Black November: a week away!

Everyone is hunkered down getting ready for a strong close to the year. Will keep everything performance related in this week’s edition!

Some quick updates:

• Brands doing $100M+ in annual GMV all have one thing in common...

  AFFILIATES generating substantial revenue. Check out my Fast Company article on how to go viral by amassing an affiliate influencer army.

• Still trying to grow your TikTok Shop affiliate channel through TikTok DMs? Think again. Hear from one of the top performing TikTok Shop affiliates herself on where affiliates are migrating to review brand correspondence.

• X launched “RADAR” - a new feature for Premium+ subscribers that will display analytics for different search queries and relevant posts. Pretty rudimentary at this point, can only look at 3 day time periods, but interesting in that you can sort by top posts, latest posts, and trending articles relevant to your query.

  Here’s how it looks in beta:

  

1. 10 Table Stakes Essentials for Running Meta Ads in 2024

Advertising on Meta isn't getting easier. Yet too many accounts are still missing the fundamentals.

Here are 10 "Table Stakes" Essentials for Running Meta Ads in 2024:

1. 3rd Party CAPI solution

2. IG & FB Shop setup (properly)

3. Audience segments defined in "Advertising Settings"...hint: use Shopify Audience's Existing Customer segment for highest match rates

4. "Performant creative" in each ad set. PC = 9x16 asset w/ sound on

5. Standardized naming conventions at campaign, ad set, and ad levels

6. Naming conventions that enable data flexibility w/ every variable

7. Dedicated campaigns w/ specific creative for: prospecting, retargeting & retention

8. Analytics/dashboard that automates reporting for media buying & website performance, creative, contribution margin, LTV, & customer acquisition/retention

9. Upsell/cross-sell app on site to increase AOV

10. Destination/Funnel testing (advertorials, LPs, offers)

Recently onboarded an account that didn't have most of these 10.

Within 2 months of implementing them, we were able to 8x daily spend on Meta (& increase ROAS).

If you think you've hit a wall on Meta, there's typically a reason why.

And it's not usually related to TAM. You haven't saturated Meta.

👇 Reach out if you'd like a second set of eyes on your account: https://avenuez.com/services/performance-media

2. Beware of GMV Max on TikTok Shop ⚠️

One brand came to us with ~$100k/day in TTS revenue... yet it was likely all organic.

Little did they know: they were lighting ad dollars on fire w/ GMV Max.

💀 Their daily budget was being fully spent by 9am each day, despite their Shop's best performing hours coming later in the day.

They were actually spending more on ads than revenue on their entire Shop during these AM hours...

The issue with GMV Max for larger brands is that attribution is a black box:

😒 ALL Shop revenue for the selected products is attributed to the campaign, whether or not the conversion is paid or organic.

In GMV Max, you just set a target ROI and daily budget; both of which TikTok "suggests."

If you already have a strong baseline of revenue, if you don't set your daily ad budget high enough, TT will accelerate spend early in the day b/c it knows the store will generate enough organic rev throughout the day to achieve the target ROI...

Example:

Brand has $100k/day in baseline revenue.

They set their target ROI at 5x.

Lets say TikTok recommends $20k/day budget.

If the brand only sets its daily budget to $5k, TikTok would blow through those ad dollars right away...

TT's algo isn't being trained on incrementality (which would require day-parting if on a fixed budget).

This is what was happening to this brand and they had no idea bc it was masked by a fundamentally flawed attribution system.

Lets say the brand actually took TT's recommendation of a $20k/day budget...

if they spent the $20k on ads and generated the $100k baseline they already got without ads, the 5x target would theoretically be achieved.. despite there being no incremental revenue generated by the ads.

This doesn't mean you should automatically rule out GMV Max for your brand.

But when you start advertising in these black box systems, you need to understand the data to see if it's functioning the way you need it to.

To scale your TikTok Shop, you need to buy your media correctly on TikTok.

Reach out if you need an extra set of eyes on your TikTok Shop / TikTok ad accounts.

3. Retargeting is NOT Dead…Despite what Twitter & LI Gurus Might Tell You 🤨

STOP blindly taking advice.

Almost killed a brand that came to us for help w/ new customer acquisition.

They'd been in free-fall for nearly 12mo.

They read on X that "retargeting is dead" & that they should stop 'wasting $$ on it.'

Here's what we uncovered 👇

Their funnel:

Ads -> LP -> Begin survey -> Complete Survey / ATC -> Checkout/Purchase

You could ONLY purchase if you completed the survey...

Main issues with survey:

1. wasn't clear to site visitors why it was necessary

2. didn't show estimate time to complete

3. no progress bar on survey to guide users to completion

4. LENGTHY (10+ min to complete)

So what do you think happened?

💦 LEAKAGE! 💦

Only 40% of people who started the survey completed it.

AKA 60% of ppl w/ intent to buy product never even had the chance to ATC 🤯

On avg, they were losing 10k ppl per mo who started & never finished the survey...

Yet this brand thought they could just shut off retargeting and save $.

The issue with the assumption that you can just "retarget people naturally with broad audiences" is nonsensical.

Main reason why?

You can't create personalized ads for people at different levels of the funnel.

The BIGGEST issue with over-utilizing broad audiences (and ASC) is you can't tell the algorithm which creative to serve to which audience segment (new, engaged, existing).

It's fine for prospecting, but certainly not a replacement for retargeting/retention campaigns...

These 10k ppl per month could have received ads that speak directly to the importance/benefit of the survey or any other objections that might have prevented them from completing the survey and purchasing product.

Marketing tactics & strategies are unique to each brand.

There's no one-size fits all approach.

You need to think critically about your offer & funnel and make decisions accordingly.

PayPal Ads: Contender or Pretender?!

Ready for another ad platform?

👉 PAYPAL ADS 👈

They just announced last week that it's launching an ad platform that will leverage the FINANCIAL data of its:

- 400M Paypal users

- 90M Venmo users

- millions of Honey users

- 225B transactions across millions of merchants

To create endless custom audiences w/ intent data of its users.

Theoretically Paypal will be able to show relevant ads to its users that should convert better its traditional ads counterpart.

Financial data is arguably the most valuable consumer data in the entire customer journey since it defines intent and interests.

Financial media networks (FMNs) will continue to emerge. Earlier this year we saw Chase Media Solutions announce its ad platform through cash-back offers and pay-per-performance model with its advertisers.

Paypal differs in that it'll roll out with banner ads (not cash back offer based) and is CPM based, not performance based.

FMN ad spend is expected to hit 100%+ CAGR from 2024 to 2026, with a forecasted $1.5B in ad spend in '26. Too big to ignore...

We're living in the GOLD RUSH of data.

1st-party data is invaluable & superfluous in 2024.

It drives everything we do (& what AI does).

My main advice activating on any emerging channel like this is to question incrementality. Try to leverage these platforms for customer acquisition, NOT just driving purchases.

Be sure that you'll be able to identify and exclude existing customers of your brand in your targeting efforts.

So the million dollar question now is:

PAYPAL ADS: Shiny new object or viable platform for performance media⁉️

If you're interested in the Paypal Ads beta, shoot me a message, I can get you in the mix.

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: Snow’s House (14 hours of my top house music tracks from the past 10 years)

Alright, doing something different this week. The music industry has been in a lull since summer and there’s been virtually no new sets worth sharing. BUT, I come bearing gifts. I’m opening up my own Spotify playlist of house music to everyone. 14 hours of the top tracks I’ve collected over the years.

I welcome all feedback. Good, bad, everything in between.

Hit reply, and let’s hear it! 👂

📧 Share your thoughts or what you want me to cover next!