Stop guessing! Make data-driven marketing decisions with confidence with the Tier 11 Data Suite.
Get it here: https://www.tiereleven.com/what-we-do/data-suite
The rules keep changing. The days of manually targeting customers by demographics and psychographics are long gone. With Meta and Google embracing auto-targeting, auto-bidding, and combined campaign systems, counting sales after an ad is no longer enough.
In today’s episode, Tier 11’s John Moran breaks down the shifts in digital media, emphasizing the importance of granular data and distinguishing between new and returning customers. He introduces “first click edge tagging,” showing how you can take control of the attribution process and measure what truly matters to your business.
Plus, we explore content diversification and creative testing strategies to help you identify what resonates with your audience. It’s time to move past the limitations of default ad tracking and align your ad spend with long-term growth goals.
In this episode:
03:11 Current shifts in digital media and campaign targeting
07:01 The impact of Google and Meta’s merged campaigns
10:50 ‘First click edge tagging’ for marketing attribution
16:06 Aligning ad goals and creatives with business objectives
24:02 Case study: Beauty brand cutting CPA from $27 to $7
27:22 Understanding model data and algorithm impact
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:
Follow and listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perpetual-traffic/id1022441491
Follow and listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/59lhtIWHw1XXsRmT5HBAuK
Subscribe and watch on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1
We appreciate your support!
Visit our website: https://perpetualtraffic.com/
Follow us on X: https://x.com/perpetualtraf
Connect with John Moran:
Connect with Ralph Burns:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralphburns
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/ralphhburns/
- Hire Tier11 – https://www.tiereleven.com/apply-now
Connect with Lauren Petrullo:
- Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/laurenepetrullo/
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenpetrullo
- Consult Mongoose Media – https://mongoosemedia.us/
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?
Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
The Future of Media Buying: John Moran on cAPI Imports + Edge Tagging (Part 1)
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:00:22
John
We used to say
00:00:00:22 – 00:00:04:13
John
this campaign will go after new customers. This campaign will go after returning customers.
00:00:04:13 – 00:00:09:00
John
what Meta or Google is measuring now, is completely disconnected.
00:00:09:06 – 00:00:13:18
Ralph
one of our larger beauty accounts was getting about a 26 to $27
00:00:13:18 – 00:00:15:19
Ralph
CPA, a cost to acquire a new customer,
00:00:15:19 – 00:00:18:13
Ralph
now it’s down to under seven using this strategy.
00:00:18:13 – 00:00:21:04
Ralph
How are we getting these kind of results? And what’s the key?
00:00:21:04 – 00:00:24:14
John
just counting a sale is not enough anymore, not enough to scale.
00:00:24:14 – 00:00:27:11
John
And so what we’re doing is
00:00:29:19 – 00:00:40:06
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11, alongside not Lauren Petrillo is here.
00:00:40:07 – 00:00:48:05
Ralph
Yes. This is actually John Moran in the flesh. I know, I can’t believe it. He’s like sitting here.
00:00:48:05 – 00:01:00:01
Ralph
We are in San Diego, obviously. Beautiful view of the San Diego Bay here. We’re here for growth hacking live. John’s going to be speaking in a couple of hours. Yep. And we just grab dough and say, come on, perpetual traffic.
00:01:00:01 – 00:01:02:06
Ralph
Give us a little preview of what you’re going to be talking about here.
00:01:02:06 – 00:01:19:16
Ralph
Great conference so far. Hosted by our friend Kazim Aslam. Perpetual traffic listeners will obviously know who that is. The former co-host here. But John, great to have you. First off, we just plucked you out of the crowd and said, come on upstairs and let’s record.
00:01:19:17 – 00:01:40:15
Ralph
Usually it’s me and you in two different locations. You doing lots of screen sharing, which is some of our best episodes. And obviously we’ll leave some of the most popular episodes in the show. Notes at professional traffic. Dot com, of course. But today you’re going to be talking about a lot of the things that we talk about every single week on our AD Lab series.
00:01:40:15 – 00:01:42:10
Ralph
Yeah, on YouTube, 230
00:01:42:10 – 00:01:54:14
Ralph
every week, every Friday. I don’t know if it’s going to be this week because I think I’m like, but, anyway, every week, 230 eastern over on YouTube. But the tier 11 YouTube channel. Yeah, but yeah, Friday is a lot of fun. We always do that.
00:01:54:14 – 00:01:59:13
Ralph
But today you’re going to be talking about all of those things that we discuss.
00:01:59:19 – 00:02:00:07
Ralph
But
00:02:00:07 – 00:02:13:09
Ralph
actually have sort of a name for it now. Workable name, a workable name. We’ve been talking about it like content diversification, AP imports. You know, obviously tier 11 data, we
00:02:13:09 – 00:02:23:06
Ralph
summarized for people who maybe have not had the opportunity to see any of those lives. Yeah. Like what exactly are you doing between Meta and Google to get the great results?
00:02:23:06 – 00:02:30:04
Ralph
And one of the results I texted you yesterday is that our team is super ecstatic about this. Is that
00:02:30:04 – 00:02:41:22
Ralph
one of our larger beauty accounts was getting about a 26 to $27 Ncac, or what we used to call a CPA, a cost to acquire a new customer, and now it’s down to under seven using this strategy.
00:02:41:22 – 00:02:46:07
Ralph
So from 26 to 7 and now it’s a matter of scaling.
00:02:46:09 – 00:02:59:19
Ralph
And their Ncac target I believe is 10 or 12. So this these are like amazing results. You like our growth strategies calls like I can’t believe this works as well as it does. So the guys like explain is sort of in theory without
00:02:59:19 – 00:03:04:06
Ralph
the ability to screen share here. I know, I know, you love to do that, but it’s probably easier.
00:03:04:07 – 00:03:05:08
John
It’s like a speech impediment.
00:03:05:08 – 00:03:08:10
Ralph
Oh, just to talk. So that so what exactly is it?
00:03:08:10 – 00:03:11:02
Ralph
How are we getting these kind of results? And what’s the key?
00:03:11:04 – 00:03:11:17
John
I think,
00:03:11:17 – 00:03:26:05
John
for the main point, that can kind of put your mind into the right frame of understanding is to know that we’ve been evolving in the digital media from
00:03:26:05 – 00:03:42:17
John
before, where we had our targeting, we had our ads. We chose the demographics, the psychographics, the geographics. It was very manual, and we were able to attract people that we want to attract with our ads through the paid media platforms, whether it be Google or Meta.
00:03:42:19 – 00:03:53:07
John
And that has since changed gradually. It’s like the frog in boiling water where we don’t really feel it until we take a step back and say, wow, the landscape has really changed
00:03:53:07 – 00:03:59:05
John
and what it has changed in two is auto targeting, auto bidding.
00:03:59:05 – 00:04:02:17
John
The remarketing is kind of been rolled in. The,
00:04:02:17 – 00:04:04:16
John
prospecting is kind of enrolled in,
00:04:04:16 – 00:04:07:22
John
all down into more singular campaigns.
00:04:08:00 – 00:04:13:09
John
So we had massive amount of granularity. It wasn’t really important to
00:04:13:09 – 00:04:30:20
John
track new versus returning or track omnichannel traffic, which means my meta is going to remarket Google traffic, and our Google is going to remarket meta traffic. You can set that up as a campaign. Remember, our Eliza’s remarketing list for search ads are like if they’ve been on our site and if they came from Google, and if they look at this product, they’re going to see this ad, right?
00:04:30:23 – 00:04:32:02
John
That’s all gone now.
00:04:32:02 – 00:04:33:21
John
they’ve eroded it piece by piece.
00:04:33:21 – 00:04:34:19
John
because of that,
00:04:34:19 – 00:04:38:16
John
we have now had to rethink the way that we’re optimizing for results.
00:04:38:16 – 00:04:45:09
John
just counting a sale is not enough anymore, not enough to scale. And so what we’re doing is
00:04:45:09 – 00:04:53:08
John
we’re changing what has been counted as simply a sale to something more specific, where if it’s a company goal, or is that campaign goal.
00:04:53:14 – 00:04:54:13
John
We used to say
00:04:54:13 – 00:04:58:04
John
this campaign will go after new customers. This campaign will go after returning customers.
00:04:58:04 – 00:05:04:22
John
Right? And now that they’re combined into one, people still don’t necessarily optimize differently. They still put in the as they still crank up the
00:05:04:22 – 00:05:05:17
John
ad spend.
00:05:05:17 – 00:05:13:23
John
But what they’re measuring as a growth of their business versus what Meta or Google is measuring now, is completely disconnected.
00:05:14:04 – 00:05:16:10
John
Because when Google and Meta have
00:05:16:10 – 00:05:18:04
John
merged the targeting
00:05:18:04 – 00:05:20:03
John
and the tracking
00:05:20:03 – 00:05:26:06
John
now that they merged everything kind of into one like Meta or Google merged everything into one, i.e performance max in demand gen.
00:05:26:06 – 00:05:28:00
John
Now, if every
00:05:28:00 – 00:05:31:13
John
platform is counting simply a lead and or a sale,
00:05:31:13 – 00:05:32:08
John
your
00:05:32:08 – 00:05:35:14
John
goal for your company is now disconnected from from what Google think.
00:05:35:14 – 00:05:37:07
John
And now meta and Google
00:05:37:07 – 00:05:53:16
John
will think something’s happening and maybe pat themselves on the back. Yeah, but what we’re measuring outside of Google and meta, like I need more new customers, I need to sell more shoes. I need to sell the brown shoes, I need more subscriptions. I need more subscriptions on this product. And if they like that, I can then sell them this product.
00:05:53:17 – 00:05:57:11
John
All that cannot be achieved by just counting a purchase.
00:05:57:11 – 00:05:58:22
John
And so I believe
00:05:58:22 – 00:05:59:12
John
that
00:05:59:12 – 00:06:02:12
John
the introduction of third party metrics
00:06:02:12 – 00:06:06:23
John
we can reports naught being high rose triple. Well, all of those have come out
00:06:06:23 – 00:06:08:01
John
as a,
00:06:08:01 – 00:06:10:22
John
to try to deliver more clarity as to what the black box is doing,
00:06:10:22 – 00:06:14:12
John
but we haven’t really taken a approach to can we change the black box or can we
00:06:14:12 – 00:06:16:09
John
influence the black box differently?
00:06:16:09 – 00:06:21:16
John
And so that’s, that’s what the kind of what we call first click edge tag customer imports
00:06:21:16 – 00:06:28:19
John
is doing is we are only allowing those platforms to count what we allow them to count, because that is
00:06:28:19 – 00:06:35:14
John
aligned with our business model. I mean, more new customers are only allowed to count the customers. The more new subscribers only count new subscribers.
00:06:35:15 – 00:06:38:21
John
You need more sales of the brown shoes and size 12 in New York,
00:06:38:21 – 00:06:46:07
John
and that is only going to count the sales of the brown shoes in size 12 in New York so that you, the business owner or the agency
00:06:46:07 – 00:06:48:20
John
and Meta and Google are now aligned
00:06:48:20 – 00:06:51:05
John
in your goals. I think that’s the biggest thing is,
00:06:51:05 – 00:06:55:23
John
if Google Meta thinks everything is normal and operating fine and you’re panicking,
00:06:55:23 – 00:06:58:04
John
you know you’re not, you can’t even pick up the phone and call Google me.
00:06:58:04 – 00:07:00:15
John
Like, what are you doing? It thinks it’s doing well. It’s machine. Right?
00:07:00:21 – 00:07:01:07
Ralph
Right.
00:07:01:07 – 00:07:02:10
Ralph
The the
00:07:02:10 – 00:07:05:23
Ralph
the big question that I get is,
00:07:05:23 – 00:07:08:17
Ralph
well, if I just put in exclusions
00:07:08:17 – 00:07:13:21
Ralph
inside my meta campaigns then I’m fine. I take out my, you know, all my previous customers
00:07:13:21 – 00:07:20:02
Ralph
or all my previous visitors like my non warm traffic and I want to target cold traffic.
00:07:20:02 – 00:07:24:10
Ralph
And then I install the event which is purchase. And
00:07:24:10 – 00:07:26:17
Ralph
you know it seems like I’m doing pretty well.
00:07:26:17 – 00:07:27:13
Ralph
Like my,
00:07:27:13 – 00:07:36:21
Ralph
meta ads platform or Facebook ads manager looks pretty good. However, when I check Shopify and my bank account, there might be sort of a slightly different story. So
00:07:36:21 – 00:07:42:17
Ralph
and explaining this to people is actually, I was on a call with a client yesterday where I was explaining this. It’s like
00:07:42:17 – 00:07:45:03
Ralph
the platforms themselves
00:07:45:03 – 00:07:45:12
Ralph
are
00:07:45:12 – 00:07:47:15
Ralph
unto themselves are not accurate.
00:07:47:15 – 00:07:52:23
Ralph
You have to take sort of a next step of granularity. And this is this
00:07:52:23 – 00:08:09:12
Ralph
Capi import edge tag technology. What is content diversification which is a whole other thing which was sort of like trying to name here, but like that’s where you actually get the real source of truth, because at the end of the day, marketing is about acquiring new customers and growing businesses, right, right.
00:08:09:15 – 00:08:13:17
Ralph
Yeah. And the platforms themselves will say, hey, we’re doing great.
00:08:13:17 – 00:08:17:17
Ralph
I know we’ve talked about this hundreds of times on our lives, when in actuality
00:08:17:17 – 00:08:27:02
Ralph
it’s not moving any metrics like business metrics for the business forward. Right. And that’s really the big change, right now. And that’s what this breakthrough is all about.
00:08:27:04 – 00:08:27:17
John
Yes. The
00:08:27:17 – 00:08:32:23
John
way that I’ve been thinking about it or trying to explain it, this is actually on the, on the presentation today is, is a picture a cloud.
00:08:32:23 – 00:08:39:08
John
And the cloud is the website traffic that your, your brand has. So you have this kind of a cloud over your website. And
00:08:39:08 – 00:08:41:15
John
there is traffic coming from all channels.
00:08:41:15 – 00:08:49:15
John
You have direct, you have organic, you have email, you have influencer, you have Google, you have meta, you have TikTok, you have Pinterest, you have everything. And it’s all going into one area called your website.
00:08:49:15 – 00:08:50:10
John
And then
00:08:50:10 – 00:08:51:10
John
that cloud
00:08:51:10 – 00:09:01:13
John
has traffic flowing in and out. Now, if you take meta as an example and you just kind of slap it over top meta like the remarketing wheel will be covering all of that cloud.
00:09:01:15 – 00:09:07:18
John
And then on Google you have another kind of overlay that is on top of meta as the same size that also
00:09:07:18 – 00:09:08:20
John
covers that entire cloud,
00:09:08:20 – 00:09:09:16
John
right? So
00:09:09:16 – 00:09:15:09
John
Meta and Google will be able to identify and also attribute
00:09:15:09 – 00:09:19:23
John
anything that they would like to themselves even without having a click take place.
00:09:19:23 – 00:09:21:12
John
And so when you think,
00:09:21:12 – 00:09:26:21
John
well, my bank account is disconnected from my meta account or my bank accounts disconnected from my my Google Ads account,
00:09:26:21 – 00:09:28:07
John
it’s sort of not
00:09:28:07 – 00:09:31:17
John
because it is attributing to itself like those metrics are correct.
00:09:31:17 – 00:09:34:16
John
You did have all of those sales. They just didn’t come from there.
00:09:34:16 – 00:09:35:08
John
And
00:09:35:08 – 00:09:42:03
John
what that is doing inside of the ecosystem that is meta or Google, and I say this as a as a kind of a quote. It is
00:09:42:03 – 00:09:47:11
John
the conversions are training an algorithm to repeat an action it was never responsible for in the first place.
00:09:48:04 – 00:09:51:02
John
And that is what is causing the disconnect between
00:09:51:02 – 00:09:55:09
John
I can’t scale, I crank up ad spend but I don’t really see more net new
00:09:55:09 – 00:10:04:20
John
it with more ad spend. It will attribute more because it can. It’s running longer in the day or it’s running more often during that day. So the metrics will go up.
00:10:04:20 – 00:10:08:15
John
But that’s just because it’s counting more of the activity you already have.
00:10:08:15 – 00:10:17:12
John
So every dollar you put in means it can attribute to itself another sale. So you think, wow, look at my scale. But it’s not actually happening. And that’s because the meta remarketing
00:10:17:12 – 00:10:20:04
John
essentially the Pixel or Google ads, the tag
00:10:20:04 – 00:10:24:07
John
sees all traffic from all sources and can take a
00:10:24:07 – 00:10:25:01
John
take credit
00:10:25:01 – 00:10:26:18
John
through their model data and a
00:10:26:18 – 00:10:31:04
John
attribution model to say you’ve had 58 sales today and it came from this campaign.
00:10:31:06 – 00:10:31:19
John
Well,
00:10:31:19 – 00:10:34:13
John
did they click? No. Did they start there? No.
00:10:34:13 – 00:10:36:19
John
Was it a new customer? No. Okay.
00:10:36:19 – 00:10:40:10
John
So that’s where everything’s simply being counted as an event
00:10:40:10 – 00:10:49:22
John
but not having the guardrails of is it new. Did it come for you. And did they even engage in an ad from a click perspective? That’s that’s what people just assume happen. And that’s where it breaks down, right?
00:10:50:00 – 00:10:50:11
Ralph
Right.
00:10:50:11 – 00:10:58:19
Ralph
explain from a technical standpoint like what this kind of does without getting to in the weeds, because this is
00:10:58:19 – 00:11:08:08
Ralph
this edge tag technology. And obviously you can learn more about like the 211 data suite and just the edge tag technology over at your 11.com/data suite.
00:11:08:08 – 00:11:08:22
Ralph
But
00:11:08:22 – 00:11:15:22
Ralph
there are other ways in which to work this. Like we figured it out through a company called Blot Out.
00:11:15:22 – 00:11:18:18
Ralph
We obviously use wicked reports. We have our own data warehouse.
00:11:18:18 – 00:11:29:11
Ralph
We’re capturing basically the click and the data on the edge without it being blocked by all the privacy blockers, iOS 14 and all the other ones that have come out since then, ad blockers, you name it.
00:11:29:11 – 00:11:31:07
Ralph
But this cap important
00:11:31:07 – 00:11:37:07
Ralph
thing that we’ve been talking about is a is kind of a separate is a is a new animal here.
00:11:37:07 – 00:11:37:12
Ralph
Yeah.
00:11:37:12 – 00:11:43:10
Ralph
And it really gets even more granular where you can if let’s say you have ten SKUs,
00:11:43:10 – 00:12:01:04
Ralph
you can target specific SKUs, not just a purchase event, but this is like the old custom conversion way back when when, you know, Facebook and Meta first started, but it’s like it’s to the next level. And then you can granularity, you can actually target new customers versus returning customers specifically.
00:12:01:04 – 00:12:18:13
Ralph
Oh yeah. And that’s where the key is in the you can actually see the breakdown. It’s never going to be 100% new customers is always going to be some return customers in that. But explain like how that all works. Yeah. Technically without getting too in the weeds, because most of the people that are listening are directors of marketing and marketers and probably not like development people.
00:12:18:13 – 00:12:18:23
John
So
00:12:18:23 – 00:12:27:04
John
so I guess, well, I’ll simplify the overview first before going to technical is we only allow Meta and Google to account. Is
00:12:27:04 – 00:12:31:22
John
did it come from that channel? Is it actually a click in that channel. And is it the first click.
00:12:31:22 – 00:12:34:19
John
Yeah. Because that is a repeatable, scalable action.
00:12:34:19 – 00:12:36:18
John
Did it come from that channel by a click.
00:12:36:18 – 00:12:39:23
John
Yes. Is it the first time they’ve ever visited my site? Yes.
00:12:39:23 – 00:12:52:06
John
So now we know that the conversion that we’re tracking had to have actually come from that campaign and that ads, that and that ad, there’s no question about it. It has to start there. So that’s that was the first thing we had to cover is
00:12:52:06 – 00:12:53:20
John
did it actually come from there.
00:12:53:20 – 00:12:58:07
John
Yes. That’s first click. So when they first click Tag imports that’s the first click portion.
00:12:58:07 – 00:13:02:09
John
Now edge tag basically means that we are tagging a user on the.
00:13:02:09 – 00:13:03:13
Ralph
Way to the website.
00:13:03:15 – 00:13:05:23
John
Not after they’ve been on the website
00:13:05:23 – 00:13:08:03
John
and had something load afterwards.
00:13:08:03 – 00:13:09:20
John
Ga4 actually, now
00:13:09:20 – 00:13:11:06
John
this is in Google’s literature.
00:13:11:06 – 00:13:17:10
John
Ga4 will not actually count a session user, a visitor, nothing that will be completely blank
00:13:17:10 – 00:13:19:08
John
if they didn’t hit accept all cookies
00:13:19:08 – 00:13:24:20
John
so Ga4 will not. I was on a call with Google this morning. They confirmed it. I they gave me the transcript of the message, everything.
00:13:24:20 – 00:13:28:02
John
It’s actually. And so in some of their literature. So for example
00:13:28:02 – 00:13:30:21
John
if you’re importing ga4 events into Google
00:13:30:21 – 00:13:33:07
John
and someone didn’t even click consent mode of yes,
00:13:33:07 – 00:13:35:07
John
that metric is not even visible.
00:13:35:07 – 00:13:46:02
John
So edge tag means before we hit the privacy issues, before we hit, you know, consent mode, before we have ad blockers that are going to they’re going to stop the tracking on the website.
00:13:46:02 – 00:13:48:22
John
It’s being tag on the way from the actual domain.
00:13:48:22 – 00:13:51:15
John
Yeah. So when they’re connecting to the WW from anywhere
00:13:51:15 – 00:13:54:04
John
on the way to the host, which is where your website lives
00:13:54:04 – 00:14:01:07
John
as it gets like in the car on the way, we like, you know, take a picture of them. Now we know who they are. And but because they were connecting to the website, we know where they were from.
00:14:01:07 – 00:14:03:23
Ralph
So you gave a great analogy on this once I want to.
00:14:04:01 – 00:14:04:07
John
Show you.
00:14:04:07 – 00:14:04:23
Ralph
Here, you. Yeah.
00:14:04:23 – 00:14:06:18
Ralph
About the store and the parking lot.
00:14:06:19 – 00:14:19:04
John
We tag them in the parking lot before they get into the store. Exactly right. Yep. And so now we have first click. We know where it actually came from. Edge tag which means the data is very, very clean. I mean the cleanest and purest that we can actually get it
00:14:19:04 – 00:14:22:14
John
with the technology that we have today is we can’t get any more accurate.
00:14:22:17 – 00:14:23:11
John
Yeah.
00:14:23:11 – 00:14:24:18
John
And now the imports,
00:14:24:18 – 00:14:30:01
John
those are what we’re trying to achieve as a conversion event in that campaign. So
00:14:30:01 – 00:14:34:16
John
it could be anything that we we want. I mean you can label these things essentially anything you want.
00:14:34:16 – 00:14:35:12
John
You can
00:14:35:12 – 00:14:36:18
John
say I need to have,
00:14:36:18 – 00:14:41:13
John
you know, a new customer or I need to account to conversion as a returning customer.
00:14:41:14 – 00:14:44:16
John
You can even actually, since we know where the data is,
00:14:44:16 – 00:14:46:21
John
we can count conversions in Google
00:14:46:21 – 00:15:00:04
John
that says did they actually come from Google or do they come from meta first? So we can even separate out. Google had 100 conversions. Do they came from Google and a 127 because 27 of those actually started on Facebook. We can get extremely granular.
00:15:00:06 – 00:15:05:09
John
We can also see what is actually being purchased. So I need a new customer of a product,
00:15:05:09 – 00:15:09:13
John
or I need a returning customer of this product because it might be a cross seller upsell.
00:15:09:13 – 00:15:17:22
John
So anything that you want to track as a goal where you’re allowing Google or Meta to pat themselves on the back because that number is going up, you get to decide what that is.
00:15:17:22 – 00:15:20:00
John
Now. So not just a purchase
00:15:20:00 – 00:15:25:22
John
because it might be a new returning, might come from a different channel, may not even have have actually had a click on it,
00:15:25:22 – 00:15:26:10
John
but
00:15:26:10 – 00:15:29:00
John
when you say I need to have it, make sure it came from Google.
00:15:29:00 – 00:15:35:15
John
I need to make sure the data is clean, and I need Google and Meta to actually optimize off of what I want them to optimize, which is my business goal
00:15:35:15 – 00:15:36:02
John
that is.
00:15:36:02 – 00:15:38:07
John
Now first click edge tag Copy imports.
00:15:38:08 – 00:15:38:20
Ralph
Got it.
00:15:38:20 – 00:15:39:04
Ralph
And
00:15:39:04 – 00:15:40:13
Ralph
all we know is that it work.
00:15:40:13 – 00:15:52:18
Ralph
And and accordingly in the in the source of truth, which is the CRM and or inside Shopify. I use that as an example. In the e-commerce store, we see sales of new customers. It’s like the correlation.
00:15:52:18 – 00:15:54:09
Ralph
And once again we’ll do we have
00:15:54:09 – 00:16:00:09
Ralph
hundreds of well, maybe not hundreds, multiple dozens of shows over at the tier 11
00:16:00:09 – 00:16:01:17
Ralph
YouTube channel.
00:16:01:17 – 00:16:07:07
Ralph
For myself and John on the ad lab that we do every single Friday, where we go through screen shares of all of this sort of stuff
00:16:07:07 – 00:16:16:22
Ralph
that I was at a meta conference last week, and this was an interesting saying, and I actually had this question asked me this week. I don’t know if I answered it correctly, so I’m going to ask it to you.
00:16:16:22 – 00:16:17:16
Ralph
Is
00:16:17:16 – 00:16:20:05
Ralph
it for millennials and Gen Z?
00:16:20:05 – 00:16:25:02
Ralph
The majority of the ads and or the content that they
00:16:25:02 – 00:16:25:23
Ralph
view?
00:16:25:23 – 00:16:27:11
Ralph
Does not have a click? Yeah.
00:16:27:11 – 00:16:28:05
Ralph
So
00:16:28:05 – 00:16:39:19
Ralph
accordingly, 50 to 60% of the content now that’s actually being viewed on the meta platform is on reels. Yeah. Which usually does not have a click, but it has a view.
00:16:39:19 – 00:16:41:23
Ralph
So if you are showing and we’re doing,
00:16:41:23 – 00:16:48:22
Ralph
you know, the way in which you set up a campaign is one campaign, one ad set and then lots of different pieces of content which we can talk about.
00:16:48:22 – 00:16:54:21
Ralph
Well, oftentimes a lot of that content, a lot of those ads, when they’re shown there is no click, what do you do there?
00:16:54:22 – 00:16:56:10
Ralph
And how do you sort of
00:16:56:10 – 00:17:06:01
Ralph
how do you mesh the source of truth with the actual ad platform in order to know which ads, what type of content is resonating with the audience?
00:17:06:01 – 00:17:06:22
John
Yeah. So
00:17:06:22 – 00:17:08:19
John
this actually ties into two parts
00:17:08:19 – 00:17:10:05
John
that I think is actually
00:17:10:05 – 00:17:11:16
John
that answers. The other question is
00:17:11:16 – 00:17:14:18
John
how what are we doing on Google and Meta, and how are we taking those together?
00:17:14:18 – 00:17:18:04
John
Well, we have to look at is this is now more of a function of the media buyer.
00:17:18:04 – 00:17:18:23
John
So the
00:17:18:23 – 00:17:23:02
John
media buyer who’s in charge of Google or Meta is making very specific decisions.
00:17:23:07 – 00:17:43:12
John
Typically it’s by CPA, you know, what is the best role as well as the best CPA. Yep. Now what we have to look at is your targeting is actually at the creative level. And it’s actually the same thing for performance. Max and dimension is still the creative level. So if you’re thinking about, well, if my meta, my Google, my reels, my stories, my YouTube, my shorts, my everything is
00:17:43:12 – 00:17:45:04
John
at the creative level,
00:17:45:04 – 00:17:51:15
John
then we have to find consistency and congruency and not only our execution but also our nomenclature.
00:17:51:17 – 00:17:59:06
John
So if we’re looking at a I’ll give you give us an example like you have a remarkable tab here. And this thing is a really, really cool, remarkable tab. Now
00:17:59:06 – 00:18:09:10
John
there is a few different concepts that we can try to use to sell this. So green that’s going to be one of them. So no more paper. Like you don’t actually have to cut down trees and you’re a better for the environment.
00:18:09:10 – 00:18:10:08
John
So that’s a concept.
00:18:10:08 – 00:18:11:18
John
And now that concept
00:18:11:18 – 00:18:28:02
John
is going to be executed between meta and YouTube, you know Google and meta meta as an example. And that concept is going to be tested in fusion variations. So you’re going to have to have, you know, your stories. You’re gonna have to have your feed items. You’re going to have to have your YouTube shorts, you’re going to have to
00:18:28:02 – 00:18:31:23
John
disseminate those creatives across all of the platforms.
00:18:32:01 – 00:18:42:08
John
And when you’re using your click attributed conversions, which is what we import, you’re going to see some pretty terrible KPIs, because only if you think about it. If you have a 3% click through rate,
00:18:42:08 – 00:18:45:13
John
97% of the people out of 100 cannot be tracked.
00:18:45:13 – 00:18:52:19
John
Right. So those KPIs look really, really horrible. Plus, as they’re only new customers to see and even look worse inside the platform, right?
00:18:52:23 – 00:18:53:12
John
So
00:18:53:12 – 00:18:58:02
John
the way that we look at the data is now much different. We know it’s fragmented,
00:18:58:02 – 00:18:59:23
John
but we also know that it’s highly directional.
00:18:59:23 – 00:19:07:08
John
So if we’re saying, okay, our first concept is the green concept, how is that doing. We have X amount of ad spend in an X amount of
00:19:07:08 – 00:19:12:06
John
sales in. And it’s coming in at a specific cost to acquire first time customer and the amount of customers.
00:19:12:06 – 00:19:12:15
John
Okay.
00:19:12:15 – 00:19:15:19
John
Now let’s try a different concept. The other one is going to be,
00:19:15:19 – 00:19:27:20
John
how it’s thin and lightweight. So no, no longer carrying this big ream of paper and going through 75 pages and losing things. It has a table of content. It’s thin, it’s light, it’s sleek, it’s sexy, and it’s it’s easy to carry around with you.
00:19:27:20 – 00:19:36:05
John
Okay. So that’s another concept. So that is now in addition to we have that ads. Those ads are created is the linear unit. And then is going to be measured as well.
00:19:36:05 – 00:19:41:20
John
So if we’re looking at hyper specifically yeah it’s going to be messed up because people are watching content. But
00:19:41:20 – 00:19:43:22
John
I still do believe that people are going to be clicking on ads.
00:19:43:22 – 00:19:47:14
John
I don’t think that that’s going to be ever something that’s going to go away. It will absolutely be reduced.
00:19:47:14 – 00:19:58:21
John
But the flip side to that is with less ad clicks, simply be simply have to be okay with a higher end platform CPA or a lower platform Roas. But
00:19:58:21 – 00:20:08:15
John
if our sales are increasing and the costs require first time, customer globally is is being acquired and we’re testing different concepts over time and comparing those concepts,
00:20:08:15 – 00:20:12:11
John
we’re still measuring apples to apples because while people and click on this half the time,
00:20:12:11 – 00:20:16:10
John
just one constant half the time and then the other concept, they click maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less.
00:20:16:12 – 00:20:18:01
John
But we have to measure those can grow. But
00:20:18:01 – 00:20:23:23
John
as long as we’re congruent our messaging across all platforms. Now we’re testing real marketing again rather than letting
00:20:23:23 – 00:20:26:15
John
the data driven attribution dictate the success of our company.
00:20:26:15 – 00:20:29:09
Ralph
So you’re using you’re assuming that
00:20:29:09 – 00:20:37:19
Ralph
the concept like green versus light weight, not requiring round and stacking paper like basically two different ideas to sell
00:20:37:19 – 00:20:40:02
Ralph
the concept of a remarkable to,
00:20:40:02 – 00:20:57:04
Ralph
those ads that have those concepts. Some are going to have a lot of use, obviously a lot of impressions, but then you’re still using the clicks as the proxy as to whether or not, even if it’s a very small portion overall, it might be maybe 10% of the actual views of the ad might be a click.
00:20:57:07 – 00:21:08:00
Ralph
Yep. You’re still using the click as the source of truth as to say, all right, green is working better than thin, light and not carrying around a rim of paper. Right. Like these two
00:21:08:00 – 00:21:10:12
Ralph
fonts up selling this. You know, this product
00:21:10:12 – 00:21:15:07
Ralph
actually done a podcast. I don’t know how they actually sold me. It’s really fun.
00:21:15:09 – 00:21:15:22
John
Answer by.
00:21:16:00 – 00:21:21:00
Ralph
The sponsor that remarkable to their watching. They should be a sponsor of the show. We talked about it enough.
00:21:21:00 – 00:21:26:01
Ralph
so that idea of no click, you’re still using the click as your directional,
00:21:26:01 – 00:21:33:08
Ralph
you know, piece of data to say, okay, this is an ad that resonates. I need more of that or I need less of it or whatever it is.
00:21:33:08 – 00:21:33:18
Ralph
That’s true.
00:21:33:18 – 00:21:43:00
John
You say, okay, that concept is working. Is it working on TikTok? Who’s working on YouTube shorts? Is it working on horizontal? Is it working on reels? Is working on stories? Is it working on feeds? Yep.
00:21:43:00 – 00:21:51:06
John
I, I doubt you’re going to have two different concepts that do a perfect 5050 equal split. You’re going to have it leaning one way or leaning the other way more often.
00:21:51:07 – 00:21:54:03
John
And so I do believe that you’re going to see as you,
00:21:54:03 – 00:21:58:03
John
as you take the data and you kind of you know, distill it down to just what,
00:21:58:03 – 00:22:05:22
John
what happened on all the platforms in these two different concepts, you’re going to find a winner. But I think the bigger picture in the The click imports is
00:22:05:22 – 00:22:08:00
John
what we’re attempting to do, not only
00:22:08:00 – 00:22:12:12
John
not only be able to to to measure, but to also retrain the algorithm.
00:22:12:14 – 00:22:17:20
John
So the pixel and the tag are going to want to do whatever they want to do. And that’s the bad part.
00:22:17:20 – 00:22:23:17
John
So if we can train it off of fewer clicks than it would normally be, we used to train
00:22:23:17 – 00:22:26:08
John
it will train it on a repeatable action.
00:22:26:08 – 00:22:29:13
John
So if found a user they they clicked and then they purchased.
00:22:29:13 – 00:22:30:01
John
Excellent.
00:22:30:01 – 00:22:35:08
John
You start to scale up the aspect. Now we have two clicks and two new customers. You scale up the ass. But now you got three clicks.
00:22:35:08 – 00:22:45:02
John
What is happening though, in the back end of that algorithm is it’s hitting the right audience more often, but you also have the right audience seeing those ads more often, even if they’re not clicking.
00:22:45:08 – 00:22:45:19
Ralph
Yeah.
00:22:45:20 – 00:22:57:08
John
So you’re still benefiting and I’m hitting the right target and I’m I don’t need to have my CPA drop. I just need this thing to scale without increasing my Ncac. Yeah. So if it’s
00:22:57:08 – 00:23:02:02
John
if the targeted audience is clicking less but watching more and still buying,
00:23:02:02 – 00:23:07:08
John
there is only one rule that that thing has to follow is those new customers better continually go up.
00:23:07:13 – 00:23:19:09
John
Yeah. And so that’s where we look at things as a media buyer differently. And sometimes an 800 CPA can have a $50 cost for acquired first time customer. Great. If I scale it up to 800 800, well may go to 800 to 900.
00:23:19:09 – 00:23:28:11
John
My cost require first time customer might be $50, maybe goes up to 55. But it’s repeatable and it’s controllable and it is something that is very reliable.
00:23:28:15 – 00:23:29:01
Ralph
Yeah.
00:23:29:01 – 00:23:45:00
Ralph
Yeah. It’s it’s one of the I been I’ve been doing this for 15 years. You’ve been doing it for just as long as like this is one of the biggest breakthroughs I think we’ve seen on the platforms. No, I, I would you I mean 100% I hate saying these sorts of things because it’s like hyperbolic. I start to sound like awesome, awesome.
00:23:45:00 – 00:23:47:14
Ralph
Like, everything is the best in the world is the most brilliant. Whatever.
00:23:47:14 – 00:23:49:10
Ralph
I just we just saw him on stage.
00:23:49:10 – 00:23:50:00
Ralph
It’s a it’s.
00:23:50:04 – 00:23:52:15
John
What what are you going to say? Just half way like like a magic trick.
00:23:52:17 – 00:23:57:01
Ralph
That’s exactly. That’s like that’s a total is. Yeah. It’s a parlor trick. You pull.
00:23:57:01 – 00:23:58:01
John
Data out of a hat, I’m like.
00:23:58:01 – 00:24:10:23
Ralph
Wow, wow. Look, we gotta get in there because he does it so convincingly and so persuasive. But the point is, it’s like this is true. It’s really it’s like a big, big deal. Yeah. And, you know, and the example that I texted you yesterday, I was like,
00:24:10:23 – 00:24:15:07
Ralph
I looked at the data, I said, well, when did you guys do the start doing cap imports?
00:24:15:07 – 00:24:24:16
Ralph
You said, well, it was around August 1st. So sure enough, I answer the weekly report. So 26 and then it was like 27. Then all of a sudden it was
00:24:24:16 – 00:24:33:13
Ralph
24 and then it was 20, and then it was maybe back to 21, and then it was down to 17. Then it went to 12,
00:24:33:13 – 00:24:38:19
Ralph
then it went to ten, then it was on the eight, and then it was $6.73 as of last week.
00:24:38:19 – 00:24:42:15
Ralph
Yeah. And that is the cost to acquire a new customer. So it took
00:24:42:15 – 00:24:44:13
Ralph
about a month and a half
00:24:44:13 – 00:24:48:12
Ralph
as we’re sitting here today in the middle of September. Yeah. And
00:24:48:12 – 00:24:53:23
Ralph
you know a credit to our team because they’ve obviously they’ve been you know they’ve been listening to you guys.
00:24:54:01 – 00:24:54:12
John
And this is.
00:24:54:12 – 00:24:59:09
Ralph
Hard. It’s hard to do because those first couple of weeks
00:24:59:09 – 00:25:08:04
Ralph
you know the client was like what are you guys doing. Like CPAs don’t really seem to they still talk in CPA language we talk about is, you know, cost to acquire a new customer language. Anyway,
00:25:08:04 – 00:25:14:16
Ralph
be that as it may is set that aside. The point is, is like it does take a while for the algorithm to start working.
00:25:14:18 – 00:25:17:05
John
We think about it like imagine taking a test.
00:25:17:05 – 00:25:19:13
John
The only grade that will ever be visible is in a.
00:25:19:13 – 00:25:23:05
John
Now if you answer ten questions and what is your grade? It’s null.
00:25:23:05 – 00:25:26:11
John
Do it again. Okay. And now all of a sudden, as soon as they do it again, now
00:25:26:11 – 00:25:31:07
John
once they get it right, you get the A. That’s essentially what we’re doing is meta and Google
00:25:31:07 – 00:25:34:00
John
are complete closed off ecosystems.
00:25:34:00 – 00:25:34:18
John
They know
00:25:34:18 – 00:25:46:13
John
more about the people than we ever can. They claim 70 million signals on the on the user, which is what Google says. Yeah, they’re having you know search upping YouTube newsfeed, discover display just all in performance. Max. There’s massive engines that are extremely powerful
00:25:46:13 – 00:25:47:02
John
and
00:25:47:02 – 00:25:53:19
John
as long as we say you’re allowed to pat yourself on the back and continually do so and I’ll give you even more money and you can pat yourself on the back harder.
00:25:53:19 – 00:26:07:10
John
As long as the metric that I. The only metric that I care about is the only thing that they can count. And that’s that’s the difference is if it’s like, hey, I got 50 sales, like, well, what what happened? What we we did an email blast for our 4th of July event and we had 50 sales.
00:26:07:10 – 00:26:08:16
John
And that is like, yeah, that was on me.
00:26:08:18 – 00:26:11:11
John
That doesn’t happen anymore. Like that can happen. Now
00:26:11:11 – 00:26:16:08
John
if we think about this in a mediavine or in a, in a paid media channel perspective,
00:26:16:08 – 00:26:21:19
John
it can attribute pretty much anything that’s happening. We ran a test where we and we imported
00:26:21:19 – 00:26:22:15
John
100
00:26:22:15 – 00:26:26:00
John
conversions that never came from Facebook, and all hundred of those
00:26:26:00 – 00:26:27:02
John
showed up in Facebook
00:26:27:02 – 00:26:28:08
John
ad, but they just came under the
00:26:28:08 – 00:26:29:02
John
one day view,
00:26:29:02 – 00:26:30:08
John
which means we don’t have to click.
00:26:30:08 – 00:26:34:16
John
We’re not sure where it happened, but our model data is only missing data, probably due to regulatory
00:26:34:16 – 00:26:41:18
John
regulations. So if you’re going to import it to me, I’ll take credit for it so it can count everything, even if it didn’t come from that channel.
00:26:41:18 – 00:26:42:20
John
Think about your cost caps.
00:26:42:20 – 00:26:46:15
John
So I need to have a conversion that is coming underneath $100.
00:26:46:15 – 00:27:03:21
John
Well, if you do a text blast early in the morning, you can meet that cost cap and that goal even before the outspent turns on. Yeah. So as long as it’s counting everything that’s happening anyway and spending your money to do so, you’re basically now using a platform like I’ll pay you $100 to just repeat with my Shopify data sets.
00:27:04:02 – 00:27:05:10
John
Right? It’s already
00:27:05:10 – 00:27:12:19
John
this job today it closed up shop, went home and fell asleep before they had started. Like that’s for 40 has been started. That’s that’s the disconnect. And
00:27:12:19 – 00:27:16:05
John
because it can count everything and will count everything,
00:27:16:05 – 00:27:18:12
John
the ads spend and your results are now
00:27:18:12 – 00:27:19:20
John
disconnected. Yeah.
00:27:19:20 – 00:27:20:16
John
This reconnects.
00:27:20:16 – 00:27:21:04
John
That is.
00:27:21:04 – 00:27:22:08
Ralph
Fascinating. The,
00:27:22:08 – 00:27:33:02
Ralph
one of the other big questions that I always get is and I’ve been at this conference for two days now, and this is always comes up like, you guys talk about model data all the time.
00:27:33:02 – 00:27:38:17
Ralph
Explain that sort of in layman’s terms on the meta and probably on the Google side.
00:27:38:17 – 00:27:44:23
Ralph
Yeah. Because people say, well, you know, I look in my meta, it looks like looks like everything’s accurate.
00:27:45:01 – 00:27:46:09
Ralph
Yeah. And I said, well,
00:27:46:09 – 00:28:03:18
Ralph
part of that a large part is models because the, the AI algorithm, the algorithm for meta is so good, they’re saying, all right, if these six people did this, then we’re going to extrapolate that these other six people did the same thing. So is it that simple or what’s your take on model data.
00:28:03:20 – 00:28:05:08
Ralph
How do you explain it to people.
00:28:05:08 – 00:28:08:21
John
Yeah. And I’ve learned a lot about the model data this last two months. And
00:28:08:21 – 00:28:09:20
John
basically just by
00:28:09:20 – 00:28:10:17
John
changing
00:28:10:23 – 00:28:21:19
Speaker 1
Hey, please stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to this show so you don’t miss the golden nuggets. To help you with metrics that matter and actually scale your business. I’ll see you in the next video.
