Just a reminder that placements through things like audience networks are usually garbage.
GroupM is removing MFAs* from its inclusion lists
*made-for-advertising sites
If you use them, be aware of your optimization. Incentives matter.
The Best Brands Are Hateable
Let's start with an aside, the Sounds Profitable podcast is a great listen for concepts communicated clearly in a short period of time.
Know the Author
A survey of listeners and non-listeners found that The Joe Rogan Experience is the #1 podcast, which isn't surprising—16% of respondents had it in their Top 3.
But what does that % mean? Here's a fun nugget:
They are not small numbers – they reflect a percentage of all the people who have ever listened to a podcast, and even at 1% they would exceed the audience of most non-football TV shows.
Are you running podcast ads yet?
More important to being hateable, the #2 podcast clocked in at 3%. That's a big gap.
So how does Joe do it? He's hateable. Or...
because Rogan is crystal clear about attracting a very specific audience, even at the exclusion of others.
He "super-serves a core audience."
He knows his core. He caters to it. He doesn't care about you if you're not in it.
Or, as Ian Schrager (another controversial dude) puts it:
“one plus one equals three.” You build something most people will hate, but a few people love – and love enough to tell their friends about.
Or how about Kurt Vonnegut:
“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”
After all, brands are stories.
Take a stand. Plant a flag. Draw a line.
Be willing to turn people off from the beginning (it will save you money in the long run).
Name brands—the ones you probably think of when you dream of what your brand could be—are aspiration engines. A rallying cry for fans and a lightning rod for haters. They have loyal fans because they're willing to have the haters.
Don't build a brand for everyone. Build a brand for only those that care as much about your thing as you. Make yourself hateable to those that don't.
🔥 Some will walk through fire for you. Some will light your product on fire. 🔥
Here's an extreme example:
TikTok continues its everything app approach to expansion by testing the music-streaming waters.
It’s a natural extension for a platform already seen as an entertainment hub (and core to launching hits these days).
The end of the free money train is going to make watching the growth strategies of Silicon Valley vs. Chinese companies vs. privacy-first upstarts vs. fediverse players even more interesting.
Google and Meta are still the go-to duo for marketing spend.
Surprises to me in this chart: LinkedIn, Netflix, and Hulu.
The first is higher than I expected, #3 is a prime spot in this lineup. The other 2 show the growth of streaming ad platforms.
Prepare for increased auction pressure as needed.
The labor illusion makes us value more highly something that takes more effort.
Why do you have to crack an egg to make cake from a box? Marketing.
Nudge podcast: Does subliminal advertising work?
Turns out the last 12 months wasn’t too bad for agencies, with at least half of those surveyed reported revenue gains and many increasing staffing.
Confidence remains for the coming 12 as well, though staffing optimism is low.
This should be a good sign for economic health moving forward.
A good reminder that LLMs are snapshots of human knowledge and expression as filtered through the internet over the span of just a few years. They aren’t oracles or infallible libraries of all knowledge.
More (Amazon) ads in more places.
Amazon Sponsored Product ads will now appear on Pinterest, Buzzfeed, and more
The more looks like some publishers.
Retail media is crushing right now (just ask eBay) & Amazon is top of the heap. Good way for struggling ad platforms to bring in some more revenue.
I’d wondered what Meta’s Multi-Advertiser ads looked like, guess I can now safely opt-out of this placement.
Tips & questions from Klaviyo itself.
Goal: 3:1 return on Lifetime Value (LTV): Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio
Post-purchase optimization:
- Personalized confirmation emails
- Transparent order tracking
- Integrate shipping & logistics data with marketing flows (beware unfortunate timing)
- Smash that unboxing experience
- Don’t forget about them after delivery
Keys to personalization:
- What did you learn during acquisition? (Quiz questions, products viewed, etc)
- Is all this data centralized?
- How are you fostering customer community?
Know your numbers—implement strategies that count
- What was CAC last year?
- What promos earlier in the year had the quickest repeat purchase rate?