💪 Groups.

Facebook Groups get several new features, Google suggests tips for reducing fake leads, and more. October 21, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Happy Friday. If you haven’t picked a Halloween costume yet and could use some inspiration, we’ve got a costume map for you. And no, that’s not a typo. You’ll see what we mean in today’s Poolside Chat section. GOOGLE Tips for reducing fake leads in Performance Max, plus a few ads updates [article-image] Google rarely hands out technical advertising tips. Thankfully, they didn’t stay quiet when Performance Max lead gen ads started [snagging too many fake leads for advertisers](… Coping mechanisms: Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, said the company is actively working to “address concerns” and prevent this from happening again. To help marketers reduce fake lead counts in the meantime, she provided a list of tips, including enabling server-side validation, double opt-in, recaptcha, and more. Sigh. Also, Google’s letting people be selective: Or as they say, [your ad, your choice](. Their new My Ad Center allows users to control the kinds of ads they see across Google properties. Users can now block or disable ads they find irrelevant. Keep that in mind when you run campaigns… On the bright side, Google made shopping easier with two new updates: - Trending now for shopping. Google started [showing a “Trending now box” on search results pages](, showing shoppers the most popular product related queries. - Shoppable search on desktop. The Shopping Graph on desktop [is getting more visual](, with an expanded feed, dynamic filters, and more. Why we care: Performance Max is far from complete, unfortunately, so you can probably expect more issues. And while the tips above can help, they can only mitigate the problem, not solve it. On the other hand, both Shopping updates could give your products a lift in search. Just need to play those ad and SEO cards right… SOCIAL MEDIA More power to Groups The best stuff on Facebook happens in Groups. And—to the joy of everyone involved—Facebook [decided to add more features to Groups](. Reels, events, relationships: After announcing Community Chats in Groups last month, Meta is expanding ways to make the Group experience even more personal: - Group profile updates allow members to customize the “About me” section to share more information and notify other members about whether they’re open to messaging. - Reels let you share information, tell stories, and build relationships by sharing special Reels videos directly in groups. - And you can also share a public Facebook event for your Group on your Instagram story regardless of whether you’re an admin or a group member. Sweet. Speaking of admins, Meta is equipping them with some new tools too: - New ways to highlight select members. Top contributors can earn points for badges, which make it easier for admins to recognize them. - Admin assist updates including moving “fake news” posts to pending and a daily summary of actions taken in the Group. - Flagged by Facebook: An extension allowing admin to add some additional context and allow content that would otherwise be removed. Why we care: With Facebook’s feed algorithm slowly becoming content-focused instead of user-focused, smaller Group feeds could recreate the community feel that Meta lost a long time ago. These new features seem like a huge plus for marketers building communities. Maybe Meta will introduce Group ads next? SPONSORED BY FLIPPA $5.24 million in 4 months [article-image]( Back in 2011, All About Cookies was earning about $5 RPM (revenue per 1000 impressions). Now that RPM is closer to $400 at a 93% average monthly profit margin… And the company was recently acquired for $5.24M after being on the market for just four months! How’d they sell a website at a 7.8x net profit multiple so quickly? They used Flippa, the world’s largest community of buyers… 500,000 buyers, to be exact. [It’s easy to sell your business on Flippa](, which is why they’ve sold more companies than all their competitors combined. And Flippa is the right place to get an accurate evaluation of your company because they have the largest database for comparing your business to historical sales data and similar assets. How much is your business worth? Get a valuation for free in just three minutes! [Discover how much your business is worth.]( ADVERTISING What “programmatic advertising” means, and how it can benefit your brand [article-image] Heard the term “programmatic advertising” lately? That’s because it’s becoming more and more of a thing… even on “traditional” online advertising platforms like Google or Meta. So it’s worth understanding this kind of advertising and how it can help your brand. Let’s get into it… What is programmatic advertising? [Brooke Osmundson defines it]( as a media buying method that uses automated technology and algorithmic tools to buy ads. In other words, it analyzes all possible signals before optimizing ads and making sure it serves the best possible person at any given time. The difference between programmatic and traditional advertising: Programmatic refers to how ads are bought, while display refers to the format of the ads. Also, display ads usually refer to the ads you buy on one specific network. What kinds of programmatic advertising platforms are out there? Brooke lists three: - Sell-side platforms (SSP), or “supply-side” platforms, allow publishers to sell ads in real time. They include both demand-side platforms (DSP) and ad exchanges: Google Ad Manager, Yahoo Ad Tech, Verizon Media, etc. - Demand-side platforms allow you to purchase ad inventory across multiple platforms at once. Think Amazon DSP, Google Display & Video 360, AdRoll, and so on. - Ad exchangers are SSPs that flow their inventory to DSPs. DSPs connect to ad exchangers where prices vary depending on the competitiveness of that inventory. Think Xandr, Google Ad Exchange, Magnite, and more. What are the benefits of programmatic advertising? There are several, but here are some of the more important ones: - Reaching a large-scale audience. Programmatic advertising can grow and scale on its own. - Raising awareness at a low cost. It can make the most out of a small budget. - Collecting real time data and analysis. It can help you make decisions and pivot faster. - Combining first and third-party data. It can find new high intent buyers effectively. That’s the quick and dirty summary. There’s more to programmatic advertising, of course, but hopefully this gives you what you need to start looking into it more seriously! SPONSORED BY NORTHBEAM Finally… You can track every channel, touch point, and conversion [article-image]( When you advertise on different channels, data gets messier than a tangle of fishing lines… which makes planning, forecasting, and optimizing ad spend nearly impossible. It’s why the brightest minds in data science, marketing, and media buying created Northbeam, the world’s best first-party data attribution platform. Northbeam tracks which channel, ad click, or view generates revenue—in real time. [This empowers you to scale your ads profitably, no matter your budget.]( [Gain control over your spend.]( THE CREW’S INSIGHTS Are your blind spots costing you money? [article-image] We recently came across a great viral Twitter thread [by Warren Craddock](, a former software engineer at Google, that described a number of failures at Google. Warren’s thesis? Google’s product teams ignored the glaring flaws in their projects. As a result, they wasted money on products doomed to fail. It’s wild stuff. And it’s just as easy for marketers to overlook fatal flaws in their marketing, too. Here are a few flaws we’ve come across while analyzing otherwise-successful brands for our [Stacked Marketer Pro reports](… LadyBoss: Our report on Ladyboss explains how their homepage breaks almost every design and copywriting rule in the book—and probably not for the better. Our theory is Ladyboss’ personal branding and emotional selling points work so well, it’s easy to get away with subpar design and copy. But if they recognized that blind spot? We think they’d make even more dough. Pete & Pedro: The men’s grooming brand succeeds in so many ways, but in our report, we discovered that they’d fallen behind on email marketing best practices. At the time, they weren’t sending from their own domain and hadn’t set up any form of authentication... a major blind spot for an otherwise efficient brand. Snow: During the checkout process for Snow, a teeth whitening brand, we were hit with six separate one-time offers. Each of them had a fake “timer” to create urgency. In our view, this is a blind spot that is possibly costing them money. Too much friction and clearly fake scarcity tends to discourage customers. The Crew’s insight: What are your blind spots? Take a look at each piece of marketing and ask yourself, “why are we doing this?” You may find that you’re doing something because you feel like you should be—and not because it’s actually working. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [GROWTH HACKS:]( We dissected Morning Brew, a $50M newsletter business, from early beginnings to massive growth. Then we threw what we learned into an actionable report. It’s a masterclass in growing your newsletter to 1M subscribers. [Join Stacked Marketer Pro to get the Morning Brew report.](* [BING:]( If you can’t find it, create it. Bing launched Image Creator, which is… you’ve guessed it – an AI text-to-image generator powered by DALL-E 2 AI technology. Wow. The new feature will be coming later this month to “select markets” first. [TIKTOK:]( The app swept past Netflix to become the second-most viewed video app in the US for users under 35. The top viewed app is, of course, YouTube. But for how much longer? [AMAZON:]( Not playing around. Amazon has filed legal complaints against Italian and Spanish “fake review brokers” and warned five German websites about the same issue. Keep it clean when it comes to your reviews! [INSTAGRAM:]( Post scheduler is on the agenda. Instagram confirmed that they’re testing the feature with a percentage of their “global community.” If and when it becomes available for everyone… no one really knows. *This is a sponsored post BRAIN TEASER Sara has four daughters, and each of her daughters has a brother. How many children does Sara have? You can find the [answer here.]( [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT Halloween Costume Map [article-image] If you’re going trick or treating in Nebraska, don’t be surprised if you’re surrounded by ninjas! Google’s [Halloween Costume Map]( can tell you which costumes are trending in which state. And there are some spooky trends to look out for: - Cop costumes are hot in West Virginia. - Broken dolls are popular in Michigan. - Horses are the rage in Maine. But you know what’s the strangest of them all? Cattle costumes, which seem to be most popular around Utica, NY. Creepy… SHARING IS CARING “I want only email marketing, not all marketing on planet earth.”—a reader who unsubscribed Our newsletter isn’t for everyone. But it’s definitely for smart marketers who manage multiple growth channels. ... And we have a feeling you know a few of them. Would you take a few seconds to share our newsletter with someone who values getting the latest marketing news and insights in 7-minute segments? 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