Loading summary
Transcript88 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, real quick before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show. There is a narrative that Cambridge Analytica won the election for Trump in 2016, which is absolutely untrue. What Trump did in 2016 is if.
- [00:31]
B
You'Re new to advertising, this is a great time to jump in. If you're not new to advertising, this is a mission critical time to understand and catch up.
- [00:40]
A
You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Are you struggling to keep up with marketing tasks? ActiveCampaign's autonomous marketing platform eliminates the busy work automatically, building and optimizing email, SMS and WhatsApp journeys all for you. If you it's all powered by billions of data points that show you what drives revenue so you can launch campaigns in minutes instead of weeks. Extend your team with AI agents that handle campaign admin and tedious tasks that you know your team doesn't want to do. Focus on strategy and let the AI do the rest with data driven decisions, clear next steps and on brand messaging across every channel. Try the next era of marketing for free@activecampaign.com hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. Your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11. And today is part four, the final episode of why Meta is the absolute best advertising platform on the planet in 2026. Meta is not paying us to say this, we are paying Meta quite a bit in order to prove this and to show it to you. And I think the history of Meta, the history of Facebook is really important for you all to understand exactly how much of a monumental shift is going on right now with the advent of AI, of course, with the Andromeda update and how that affects everything. We're going to be talking on a show and we're going to be talking on a subsequent show about how it affects your Google Organic search, which is a really interesting episode. How all of this stuff affects everything. Looking at individual platforms, looking at your meta, trying to measure your ROAS on Meta, trying to measure your ROAS on email, trying to measure your ROAS On Google Ads, your Google Organic, your TikTok, your Amazon. That is so 2016, so 2017. And the reason why we're talking about this stuff right now is because multi platform, not even multimedia, mix modeling or however you want to say it, it's not even modeling. There's a way in which to show this through. Last click, first click contribution versus attribution, which we talk about here on the last episode as well as on this episode, and how it all impacts your business. And these are really important episodes that I think you understand exactly how we've sort of gotten to where we're at right now and how you can leverage this new Andromeda algorithm. And of course, if you need our help, you can head on over to tier11.com forward/apply. So without further ado, here is the final part four of why Meta is the best advertising platform to scale and grow your business in 2026. Like we've said that plenty of times.
- [03:21]
B
Here, Creative creates the targeting in today's day and era. Because before you would just say, here's my ideal customer. You're an LDS mom with seven kids and I'm trying to sell you a nine passenger vehicle. It's easy to sell a Mormon family a nine passenger vehicle with seven kids than it is to a 20 year old with three different girlfriends. Like they're, they're not thinking about family at all. That kid wants a car to attract his fourth girlfriend versus the Mormon family. That's like, I need to be able to take everyone to service or to school on time. So when you had that details, I just had to say, hey, here's that nine passenger vehicle you've been wanting. And they're like, thank God it's relevant to me. But now as you're saying, it's, it's shifted because now you have to make an ad specifically for that person and then you make a different ad specifically for that like 20 year old that is in three different situationships. Like that's, that's where it's totally changed. Before you could have your audience. Here's my ideal customer. I know 10, 9 out of 10 times this person's gonna be like, yes, this is the model I like. Here you go. It's like you just put it up into the universe and as long as you knew who the audience was, they almost always bought. Or at least it felt like that. Especially when comparing today's day and age.
- [04:31]
A
It felt like it. Yeah, it was, it was so easy. In 2013 through 2018, I would say it was like you just, you didn't like your creative didn't matter quite as much. Like today it is everything. So the big data companies, I remember there was like epsilon data Axiom.
- [04:48]
B
Yes.
- [04:52]
A
Yeah, like all of this, like you could get to these Crazy levels of targeting. And that's why it was, it was such a cool platform. It's like, oh like I signed up a real estate investing company, all right, real estate investing as a target. And then you know, real estate seminar.
- [05:07]
B
In the last six months was the target.
- [05:10]
A
That was crazy. Like think about that. And like if you're still looking at Meta in as a targeting based platform, you've got it all wrong. Like literally the targeting is like by region or by country and then by age, you know, cut down the age as much as possible. Meta will figure that out for you eventually anyway, you know, so if you're not going to sell to 18 year olds, then, you know, make it 25 to 55 or whatever your ideal demographic is or just leave it wide open and Meta will figure it out.
- [05:41]
B
Yeah, it's really a suggestion, like none of that should matter. And it's like you can upload your audience list, which is good because then when you're looking at your sales campaign, you can see your new customers, engaged audiences in existing. But like, like we used to do a lot of like lookalike audiences like even to earlier this half of the year because we would say, hey, here, model the data off of already my existing customers and then I would supply it. But you look in all of their documentation, Neta will say you can give us recommendations, we're going to view them as suggestions.
- [06:12]
A
And by the way, if you put them in as exclusions, we're just going to use that as a seed audience to figure out who's your best customer and completely ignore the exclusions, which is a totally different way of doing things. And by the way, in and around this time, I believe it was about 2012, that's when you could start to upload custom audiences which we take for granted now. Like that used to be a great platform. Let's say you have a database of 100,000 email addresses in your CRM. You just simply upload it and then there was like a 70 or 80% match rate in a lot of cases. Yeah, like it was really, really good. The matching engine was really good early on and you could just literally retarget those people for, you know, a site wide sale or you know, to get on your continuity program. Like it was so easy and all of that has now completely flip flopped. So. But yeah, 2012 was a big year. But I think a lot of people say, oh, Zuckerberg is so brilliant by putting ads in the newsfeed. He had no choice, he literally had no choice to do It. And that's. Sheryl Sandberg is obviously is powering that behind the scenes. And that's the reason why we have ads in the newsfeed today, which is, you know, probably the best, greatest ad platform or, you know, ad serving network there is. So 2013 to 2017, you know, those are good years. But a little thing happened in 2016. Remember this, there was a big election and Zuckerberg is. And just, you know, I think Meta in general is great at overcoming really bad situations. That's when the Cambridge Analytica.
- [07:52]
B
Yeah, I was like, 2016, that was like, I, I remember the 2020. And then because there was like all those alleged Russian attacks, right, where they were like hacking stuff in that election. So people were like, oh my gosh, what's going on? Are my dollars being spent? Like, I think for me at least that was the, like, that was the very beginning of stuff for me. Or early in the beginning where I remember we had surging CPMs and that was like the, for me still like the very beginning of it all for me. But as far as I know, that was when people were like, my accounts are getting attacked. Like, this became a viable business for people to sabotage.
- [08:33]
A
There is a narrative that Cambridge Analytica won the election for Trump in 2016, which is absolutely untrue. I don't know if you'd realize this, but we actually talked to Cambridge Analytica about their targeting. Like basically they use like a hyper focused targeting, which we, we assessed it and realized it's kind of a waste of money. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm like, the targeting inside Meta is so good. Or Facebook at that point in time was so good. It was like, we don't need this. And how much is it, by the way? Oh, it's like 50, $60,000. Like that's total crap. So what Trump did in 2016 is he split tested millions and millions. There's a great article from Wired. I'll leave it in the show. Notes his media manager, like basically won the election for him on, on Meta. And we're not going to get into all of that here. And we really.
- [09:28]
B
He had a marketing team. Whatever you think, political wise, his marketing team was solid. I remember in 2016, Jeb Bush, who was the governor of Florida, had a website, Jeb Bush.com and his domain expired and someone on Trump's marketing team bought the domain the second it expired. And if you went to Jeb Bush.com for several days, it went straight to donaldtrump.com or Donald J. Trump, whatever it was, whoever, like the. I believe, whatever this article is, I'm keen to look at it because he brought on elite marketers that were like, I'm gonna try it, everything.
- [10:03]
A
So the. The lead on his team is this guy named Brad Parscal, and he's. He was inter. I think he was interviewed on 60 Minutes. We'll leave links in the show, notes for all this. It's fascinating. But basically, he did, like, all this. All the stuff that he did we were doing, he was just doing it at, like, a massive scale. Like, he had hundreds of millions of dollars to play with. And he basically ingratiated himself to the Trump family by building their websites for, like, a couple thousand dollars. And then he all of a sudden became like, their. Their.
- [10:31]
B
Go to marketing expert.
- [10:33]
A
Yeah, it's. It's fascinating. Leave a link in the article. It's actually. It's on Wired magazine. It's still up. I just found it here. So we will leave a link on that if you want to get deeper into that. But anyway, the Cambridge Analytica thing was totally overblown. Now, the point is this is that it did raise a lot of visibility, unfortunate negative visibility for Facebook at the time about privacy.
- [10:54]
B
Yeah.
- [10:56]
A
Which the election happened in 2016. The Cambridge Analytica thing comes out. 2017, 2018. I remember we actually had, you know, numerous shows on this, on perpetual traffic. We were, you know, still within our first couple of years of running this show. It was a big deal. And as a result of that privacy and a lot of the security side of the equation really became, like, we started to see a ton of banned ad accounts. Facebook sort of overstepping on compliance. And this was the age of banned ad accounts. And thankfully, thank God we had a partner manager at that point in time where we could navigate through it. But I was getting calls left and right for people like, yeah, I just got my ad account banned. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm selling, you know, you know, health and beauty products. You know what I mean? Like, and now it's against their terms of service. So after Cambridge Analytica, the fallout for advertisers was like, this hyper focus on not really privacy yet, because that comes a little bit later, but really on compliance. And a lot of these fake pages that were being put up, like, by, you know, the Russian infiltration, like, a lot of that sort of thing, which didn't swing the election. Sorry, everybody, like, read this article on Wired. Brad Parscale won that election for Trump. Like, he was super, super Smart. And, you know, whether you like Trump or don't like Trump, like, he leveraged the platform. It had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica, had nothing to do with all this other sort of stuff. It was a different day and age there. So very important thoughts. Comments?
- [12:27]
B
I'm saying anyone who's listening and has any, any connection to Brad Parscale whatsoever, like, can you please introduce us? I want him on this show. Like, Ralph, I want to. So go hear about, like, well, what. I mean, if he was. Went from like a website builder to then managing a political account. There's a lot of small businesses but are listening to some. A lot of small agency or like single service providers that are listening. And it's like, hey, that's a really cool story of a lot of us start selling one service and then we expand and expand our business to where we go from freelancer to agency. And it sounds like he did that trajectory as well, but then still, like the, the startup mindset and the enterprise budget he had was something that I think would be valuable to bring on it. So, hey, any listeners, if that's something you want to listen to or you have some sort of connection, like, that's my ask. That's my comment. Like, this would be. I've always wanted to meet the people behind some of these very successful campaigns.
- [13:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, No, I think, yeah. If anybody knows him, certainly. I mean, he's. I think he's from Kansas originally. One of the things that when I read about, I don't think it's in this article is like, he used to do the same thing that I would do when I was first starting my digital marketing agency. He went to Barnes and Noble in Hungary around the website book section.
- [13:49]
B
Okay, you did that in the business section. You were in the business book section.
- [13:53]
A
I did in the business book section. But then I also did it in, like, the website section, like coding and that kind of thing. And then I would hand out my card. He did the same thing, which I thought was always kind of cool. So he's. He's like a totally scrappy dude that, you know, latched onto the Trump Organization, ran the whole thing, and I think Trump let him go at some point in time. Like, it was a very bad ending. Anyway, the point is this, is that that's what won the election. What really won the election is ads in the news feed and insane levels of targeting. It was not Cambridge Analytica. Sorry, everyone. Now, Cambridge Analytica did take data out of Facebook because of this app. Well, I'm not Going to get into a whole lot, but we'll leave links in the show notes, we dissect the whole thing. Point is, is that became privacy started to become more of an issue. And that's something that we are still dealing with.
- [14:44]
B
Absolutely.
- [14:44]
A
Really? To this day.
- [14:46]
B
Yeah.
- [14:47]
A
Which is gdpr, obviously advertising for elections, you know, sensitive categories.
- [14:55]
B
What's included for minors, you know, like with 100 now messenger, like Facebook Messenger. That data within your messenger, as I understand is now fair game to be used for. Was it contextual targeting for pieces that you can upload into the ecosystem? And so then again there's like meta AI. I love meta AI, it's a great tool. But then again it's like all this stuff with the intention of where's the line draw between relevancy and privacy? And like I was just at the Capitol a week ago where I was talking to a subcommittee about business and professional use of AI and there was one representative that was very specific about excluding miners access to AI because of the fear of their information becoming available. I mean, yes, there's a component where it's like, do I think miners should be left out of the AI conversation? Absolutely not. But should their content be leverageable for ads? No, I don't agree with that. But all that to say like that was a conversation I had last week with elected officials. Like, this conversation's not going anywhere.
- [15:56]
A
It's not going anywhere.
- [15:56]
B
It's just a target shifting, I think from Mark Zuckerberg clearly on the attack to what I know is in our next piece, the next phase of other social media giants that then become the enemy. And now with this world of AI and the fear of how AI is replacing jobs, I feel like the AI, they're just moving their target of who politicians and legislators and the public is going after. But again, it's like we're seeing history repeat itself too. So like again, I know it seems like why are we not talking about the ads and like tactics and stuff? Because so much of this defines what's working today. And when you understand where it came from and then you see other things coming on the news, you can anticipate what's going to happen when it just becomes a repeatable conversation. And so this is the advent of privacy banned accounts or not the advent, this is the era of privacy restrictions, ad account hacks, marketing legislation flowing through. Like you said with gdpr, oh my gosh. And the California Act. Now there's Mini Texas cca, ccpa.
- [17:01]
A
Yeah, it's all this was the genesis of all of it. All the stuff that we're still dealing with today.
- [17:06]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [17:07]
A
So which is the reason why we're talking about this. It's like you got to understand this to sort of realize like what we have today and all the stuff that's happened along the way. If you're still relying on Google and Facebook for all your performance, you're missing taking your performance even further. That's where Realize comes in. Realize helps performance marketers tap into more ad placements across hundreds of premium websites, reaching audiences you just can't find on traditional social channels. With intent based, contextually relevant ad placements, you can drive real conversions, not just impressions, and expand your acquisition strategy with better data, more control and higher roi. Thousands of brands already use Realize to diversify their ad spend, boost performance and unlock high quality traffic websites that will help you scale your business results. So if you're ready to go beyond the usual playbook and start reaching new audiences, check out discover.taboola.com perpetual to learn more or just check out the link over@perpetual traffic.com for this episode. And I would say probably like I always say about Andromeda, the Andromeda update right now and creative diversification. It's the biggest thing to happen to meta or Facebook since ads in the newsfeed and that insane level of targeting which did win the 2016 election 100%. This now is even bigger than that in my opinion. So putting things into context here, if you sort of go through the chronology of, of Meta and or Facebook, they haven't changed their name yet and sort of our story and our narrative here still Facebook.
- [18:43]
B
Well no, they went from not Facebook to Facebook.
- [18:47]
A
Right. That happened very early on, I believe in 2004.
- [18:51]
B
I don't know, I just remember not being in the movie.
- [18:53]
A
So it was actually, it was Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who told Zuckerberg. He said like that is true. That has been confirmed. Even though it was in the social network as well. He's like, you know, the Facebook isn't as cool as Facebook. So anyway, so credit him. And he was actually an early investor, you know, moved out to Silicon Valley with Zuckerberg when he took like his gap year at Harvard and never went back. Like he was a, he was a big force there. That, that's way, way in the beginning.
- [19:21]
B
Side quest. Like it would be really interesting to know if Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, currently has a Spotify or Apple music subscription. It'd be really funny. Like Spotify has a social media network component and you can connect your Facebook account. I'd be curious, does Sean Parker pay for a music subscription now?
- [19:42]
A
I have no idea. Napster's still alive. I don't even know what they do. Like, we'll. We'll leave a link.
- [19:48]
B
I'll look up Limewire.
- [19:49]
A
Napster moment is almost here. Yeah, Limewire was the one that I really loved. Obviously, all of that was illegal at that point in time. ITunes changed all that, which is a good segue into the next phase here, which really changed a lot of things. So we come up until about 2017, 2018, 2019. We've got 2020 with. Obviously, the big thing that happened that year was this pandemic thing. Everything went crazy.
- [20:15]
B
Well, it depends on where you are. I live in Florida, so we pretended that it happened.
- [20:20]
A
We pretended it didn't exist. Yeah. I'm in the Boston area. Everyone was wearing masks outside, so. And they still do, by the way. When I walk around my neighborhood sometimes, I'm like, why are you wearing a mask? It's like, outside. Anyway, whatever. So in 2021, this was the big deal. This is when everything I felt was starting to kind of fall apart.
- [20:40]
B
Oh, my gosh. I know exactly what we're getting to. Oh, my gosh.
- [20:45]
A
Yeah, we dealt with gdpr, we dealt with Cambridge Analytica. We dealt with, like, a lot of account bans, but nothing compared to the ATT prompt attack. The ATT prompt was in 2021, and it came on. And I don't know what your reaction to it was originally I was kind of freaked out by it. And I remember I was messaging with Molly. She's like, yeah, it's not really that big of a deal. Nobody really cares. Like, everyone will opt in. I'm like, no, but nobody will opt in. And so let's remember what this thing is. You still get it when you download a new app. I forget what app I downloaded last week. And it actually gave me that and said, either would you like name of app to track you, in essence? And either yes, I want it to track, or no, I don't want to be tracked. So it was very binary. And I believe no is at the top, if I'm not mistaken. So 80, 90% of Apple users opted out.
- [21:43]
B
Yeah. And the only ones that didn't were marketers that were just like, please, dear God, please stay opted in.
- [21:51]
A
Yeah. And so overnight, Facebook lost its visibility on its largest mobile platform and most lucrative. And by the way, if you really, if you could break out users of Apple iPhones versus any other Android device. The Apple iPhone users we did this many, many times were always like our highest average order value, highest lifetime value. Like, it was crazy. Like a very, very lucrative market all of a sudden was just pulled completely out from under. And I remember when it happened in 2021, it was like spring, and then everyone was trying to scramble and figure it out. Metamask didn't have or at Facebook at that point in time, didn't have an answer. And you just all of a sudden lost tracking literally overnight. And if you had a lot of Apple users and most of them were at that point in time, it was a really, really hard time for any advertiser, agencies included. And we didn't have an answer for it. We were struggling with. We were in the throes of making our first investment in wicked reports at that point in time and ended up doing so. The point was, is like nobody had an answer to it. And I don't know if you recall those days, but it was scary.
- [23:02]
B
Oh, I, I, I hired a program, I joined a mastermind specifically with the intention of getting prepared for the iOS updates. Like that was this paid traffic program was, hey, we're going to go through these changes together. And then I was alongside like 20 or 40 other media buyers, marketers, because I was like, this is the first time I ever personally invested into that type of education. And it just scared me so much. I thought, I don't know how to navigate this. I'm going to disappear from having a client roster. And I had like, the pandemic was really hard for me. I don't know how it was for you, but we had nonprofit and hospitality clients, so no one traveled. All of our hospitality clients disappeared. Nonprofits, their donors held back because they were too afraid. So in 2020 was the hardest year I've ever worked. And then we grew into the e commerce space and a lot of success. Some clients have come back and like, it was just like, I just went through the gauntlet. And then as soon as I was finally able to take a breath, we built an entire new client book because we had like, lost the clients that we had. Like, they like the biggest hospitality brand in the world, right? We were overseeing a $200,000 a day budget. Like, that just disappeared overnight. And so that was super traumatic for me. And then all of a sudden, this, these iOS changes, I thought, oh my gosh, I just finished a marathon and now you're asking me to run an Ultraman. I wasn't ready. So that, oh, I was, I was terrified. I was Uncomfortable. I hired my first ever mastermind type of help. So while no one really knew what to do, I was in the camp of, oh, my gosh, Lord help me.
- [24:53]
A
Yeah, I think we were all. We were all freaked out about it. And I think it caught Facebook completely off guard because that's when they realized. Hmm. And you. You listen to Zuckerberg right now, and he's like, why are they coming out with these, you know, the new Ray Ban glasses? They're. They want. They don't want to be sharecropping on other people's land.
- [25:15]
B
I was like, ray Ban glasses.
- [25:17]
A
I know, which is very cool. But they don't want. They want, you know, platform agnostic security. And they realized at that point in time they were tied in with att and because Tim Cook couldn't think of any new thing to come out with because he's totally a crap CEO, in my opinion, he's not thought of anything original since he's been the CEO of Apple. And you can tell him I said that. Point is, this is. Now he latched onto. This whole privacy thing is like, oh, we're so private. When in fact, Apple's using your data every single day.
- [25:51]
B
I thought they were doing this because they're launching their own ad network. So, like, which this is. Yeah, like, we were talking about something that's happened in 2012 at the beginning of this episode. And then I think, like, that is going to be the 2030. Oh, how Apple's ads network. Because Apple has an ads network. I don't know if a lot of people know this, but Apple does have an ads network. It's just like 2007 Facebook or whenever they initially came out with, like, those. Right. Desktop. It's nowhere near where it can be. But I assume that that was essentially doing a, like, complete annihilation of who their biggest competitor will be when they launch Apple Ads Network.
- [26:34]
A
That's what we all thought, and I think we actually did plenty of episodes on that here. Like, they're definitely launching their own network and they haven't. And I mean, they're using your data for sure. Is it. Is it within the walled garden of Apple? Are they selling your data? No. Apparently Facebook doesn't sell your data either.
- [26:52]
B
Sorry, I'm just going to pause. Ralph, Apple does have an ads network. They for sure do.
- [26:57]
A
Absolutely.
- [26:58]
B
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
- [26:58]
A
It does.
- [26:59]
B
You said they don't. They don't have it to the degree of what the other ad network and ad platforms like AdRoll or Taboola or Google or TikTok.
- [27:08]
A
Snap all we thought because they had so much data, they would launch a Facebook level kind of.
- [27:14]
B
Yeah, okay, Perfect competitor. Yeah.
- [27:17]
A
And that that did not happen. Do they have an admo network? Yes, they do. And you know, the most of the ads that I see are like app download ads. But yes, they do absolutely have a network, but they have not leveraged it as much as they possibly could have or should have or I don't really know what they did with it, but it was just a way to like really stick the knife inside Facebook. And Facebook had no response for it until they started to figure out in early 2022ish about conversions API, which is the way to get server side data sharing to restore that data pipeline and protect attribution to a certain degree, but also use the data that we're still, we're still in this day and age right now. Where meta is not is the data that you see inside your meta ad platform is typically is modeled data.
- [28:09]
B
Yeah, I don't think most people know that.
- [28:11]
A
ATT prompt. Yes, the ATT prompt, which, you know, it's the thing that comes up that says name of the app would like permission to track you and you say allow tracking or ask app not to track. If you say ask app not to track, you are blind for that particular app and for anyone on the Facebook app, they had to reinstall the Facebook app. If you remember the iOS 14 update, so everybody, like the vast majority, I think it was 80, 90%. It was like a site that would actually track like how many people.
- [28:45]
B
I think that's very conservative. I feel like it was 94 to 97%.
- [28:50]
A
Yeah, it was a lot.
- [28:52]
B
Yeah.
- [28:52]
A
The point was is you lost visibility there. But then through CAPI integration, which was sort of their defense into 2022 and beyond, and then model data, which you still see now. So if you see 10 conversions inside Meta right now, people don't really know this. Four to six of those are probably modeled conversions because Apple has, I mean meta has still lost data and lost visibility because of that att. So they never fully recovered. Does CAPI or conversions API make up for it? To a certain degree, yes, it does restore some visibility. But still there is model data that's in there. That's why third party attribution softwares and edge tagging and all the other things that we talk about here on the show are so vital right now. We all know this as marketers and business owners, that growth is amazing until something breaks or some catastrophic event, heaven forbid, should ever happen. To your business. And I don't mean just your ad campaigns going sideways. Maybe a client slips on a wet floor or a shipment suddenly goes missing, or a contractor gets hurt, or an employee gets hurt. Suddenly the thing you've been building can take a huge financial hit, maybe one that you worry might take down the company. And you should always be thinking about that as the business owner. Most people don't think about business insurance until after something goes wrong, when it's already too expensive or it's too late. That's why we're big fans of what next insurance is doing Business insurance is so important for any business, whether you're online or offline. And they've basically taken the pain out of business insurance. It's 100% online, ridiculously fast and designed specifically for small businesses. You answer just a few questions and next tells you exactly what coverage you need. No phone calls, no waiting, no holding the line for the next representative. Just fast, affordable production that actually has your back when things go sideways. Policies start for as little as $29 a month. Don't wait for a crisis to remind you you're not covered. Get protected in minutes@nextinsurance.com perpetual. That's nextinsurance.com forward/petual.
- [30:59]
B
I would say the only caveat Ralph would be that the conversions API and all that model data stuff is for things that are outside the control of meta's network. So if you're doing in app lead forms or if you're doing meta shops, things that are like still with contained and within their ecosystem they're providing extensive visibility on that end because they have that's up there's still model data that's happening for sure. But from the conversion side where it's model data off of other behaviors, especially when it's like web conversions that happen off a meta owned platform.
- [31:37]
A
Good point, good point. Absolutely. If you keep everything in app it's all within you're not actually leaving and so that data is accurate. So there is a way around it. And I think there was a big push. I remember our partner manager was pushing for you know, keeping everything in inside meta to or Facebook at that point in time. I forget when they actually changed over at Meta 2021 we just call it Facebook and or Meta 2021. So yeah, so keeping in app in the blue app itself and never leaving the app and actually making the purchase going lead forms like everything that you're talking about here was not affected by that. So that was a partial strategy. But Facebook really didn't know what to do. And it was an interesting time. On top of that there's this other app that came out called TikTok.
- [32:26]
B
That.
- [32:26]
A
Started to eat away a lot of.
- [32:29]
B
TikTok people meta, they were unprepared for, but it was like after Baidu or Douyin, so they just brought it to the western market. And I think what it was is like this eastern massively successful app where we talked in the last episode how meta apps and some other western social media are not available in China. So when China's like, well let's launch this very successful app in the east, out to the west, Meta was like, oh, what do you mean there's a world outside of us.
- [33:01]
A
Yeah, it's true. It's absolutely true. I mean I would submit that TikTok is. TikTok is categorized as a social media app, but I actually look at it as more of a media app because you can see everybody and everyone. You're really not communicating with your friends per se on it, but you're just seeing media from anyone that's any of your interests or anything that you've liked or watched in the past. They show more and more of it. The algorithm I think is super smart, but there's not a whole lot of interactivity like there is with the blue app and even with Instagram for that matter. So I mean there is some social.
- [33:40]
B
I agree with that.
- [33:41]
A
More media.
- [33:42]
B
But I hear you on the media like, like I just told you like yesterday. So we're recording this is like December 17th, Tuesday, December 16th, Meta announced that Instagram TV is going on Amazon Fire enabled devices. And so if we're saying it to that degree it's like is so is YouTube a social media app or is that more of a media company? I think the, the reason why I mentioned challenge is the way we socialize has just evolved I think especially past a pandemic social isolated era and especially for those gen alpha, like we had the recession in 2008 so a lot of people like we had like 20% reduction in birth born. So now people that are graduating high school now that came during the like financial crisis recession era, we have fewer high school graduates than past years. And so I think like in that taking in all these other pieces a group of like gen offers went to school online. We had social isolation. Social isolation. With the pandemic we had this advent of more ready made available media and like YouTube became its own publisher. Like people are watching YouTube instead of Netflix or Prime for quality content shows. It's a button On a remote. So if, if TikTok is more of a media company than social, so it's like a media social company and just like reversing the order.
- [35:07]
A
I think it's media first.
- [35:08]
B
I think it's media first. I still, I don't know if I'm there with you yet. I just would say that people socialize differently because I, at least from my experience and what people I know like, the way they connect on TikTok is with. With strangers. I don't think you, like, you still have messenger and you still connect socially to an extent, But I think TikTok is a place where you connect more with strangers. The way like online gaming is like Twitch, I think is a huge social platform that we never talk about or that like just gaming in general, like Minecraft, like you build friends online that you haven't met in person. And So I think TikTok is one of the social devices that facilitates stranger interactions. Whereas Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, other solutions. Venmo is you're interacting with your existing community. And Mark's talked about how like Facebook is like your living room or your community town square. Whereas I think TikTok introduced. I'm going to connect with other people that like, like, I just learned that there's Dungeons and drag queens is like a community of drag queens that learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons. It's such a niche community that they're finding more success in it. So that I just, I'm just challenging. I don't. I don't know. It's. You're right that there's a lot more media forward, but I would caution on the side of eliminating the social aspect of it, I would just say that the way we socialize on that app is different than historically socializing on other apps.
- [36:32]
A
I think Zuckerberg and Facebook viewed it as a direct competitor and that all comes in, in and around this, like, right after the ATT prompt stuff. And now people like both apps coexist. I mean, meta's growth has not stopped. Like they're still growing their user base over time. And I think this was an existential threat for TikTok, meaning that it was going to be a network that was going to pull away users from Facebook, which the younger demographic. Absolutely it did. And I think it was sort of going that way anyway. But one of the interesting parts to this is something that we use every single day now and we advertise on it every single day as they stole yet another feature. Which is fine. Yeah. Which is Reels kind of came in. Yeah. And I think TikTok had a huge impact on meta overall. You know, we can debate whether it's, you know, social, whether it's media or whether it's both. The point is this, is that it had a big impact on, on their competitive nature and also integrating in new functionality into the platform, which came as reels and then YouTube shorts to a lesser degree. Yeah, it was YouTube shorts for sure.
- [37:39]
B
It was psychological and like the cultural change of short form content. I mean, Meg Cofton, who was a CMO at Disney. No, she wasn't CMO of Disney. Um, she was a big executive at Disney, launched a short form content subscription service where you're watching shows under $10. It failed in the western market, but now we see in this year short form content like Drama Box and other. These short form media platforms in China have now made their way to the west and it's a growing market of media like Crunchyroll. Massive market of media where it's like specifically anime. I think they like grew like 40x in two years. And then Drama Box and all these short form content like borrowing TikTok style reels, shorts and TikToks, they now have media made in that same short form content. So I think what TikTok did culturally, socially is dramatically shifted or leaned into that like nat limited amount of attention while also leveraging binge consumption because we would have younger audiences that are like, I have such limited attention span, but when you got my attention span, I binge like a mother. Right. They'd be watching hours of content, but just short micro pieces.
- [39:03]
A
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, have you ever been like, obviously listeners of this show have been on TikTok. It is absolutely addictive and I can see why. And I was like, I almost, I never open it up just because I know I'll just waste a whole lot of time on it. It's like there's absolutely no use for it because it is so entertaining. And the algorithm and the suggestion engine, maybe it's a little bit of Alex. Net in there is so damn good. All right, so TikTok obviously had a huge impact on meta, which in and around that time Advantage plus came out not too far after that, which was I think somewhat in response to TikTok's incredible algorithm. And that's when Meta really started to pour money into this suggestion model, into the algorithm, into machine learning and up to today, which is where we're really at today, which is Andromeda Creative diversification. All the billions 72 billion that Meta put into AI this year, the 115 billion projected that they're going to invest in 2027. It's obviously it's through their own AI model, which is powered by Llama, which. Which you use Meta AI a lot. There's also powering the algorithm for the advertising platform. The point is like, that's all. Everything that we've discussed in these shows here is sort of a prologue to where we're at today. Which leaves us with like, what do you do as an advertiser? What do you do as a business and Andromeda right now? And the creative diversification, the ability to be able to target people exactly at the right moment with the right type of ad that resonates most with them. Contribution of all the individual ads, maybe up to 30 or 50 at a time that then ultimately attribute maybe one that gets the last click that or maybe Google gets the last click after they've become aware of your product over on Meta or any one of the Meta platforms. All of this sort of leads up to where we're at right now, which is an incredible time to be an advertiser with this Meta Andromeda update, which I think is just going to get better and better as they continue to invest even further. And creative is the thing right now. Creative creates the targeting and creative diversification, which obviously you and I are big proponents of. If you want more information on it, head on over to tier11.com CD we have a whole page on it there. We've got videos on it. But like, yeah, now is the best time to be advertising on Meta. Closing thoughts, Comments I'm just like, I'm.
- [41:36]
B
Excited because like all the stuff that. If you think there's been a lot of changes in the last three episodes that we've talked about with the evolution of where we are today, just know that it's like where the conversation started and where we are today. That big of a jump is still half as impactful as the jump that's happened this year.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, it's. It's insane and I think it's. There's gonna be even bigger jumps in the future or there's just more iterations of what we already have. Yeah, because this isn't that this platform isn't going anywhere. No, it really isn't. Unless there's some exist essential threat that's out there that I'm not aware of. Like that can possibly happen.
- [42:09]
B
Okay, put on now you've got John Moran's tinfoil hat. To put on.
- [42:13]
A
Yeah, who the hell knows? I mean nobody really thought that ATT prompt was going to happen or that Cambridge Analytica and all that was going to happen.
- [42:20]
B
For sure something will change. There's going to be some in outside forest, but yeah, this is fun. I'm, I'm, I'm hoping people are understanding how if you're new to advertising, this is a great time to jump in. If you're not new to advertising, this is an mission critical time to understand and catch up. And we're figuring it out together. Same time.
- [42:40]
A
Well said. All right, well, we're going to leave links in the show notes obviously to everything we mentioned a lot of different things here on today's show. We'll get that all over@perpetual traffic.com of course. Wherever you're listening to podcasts, please make sure that you do leave us a rating and review. Helps us get out to a wider audience, teach people how to do the right way this marketing stuff. Also maybe teach them a little bit about the meta platform itself. Really appreciate everyone who leaves late ratings and reviews over there so we can teach you how to do this through metrics that matter in growth that scales and leverage the Meta Andromeda platform at the same time. So on behalf of my amazing Pink microphone co host, Lauren Ippetrulo, ciao till next show. See ya.
- [43:24]
B
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.