📆 This Month
How to rank better, engage faster, and work harder to go viral on social. [Remember: tips for organic social often have a nugget of truth for social ads.]
We also look at how to make better choices with your ads with open bidding and by not pressing the ‘easy’ button.
Plus, in the email version – exclusive online advertising benchmarks (including paid social) for subscribers to This Month’s Reads.
Enjoy This Month’s Reads.
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📚 You should read…
Google vs AI (Whiteboard Friday)
The rise of AI has made the future of many types of websites feel bleak. Why write when an AI can generate? This Whiteboard Friday breaks down which types of sites are truly at risk and which aren’t (hint: it’s about who pays most for ads).
Mastering the Art of YouTube Ad Engagement
You have five seconds before people can skip your ad. What should you convey in your intro to make sure people don’t click away?
A Guide to Google Open Bidding
Sick of your site blindly broadcasting your users’ data via header bidding? Then maybe Open Bidding is for you – it’s the server-side alternative (also called EBDA).
7 Secrets to Creating Viral Social Media Posts
Sometimes lightning strikes at random; sometimes, you spend the time to carefully plan and build a lightning rod. How to put in the work to go viral.
How Do We Un-Fu***k Digital Advertising?
With yet another incomprehensibly large ad fraud being uncovered recently, Dr Augustine Fou asks the real question – and gives the real answer: stop pressing the ‘easy’ button.
That means no more PMax and no more Audience Networks. Less blind automation – more manual targeting.
The key quote:
“Having researched ad fraud for 11 years, I can tell you that fraud sites ALWAYS have higher clicks than real sites, because the bots that load the ads also click on them.
Video ads that run on GVP (Google Video Partners) have higher clicks (and lower “skips”) than ads that ran on YouTube; so the PMax algorithms faithfully allocate more and more of your budgets to GVP, wasting more and more of your dollars in the process.
Google makes revenue either way. So as long as they can say “look, we are maximizing your performance” and you believe that more clicks means more “performance,” the game of musical chairs continues and no one’s the wiser.“