Meta
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Once you’re a large, publically-traded, profit-generating machine, the genie ain’t going back in the bottle. I doubt the unit economics work out for a monthly subscription amount users are cool with replacing the potential ad revenue. Think about how much more money these companies make compared to Spotify or Netflix (the money only matters because stock markets).
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They don’t believe users will actually enjoy a non-personalized, data-powered experience more.
Here’s more on pricing (this is turning into an informal Pricing Week).
Always place your price below the product, not above it.
This approach made the same price feel 9% lower on dental floss and increased sales 35% in a liquor store, in the experimental study.
One of the crucial metaphors ingrained in us as we grow up is:
Down is less and up is more
Metaphors are powerful because they’re essentially the cognitive interface between the brain and the world. Vehicles for experience.
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While TikTok tries to make its content and discovery engine an ecommerce platform, Amazon is plugging its ecommerce engine into all the other content and discovery (formerly social media) platforms.
First, Pinterest. Now…
Meta lets Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram without leaving the apps
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Google mulled offering paid-for no-logging private Search subscription
I think there are 2 reasons companies like Google and Meta won’t roll out paid ad-free versions:
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More ads in the same places
Meta is turning its monetization focus to WhatsApp, including lead gen ads that launch a WhatsApp chat.
Maybe the Reels revenue machine can be refined, but Instagram and Big Blue have few growth avenues. Their ad revenue will grow as long as budgets do. Zuck+co’s messaging apps and Threads are where growth acceleration will happen.
Elsewhere, Fire TVs are about to become ad machines. And you know it will mint the Bezos Boys a fortune. If they don’t ruin the user experience. I’m less confident in that last part these days when it comes to The Everything Company.
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What if I told you that
— Jess @ FireTeam 🔥 An agency on fire... (@HireFireTeam) November 2, 2023
Meta's new "feature" which tells you how much you can raise the budget before entering the learning phase (usually by up to 70%) is just a mind game to get you to spend more because the "learning phase" doesn't exist and never has.
Would you believe me?
Tell me more…
The argument, at least from my point of view is that there is no on/off state where an ad is in the learning phase. Meta has conditioned media buyers to accept a certain level of instability for new ads and for budget changes by calling this period "learning phase". But that…
— Jess @ FireTeam 🔥 An agency on fire... (@HireFireTeam) November 2, 2023
I mostly agree with this but it’s a bit over the top (it is on X so guess that’s not a surprise).
Machine learning algorithms have a training stage. A set of training data is used to “re-wire” a model to adapt the outputs. And can be done without overwriting prior states.
This is (partially) why you should wait a week or two before deciding if your campaign is working.
At Meta scale, more data is better. So that learning label is just saying you haven’t hit Meta scale. Your performance may not be optimally optimized but let your data tell you if it’s optimal enough.
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