that struggle with scaling creative production or want to save costs & improve effectiveness. Check out the demo here and let me know if interested.
Google Tag Manager has recently released Server-side tagging into public beta. While this - perhaps - helps some to set up server-side conversions more easily, if not already using tools like Snowflake, Segment or plugins, I say it’s rather for Google-focused businesses, as it doesn’t really make things easier, just different, and gives Datenschutz-teams a new question to ponder. In my experience so far most Datenschützers don’t want Google to be integrated server-side. Have a look how Google integrates it into GTM: https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/server-side-tagging-google-tag-manager/
How 6 second videos work better than 15 seconds on Snapchat across age groups:
It seems that shorter ads quickly get their point across to maximize persuasion. Those who can, do.
There is 1 more thing I wanted to announce.
A while ago, when I set up my German GmbH, I was looking for a business bank account that doesn’t invest my deposits into coal mines, child labour or weapons and offers a state-of-the-art digital access. I found none.
Discussing this with a friend, we figured that such an offering could do even more to help businesses drive down their carbon reliance and act as a real agent for change. So, on the back of some COVID-induced spare time, we founded Multiplye to address exactly this. A business bank account enabling climate action. We are starting today to take early access submissions through our website and are happy for any referral or advice (and questions too) to build it out. Have a look :)
Take care,
Johannes