Cambridge Analytica, Facebook Third Party Data Partners Going Away - What To Do?

Alright guys, here's the thing. I'm not doing this shit anymore.

Haha, I'm just kidding!

Hey, what's up guys? How are you today? Welcome to another video and thank you once again for all of the support, all of the comments, all of the good stuff that you guys have been giving me for the past couple of weeks since I've been uploading videos and whatnot. And the reality is that today I wanted to touch base on a really specific subject and a really timely subject, which is Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, quote unquote. Facebook decided to quit or to cut the third-party data to all of the Facebook advertisers. Long story short, what does it mean in plain English is that basically all of the data that you can now access that is not native from Facebook, meaning it's not collected within Facebook but it's actually fed into Facebook by third-party data partners, it will be no more. It will be no game, at least for advertisers. They're not saying that they will stop collecting it. They're just saying that they'll stop giving it to us as advertisers. Now there's also another thing which are the third-party audiences which you might or might not have heard of which are one of those examples is the Oracle Data Hotline and whatnot. They have a whole array of audiences and the reality is that those will stop to be available on Facebook as well. Now here's the thing. I'm launching this video and they're saying that there's going to be 6 months from now until they stop it completely, right? And this not only affects us using third-party data, but it will also affect the audience insights potentially, and it will also affect, you know, whatever has to do with third-party targeting. Meaning if you're targeting for people on household incomes, and these specifically applies and will impact, you know, really heavily on, like, for example, first world countries like US mostly, maybe a little bit of Canada, maybe UK, Australia, and whatnot, but mostly on the US. So here's the thing, if you're now targeting on based on, you know, like household income, net worth, what kind of car your audience is driving, and, you know, what kind of jobs they have, unless they actively are putting I am a CEO, or I'm the CEO of Google, that's not gonna be able to, you know, that's not gonna let us target these folks anymore, at least inside of the Facebook platform. Now here's the thing, now that you know that, now how do you cope with that? Okay, so there's basically 3 ways that you can actually cope with this, and you can actually still be advertising without you thinking or feeling the hit so much. The first of them is to remember that Facebook is just a small fish in a super big pond. In fact, Facebook is not the biggest network out there, okay? I'm a big Facebook fan and I will keep advertising on Facebook as long as they are offering an advertising network because I think that the ability to target is one of the best in the market, okay? And the AI, the algorithm that they have developed, is second to none. So That's one thing I will keep on advertising, but I keep on telling you guys that you need to stop depending on one source of traffic. This also applies if you're doing Google AdWords or if you're only doing SEO. If you're killing it with, I don't know, with Facebook ads or with Instagram ads, do not depend on one source of traffic because this is a big move for a big player right now. If you're strongly depending on Facebook ads alone, the chances of you getting hit by these kind of approaches or this kind of switches and changes are really, really high. Now how do you prevent that from happening? Well basically, number one, you start diversifying your portfolio of where you're buying media, basically saying you buy Facebook ads but you also buy Google AdWords, YouTube. So you're trying to diversify as much as possible when you're buying media, but not only that, you're also trying to rank your website on Google, you're also doing your Instagram profile so that you can get organic reach, you're also collecting emails, and you're sending them that list emails over and over again, right? So that will put you in a position of advantage versus someone of your competitors that are depending heavily on traffic. So number one, stop depending on one source of traffic alone so that no matter what happens in the world, you will be just fine. Number 2 is to also remember that Facebook collects a lot of data and a lot of data, data, whatever you want to call it, within itself. Meaning that not because you cannot target people that are, I don't know, driving SUVs and having $300,000 paycheck every year, you will need to be a little bit more creative when it comes of where are those people hanging out. Like, the actual interest targeting on Facebook will not go away. Just have that in mind. All of the third-party data will. But if you're now relying on those that data, try to find the correlations between the interests of those people and the type of car that they're driving and the type of interactions that they're having online. So for instance, if you're targeting specific demographics and these folks like country music, then you can and will start targeting those country music pages and artists and forums potentially and whatnot within the Facebook platform. That's not going away. You won't be able to target based on income anymore, but that doesn't matter because you can still target the country music lovers, which are part of your demographic. The same happens with some other positions, like if you're targeting coaches and consultants and these folks happen to love Tony Robbins, for example, you can still be able to target Tony Robbins, so that won't necessarily matter. A word of caution though is that while this happened, it's not clear when it will happen. Like, it could happen tomorrow or in 6 months down the road. It's not clear, but there will be some side effects on the algorithm. You need to have that in mind because they happened 6 months ago that they took out a couple of targeting options on the ad sets and the ad sets kept on running but without having a clear option who to target to. So that kind of sucked, right? So you keep— just imagine that you're targeting, I don't know, your Dolce& Gabbana your targeting on your ad sets Dolce& Gabbana and it's just out of nowhere Facebook decides that Dolce& Gabbana is not a valid target anymore so they take it out, but they do not deactivate your targeting. So what happens is that with that ad set it will go wild, it will spend money without a target. So bear in mind that your advertising on Facebook until the dust settles will potentially have some side effects. It could be good, it could be bad, it depends on the rest of the funnel and and how well you're prepared for it. I try to think about this like a Google algorithm update where everything dances. If you've been doing SEO for a while, you know that every time Google implements an algorithm change, everything dances all over the place. If you have been following a really strong SEO strategy, your websites end up better than before, right? Because it sweeps out the entire landscape, and this would happen The same thing with Facebook, which takes me to step number 3. Step number 3 is just keep at it. Please keep at it. What I mean is that a lot of people will freak out, a lot of people will jump ship, a lot of people will not advertise on Facebook anymore, and that's actually a great thing if you think about it because we will have— the marketers that will keep at it, we will have less and less and less competition. As we move forward. So if you think about it, the cost per acquisition that has been going up, because it has been going up across the board, the cost per 1,000 impressions, also known as CPM, has been going up because more and more people are in the auction, more and more people are advertising on Facebook, right? When this happens, when a new algorithm change happens, when a new set of rules are applied, a lot of people jump ship, mostly because they do not know what they're doing. They're just spending money, they're just throwing money at Facebook. But it's just because they're giving up. If you don't give up, if you just let the dust settle, maybe lower your ad spending a little bit instead of spending, I don't know, $100, $500 a day or whatever you're spending right now, just lower it a little bit, see how it works, but please keep at it. The success of your company depends on the ability of you being able to keep at it and being able to be flexible and be able to foresight these kind of changes. Okay, nobody could have said that Facebook would be taking these kind of things and this kind of matters and this kind of new rules, but it is what it is, right? This is why— this is one of the reasons that I created The Power of Marketing, so that I can help you guys staying on top of things and staying current. So if you want to check it out, it's super inexpensive, it's a subscription that you can cancel anytime. There's gonna be a link somewhere around here. So you can join and be on top of things. So please just keep at it, keep doing what you're doing, don't freak out, try to diversify as much as possible all of your traffic sources, and remember that you can still be able to target people based on some other interests. So it's a good way right now, it's a good practice right now to start figuring out where your audience is hiding that doesn't have to do with third-party data, at least with the Facebook and try to match those data with actual likes and stuff that people within Facebook would do, like liking a page, for example. Okay, so those would be my insights. If you want to know more about this, I'll keep on reporting on the Facebook group, so it's free to join. You can click on the button below. And again, if you really want to stay on top of this kind of news, if you really want to stay current, if you really want to stay on the bleeding edge of marketing and advertising online, I strongly suggest that you join the Power of Marketing newsletter. Again, it's super inexpensive, you can cancel anytime, and I think you're gonna love it. People are in there already loving it, and we're receiving a lot of business from them. So I hope that you enjoyed this video, guys. If you have any questions, just let me know. Thank you once again for watching.

I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.