🍪 Cookies stay.

Third-party cookies get some good news. Find out the best time for social media posts. February 21, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Good Monday morning! We found a new obsession on the weekend. [This Twitter account]( sharing topographic maps is oddly satisfying, and we’re ashamed to say we spent more time than we should scrolling through it. Luckily, we still made time to bring you this newsletter. E-COMMERCE Walmart’s ad business is thriving [article-image] We reported a few weeks ago that Chinese sellers [were flocking]( to Walmart as a result of Amazon's ban. In case you didn’t know, Walmart is the [second largest e-commerce]( marketplace in the U.S. Now it turns out that they're also a pretty large advertising marketplace as well. [Walmart released its Q4]( earnings report and reported on its global advertising revenue for the first time. How big is it? Walmart's advertising revenue reached $2.1 billion last year. The number of active advertisers in the U.S. who’ve used Walmart’s advertising tech (named “Walmart Connect”) has also increased by 136%. How does this stack up against Amazon? [Amazon reported]( $31 billion in advertising revenue last year, which makes Walmart's figure look pretty small in comparison. However, one wise person once said: "If a figure starts with a B, pay attention." The Crew’s take: Walmart is to Amazon what Microsoft is to Google in search. Much smaller in market share, but still significant enough to pay attention to. Markets with a dominant player share one characteristic: Everyone is focused on the dominant player. Most people forget that there are still other players in the space. Herein lies the opportunity. ADVERTISING Here’s why third-party cookies may not be going away anytime soon It’s the government’s “fault”. Over the past few months, we covered many antitrust lawsuits against Google, Facebook and Apple. It seems governments around the world are fed up with Big Tech's (ab)use of power and are increasingly taking action to limit it. One of these abuses of power is attempting to replace open web technology with proprietary technology. One example is Google phasing out third party cookies in favor of FloC cookies. Jason Bier from AdExchanger recently [wrote a piece]( on why this plan probably won’t work, thanks to the government. Google vs. the government: One month ago, [the EU opened up]( an investigation into Google’s “Privacy Sandbox”. The UK competition regulator has also investigated Google's Privacy Sandbox and requested revisions (which [it recently accepted](). [The US Justice Department]( is also looking into this matter. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst: Despite this, there has been a heavy backlash against tracking and a push for privacy tracking solutions. Government lawsuits will buy us marketers some valuable time we can use to find an alternative that works for our use cases. SPONSORED BY POSIRANK This SEO agency guarantees to boost your organic traffic by 20% at least or pay you $1,000 [article-image]( Yes, you read that right! But how can they be so confident? Two reasons: their process and their past results. [PosiRank]( is a team of 25+ motivated professionals who can deliver results, through exceptional link building solutions, even in sensitive niches like crypto, CBD, nutra, gambling, vape, and THC. [PosiRank’s strength]( is their holistic approach. They look at your offers, your products, and your positioning first. And this helped them deliver some awesome results for their clients: - They increased the traffic of RTA Outdoor living, a store selling outdoor living features, by 200%, in just 3 months. - A wholesale e-commerce site in the agriculture industry saw its sales grow by $2M in 30 days after the PosiRank team got their hands dirty with the store. - PosiRank increased the organic traffic of an e-commerce store selling 4x4 vehicle parts and accessories by 690% leveraging a custom link-building program. There are 200+ success stories like these. [Be one of them and multiply your organic traffic]( - guaranteed! Or get $1,000 if that doesn’t happen. SOCIAL MEDIA What kind of content do people consume during the day? [article-image] If you create and share any type of content, you probably asked yourself at least once what’s the best time of the day to post. [This Ariyh issue by Thomas McKinlay]( will answer that question. And it’s quite straightforward. First, let’s make a distinction between two main types of content: - “Virtue” content: This is educational or value-adding content, such as a financial article or a marketing case study. - “Vice” content: This is content that gives immediate gratification, such as memes, a flash sale, entertaining content. So, when should you post what? The study, took in analysis 7,604,530 Twitter likes, 139,151 Twitter follows and found out that: - In the morning, people engage more with virtuous content. - Later during the day, people want to be entertained, hence, the consumption of vice content increases. And this is true even for weekends and for content not related to a person’s job. Why is that? We must consider the following points: - People consume content for two main reasons: to get immediate pleasure or to learn something. - Our self-control declines during the day, especially on hot days. And mixed reasons cause this phenomenon. - When self-control lowers, we look for instant gratification, so we tend to watch Netflix or read gossip magazines rather than go through a financial newsletter. What can you bring home? - Divide your content into educating and entertaining. And post accordingly. - This isn’t just true for social media, but any type of content. - Even though you create virtue content, you should still try to inject entertainment in it, to facilitate its consumption. SPONSORED BY SPY HOUSE Spy on your competitors’ best performing campaigns for free [article-image]( [Spy.House is a free competitive intelligence tool]( that lets you analyze your competitors’ ads . A lot of inspiration for your advertiser’s mind: With Spy.House you’ll access 6 million creatives from 25 advertising networks per second. You can search ads by keyword, domain, and redirect. And sort them by lifetime, popularity and novelty. And it’s free forever. [Save money on testing campaigns.]( THE CREW'S INSIGHTS $25,000 giveaway stats and thoughts from The Crew [article-image] If you were to venture a guess, how many new subscribers do you think our giveaway brought through referrals? If you are new, or just don’t know what we are talking about: Between 10th January and 4th February, we partnered with Flippa to give away an online business worth up to $25,000. To enter, you had to refer at least one new reader using their unique referral link. [We shared some of the early lessons from our giveaway](, lessons that were very obvious once a few days passed. Now it’s time to dig into some stats! Out of the 22,000+ subscribers we had when starting the giveaway, less than 1% referred at least one new reader in the giveaway period. The final number of what we call advocates (readers who refer other subscribers) was 194. This generated 1,146 referrals in total. The Crew’s thoughts: We had a good first few days, then the next 2 weeks were relatively poor. We did a bad job at keeping up the excitement with how we mentioned the giveaway in our newsletter. It also didn’t help that promoting the giveaway to a cold audience did nothing. All in all, we thought both numbers could have been higher. What could we have done better? Three things come to mind: - Giving you a heads-up about the giveaway. If more people had a chance to prepare promotional activities 1-2 weeks ahead of time, we could have seen an improved result. - More examples of what you could win, presented better. We already saw that giving awesome business examples helped engagement the most. Doing a better job at creating the “after winning” image in our readers’ minds would have likely helped. - Better social buzz. Even though we saw our giveaway mentioned on social organically, we should have done a better job at partnering with some publications to hype up the giveaway before it started. It’s easier in hindsight, but those are the main things we’d try to improve on if and when we do a similar giveaway. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [MARKET RESEARCH:]( Hire Sherlock Holmes for free! Just give him your business name, or your competitor’s, and AudienceScout, aka Sherlock, will return you a list of 250 results including your audience’s interests, competitors and potential partners or influencers. [Instantly and for free.](* [FACEBOOK:]( What data does Facebook currently collect about its users when they are not using Facebook? This research provides some really interesting insights into what are usually called “Facebook Shadow Profiles”. [TIKTOK:]( Take this with a grain of salt but TikTok was the highest earning app of January 2022 in the US. It earned an estimated $64M from the App Store and Google Play. [BROWSERS:]( Watch out, Apple! Microsoft Edge is edging out Safari in terms of market share. Still a long way to catch up to Google Chrome though. *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday? You can find the [answer here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT When you try to cut off internet to your kids but accidentally cut off internet to your entire city [article-image] This is [what actually happened]( to one father in France. This French father attempted to do what almost every father has attempted to do at some point in their parenting lives: get their kids to spend less time on the internet. How? He used a signal jammer to prevent radio frequencies from reaching the family's home. Except that the signal jammer turned out to be capable of blocking radio frequencies throughout the entire town! This alerted the French government agency in charge of managing radioelectric spectrum in the country, which then tracked down the jamming signal to the house. In France, using jamming devices is illegal and can result in a fine of up to 30,000 euros as well as 6 months in prison. Let's hope that this "Oops" story ends happily. SHARING IS CARING You know what else can have a happy outcome? If you share our newsletter with your marketer friends, we’ll send you some awesome merch for free. Comfy T-shirts, cozy hoodies, spacious laptop backpack. And your marketer friend will thank you for keeping giving them an easy way to stay ahead in the industry. All you have to do is share your referral link below. It takes less than 30 seconds. [article-image]( [CLICK TO SHARE]( Or copy your referral link: [ [SUBSCRIBE]( | [INSIGHTS]( | [ADVERTISE]( You are receiving this email because you want to know what is going on in digital marketing. If you aren't thrilled about our emails, reply and let us know why. Or you can unsubscribe from all daily updates by clicking [here.]( Our postal address: Spectrum IT Solutions GmbH, Canettistraße 1/Top0107, 1100 Wien, Austria