Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale
Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi

Guests

Barry Hott

This is Working RIGHT Now In Media Buying... - W/ Barry Hott

in this episode, we pull back the curtain on what is working right now in media buying and what you might want to consider doing. #Adspend

Notes & Links

📧Subscribe to Whale Mail for exclusive industry insights and in-depth marketing breakdowns: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tripl...

🐦 Follow us on Twitter for Industry insights https://twitter.com/triplewhale

Follow the people featured in this episode here:

- Rabah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabahrahil
- Ash's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashvinmelwani
- Barry's Twitter: https://twitter.com/binghott

Transcription

Barry Hott (00:00:00):

The more that I can have more ads that are getting more people to take more valuable actions that I can track. The more that those ads are also leading to other impact beyond just the conversions that we're tracking. That's my like firm belief.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:23):

And we are back folks for your favorite DTC podcast. And boy, do we got a screamer for you? The man with the plan, Barry hot. How are you? How's the VDO. How's the new baby. He didn't gimme the hat. He didn't, he has a lot of drip. Didn't gimme the drip, he's wearing some swag. Um, but, uh, how are you doing Barry?

Barry Hott (00:00:44):

I'm good. Car's good. Baby's good. Baby's great. Baby's daycare amazing. Uh, very exciting times, uh, for, for that baby.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:52):

Amazing first baby. Correct? First

Barry Hott (00:00:54):

One. Yeah. Number, number one. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:57):

Don't, that's amazing. Do it

Barry Hott (00:00:58):

Ever again? Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:01:01):

And then not a baby, but look at that baby face my partner in crime. Ashvin wan Ash, how are you? How you doing always swag out. Looking good that, that P OD swag that Ron just dropped, dropped all the cookies. He let everybody know. Yeah. Yeah. Thread was heat. That thread was heat.

Barry Hott (00:01:19):

Yep. That's it. The secret's out. We're always giving out our secrets.

Rabah Rahil (00:01:23):

It's tough. I know you guys are so giving. It's so great. Oh, I'm going into God mud here. I gotta gotta hit this. Uh, gone, go this
Too bright over. Um, alright folks. Well, we're actually gonna get into a lot of stuff. Barry is one of the best acquisition marketers, retention, marketers, just overall big brain guy. And I love him. He always has hot takes, but, um, the data and logic to back them up. So let's just jump in. What are you seeing kind of working in the ecosystem and then we can kind of just fish bash that off of kind of what Ash has seeing and, and let's just start to jump into some combos. So, Barry, what do you, what are you seeing people succeeding with right now? What should people be staying away with in terms of, uh, acquisition and specific paid?

Barry Hott (00:02:06):

Yeah. You know, I've been meaning to tweet this and I don't like giving away my secrets. I'm I'm still getting used to Twitter and, and the idea of giving away what is working I'm, I'm still really not accustomed to this. So like I'm like giving away a value, a very simple, this is not, not revolutionary what I'm about to say, but it is a value bomb and I'm gonna drop, uh, which is that images <laugh> are working real good. <laugh> I've

Rabah Rahil (00:02:37):

Been saying really?

Barry Hott (00:02:38):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been saying it too, actually. I haven't been seeing it, but I've been seeing it. Uh, yeah. Uh, you know, I preach a lot about video and I think video fundamentally is a future. And I often, I often think that images are, I'm seeing images, working and scaling in a lot of places because those are brands that aren't getting video to scale as well. So, you know, there's some chicken in, there's some egg, uh, going on there, but I am having some success with some images. Uh, so, and I'm having fun producing it, um, and coming up with image ideas and playing with that. So that's what I'm seeing right now. Start with that.

Rabah Rahil (00:03:20):

Let me jump in and then, and then you can rattle off Ash. Yeah. Two things. One. Are you seeing that across the whole funnel or when I was used, when I was running my agency, we saw images crush on retargeting more than videos. Yeah, of course. Um, but so I didn't know if it was, if there was a certain stage of the funnel that's crushing at, and then do you also think it's because you can have a higher creative velocity with images just because they're inherently easier to iterate make than, um, videos, even short videos are kind of a lift, unless you have like the, the Ash influencer set up where he has a thousand people, billion people and sending him creative throughout this whole thing. Um, it can be challenge. Yeah, exactly. It can be challenging, right. To keep up that creative velocity to ensure that you have that throughput to, um, scale. So those are my two questions and I'll toss it over to Ash

Barry Hott (00:04:11):

So much to address there. <laugh> um, first and foremost, the like the whole image working and retargeting thing, I would probably, you know, historically think about that being maybe related to just being cheaper inventory that if you're retargeting and Facebook's trying to like, you know, I think you guys know me well enough. So I don't know if someone watching would know, I, I'm kind of almost like a, um, conspiracy theorist in terms of, Facebook's trying to just get credit for the easiest conversions. It can rather than driving actual incremental conversions. So I have typically thought that Facebook, when it can get a cheap click from someone that's already in funnel is going to do so with the hopes of that, it's just gonna take credit for it. So that's why I would expect to see some retargeting image stuff historically have worked that way. Um, but hard to say if that's true or not, and if that was true or still is what I'm actually seeing right now, however, is images working well in prospecting and across several accounts that I have access to, um, and that I'm working on, which is interesting. Um, and I think it might, I don't, it's not, they're not accounts that are also even like shitting out a billion images. They're not oh, okay. Um, yeah, we, we probably we'll start more because we're, you know, what we're seeing working compared to video and how scalable some of it can be. Um, part of me thinks that it has a lot to do with the relaxation of the 20% text rule. Mm-hmm <affirmative> from the past. That's

Rabah Rahil (00:05:53):

Great point. That's actually a really good point

Barry Hott (00:05:55):

That, yeah, that, I think that was, was something, you know, if I had one small regret about the last year, it would be not immediately capitalizing on text in ads. Um, I remember, you know, the reason why that 20% text rule was a thing was because it prevented advertisers from making tech heavy ads, which were a bad experience for users on Instagram and Facebook, or, you know, early on, or even just Facebook early on. But I think what we've learned now is that it actually is, it can be done in a spammy way and it can be done in a positive, useful way where you can have three big words that takes up more than 20% of the screen. And it not feel like shit. It can feel nice. It can feel helpful. It can, you know, maybe it still is spammy. Maybe it still is very ad, you know, focused and I to wear. There's still a lot to unpack there from a real like subconscious user psych or sorry, consumer psychology, whatever standpoint. But I think thinking about how Facebook originally like disallowed that, and then started to, uh, just have it penalize your ads, and then now has moved away from that completely. It's really interesting to see that kind of self-regulation shift. And now I'm playing with that more and it's allowing for really strong copywriting to prevail. That's what I think I'm seeing

Rabah Rahil (00:07:27):

When that market cap shrinks. You want that money? <laugh> um, the

Barry Hott (00:07:32):

Other thing don't know if it's relates to that, but maybe I

Rabah Rahil (00:07:34):

I'm teasing. I mean, it is what it is at the end of the day. They they're, they're taking haircuts less than most people though, to be fair <laugh> um, but sorry, keep cutting you off Ash. I'll give it to you after this, but to, to your point, Barry, the, the 20% rule is such a really pressuring point because what I've seen, um, just anecdotally is really impactful testimonial ads in images where you can have these kind of longer testimonials, you have this nice lifestyle image or person that you can relate to mm-hmm <affirmative> and then you kind of read their story. And it's almost like in a, not a meme format, but it's a really nice consumable, like where before you couldn't do that, and you have this gorgeous testimonial, and this is like this, you know, three or four sentences of just awesomeness mm-hmm <affirmative>, but you'd have to put in the text or something like that. Nobody like, it's your point? Copy helpful. But I see ads in terms of a hierarchy where I creatives at the top. Right. I do creative headline text. That's kind of like the, the hierarchy for me. Um, and then CTAs, obviously last, but, um, anyway, just wanted to throw that in there. Ash, take us away.

Ash Melwani (00:08:33):

Okay. So I, I got a lot here. All right. Let's good. Because, because I think this entire year from what I've been doing at Avi and what I've been kind of putting out on Twitter is that we've been testing like 20 to 40 creatives a week. And purely based on the fact that they were static images, right? It's a lot easier to pump out that much more creative than videos, right? You gotta get content creators, this and that pay influencers. Like it's a deliver of love. But, um, we found that just getting two or three designers and just pumping out creatives was the easiest way to go. Okay. Um, to your point on the, the text rule, as soon as that was lifted in my head immediately, everybody post iOS update was saying, you're creative is going to do the targeting, right. And at the same time, this is when that text rule kind of like went away.
And in my head, I was like, all right, how do I do, how do, how do I get my creative to do the targeting, utilizing text on our graphics? Right? So if you see any of our ads, look at our ad library, look at the stuff that I'm tweeting out. Literally our main headline is on the creative and I fully believe that is why we're able to target the right person to come to our website and purchase. Right? So two things here is that, uh, and Barry, you tell me what you're saying, but basically at least on our static images, our cost per click is typically a lot higher. Uh, click through rate is a lot lower, but our conversion rate is very, very high. Like I'm talking seven to 10% conversion rate on our Landers because I think because the creative is very targeted to the specific problem that like, for example, say goodbye to hair loss, you're talking to somebody who wants to address this problem and you're getting that right person to your page and they're converting, right?
Mm-hmm <affirmative> so what we're seeing is higher conversion rate, higher cost per traffic, right? I'm looking anywhere from three to $5 cost per Clipse, which is tougher to scale, right? It is very tough to scale this. Um, which is why I think we've moved into this. Like if our, if our end C is like at X KPI, we're good to go. Um, getting like your cost per click to get lower on, like on an image is very tough because then you give up the conversion rate, right? So recently what we decided to test was more videos. Okay. TikTok style videos, U C style videos, we're testing everything and we're putting it all into the same adset video, statics, everything, what I've noticed. And this is where triple will has helped us significantly is that the first click is gonna start to come from the video, right.
Because one that has higher clickthrough rates and lower CPCs. Okay. Um, but lower conversion rates, then what I end up seeing is that our static images will not get as much volume, but they'll get a lot of conversions because they're also last click. So because we're running this full funnel approach where everything's in one campaign, everything's being driven by this like highly engaging video, which is your top of the funnel really within this campaign. And then people are converting on the static images, which is what you mentioned is it does perform better on retargeting, right? So looking at like a first click basis, the video is where it's driving the awareness on the last click basis. Our static images are, are performing really well right now. Um, so that was kind of us shifting over the last couple weeks because of the algorithm change and they're pushing more videos. And we wanted to say on top of that, but I've found that it's been, we've been able to scale a little bit more during a slower period of time for us because we've added videos into the mix that may or may not be converting on the first touch, but they're, they're basically setting it up for the, the static images to kind of convert later down the funnel within, within that same campaign. Um, cool. But yeah. Thoughts,

Barry Hott (00:12:23):

Can I ask, can I ask a question?

Ash Melwani (00:12:25):

Yeah.

Barry Hott (00:12:26):

What attribution, I hate to have to do this. I don't really wanna spend this time talking about this the whole time, but we might. Yeah. What attribution setting are you using?

Ash Melwani (00:12:35):

One day clicks.

Barry Hott (00:12:36):

Okay. Okay. The

Ash Melwani (00:12:38):

G none of that one day view, none of that. None of that

Rabah Rahil (00:12:42):

View theories, chew

Barry Hott (00:12:43):

Throughs. Good.

Ash Melwani (00:12:44):

Yeah, none of that.

Barry Hott (00:12:45):

Okay. So that's

Ash Melwani (00:12:46):

Not

Rabah Rahil (00:12:46):

To cut you off there, but let me, let me, uh, pull some people along that aren't there. Um, first click attribution is what as is talking about and last click attribution, their different attribution models, and then, uh, N C or N CPA is just your new customer, um, CPA. So just to make sure that everybody that isn't hip to the game is following along conversation. Mr. Hot is to you.

Barry Hott (00:13:07):

And then I'll add the one day click attribution setting is a setting in Facebook, which controls how Facebook delivers and also reports. So those are separate, all separate things. Um, but they all can relate. So interesting hearing that you're doing the one day click, I, you know, mostly do approve. <laugh> like, I'm a

Ash Melwani (00:13:24):

Big one day click guy.

Barry Hott (00:13:25):

<laugh> um, there, there are some oddities I've seen in terms of like, I I'll be very honest. I don't think that I try to waste time breaking down the differences in CPCs, conversion rates, CTRs, whatever between anything. I expect them to all be different. And I'd like to talk about why. Right. And I, this is a tweet, this is a Twitter thread. I'm like, I have drafted that. Like, I've dying to like launch, but it's like 50 tweets. So I don't, I don't think it's appropriate for Twitter thread.

Ash Melwani (00:14:04):

I do. I do wanna just preface that before. Cause I know where you want to go with this is that I fully do agree that yeah, there isn't a correlation between CPC, CTR and CPA. Yeah. Right. However, I do think the creatives that do have the better soft metrics are easier to scale at higher budget.

Barry Hott (00:14:26):

I, because I understand that. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Keep going.

Ash Melwani (00:14:29):

So keep going. One thing is that when we were scaling from 20 to 30 K a day, right. That large jump, we saw our average CPC increase up until like the average of fours. Um, obviously we're taking up more inventory from Facebook. We're obviously, you know, our cost for traffic is gonna increase, but our conversion rate doesn't increase at that same rate unless we're making changes. Right. So then my CAC is gonna increase on a, on just a, a fully mathematical equation. Right. So, yeah, I agree up until a certain point that there's going to be like the sweet spot within budget and like your, I guess, cost of traffic, but that video that's getting like a dollar click and maybe a lower conversion rate can scale a little bit more aggressively. And, and that's just, just, that's just how I've been seeing it recently, cuz like we've, we've cut back budgets during the summer. But in the last couple weeks we were able to scale a little bit just by throwing in some videos that we're sending low tra uh, low cost traffic at a lower conversion rate, but then having the status pick up that retargeting as well. Well, so yeah,

Barry Hott (00:15:33):

I, I appreciate all that and I, I don't have anything wrong with that. Yeah. Right. Like I think what I'm trying to say is there's multiple and this is the thing you'll you'll own like this is what my brain is just constantly going around in circles on stuff like this. And I love talking about this, but like there are just so many variables that we can't possibly see that are impacting this. So when I think about just simply ad a versus ad B two, two unrelated ads, okay. They're not an iteration of each other, even if they were similarly related, we could talk about that. But let's say they're two different ads. I don't care if they're images or videos. I don't care if they're the same or different. Okay. One of them is going to have a better CPC or better CTR than the other.
One of them is going to be delivering more to younger users. One of them is gonna be delivering more to older users. Maybe it'll be similar. Maybe it'll be more relevant to peop to men. Maybe it'll be more relevant to women. Maybe it'll be more relevant to people in Washington or Miami or Detroit, all of those variables. And plus placement, Instagram stories, Instagram feeds real Facebook, right column. All of these variables are more or less relevant to the ad. And then the user is going to react differently to them in those different placements. So I just have given up on trying to make sense of like, oh, if I get my CPCs up here, it'll do this. Because from what I've seen, both my doing this myself and also like analyzing other people's work is so often it's like, yeah, they found a data correlation, but it is not at all the causation.
Right. That's why so many people think that CPC relates to CPA directly because if you set your systems up in a way that in a certain way, then it will like there there's so many ways that those can correlate because of they, they kind of should. But that doesn't mean that they're caused by that. So I don't know if I've helped here or if I've made a good case about anything cuz it's really just, I'm just pointing out. It's really fuzzier and blurrier. And I just care at the end of the day about getting the cost per conversion down. Yeah. For the most part, like 90% of what I care about is that, and then the other 10% is me worrying a little bit, just a little bit about if I focus too hard on conversions, am I actually limiting myself in terms of impressions or reach or clicks?
Maybe some of those other things, maybe I do want more traffic. Maybe I just want more people to just see the ads, even if they're not, there are other intrinsic brand value things. Um, but for the most part, my firm belief, this is again that 90% is that the more that I can have more ads that are getting more people to take more valuable actions that I can track. The more that those ads are also leading to other impact beyond just the conversions that we're tracking. That's my like firm belief. And that's why when I, when I hear, when I talk about like make ugly ads, right? Like, and people talk, say like, oh, don't make ugly ads. It hurts your brand. I'm like, no, it doesn't because I'm getting more people to pay attention. I've already, I've doing that better. And I'm getting more people that are interested in buying and taking action. Therefore I have a, I'm having a much bigger overall impact with my ads than anything else. I'm definitely not saying make ugly ads that are actually Gar actually, ah, sorry, actually garbage and people don't like or piss people off. Don't do that. Yeah. But that's my whole spiel. Like it's a big, that was a big one. Sorry. I ate up a lot of time there.

Ash Melwani (00:19:35):

No, I, I, I, I think it's great because like, even to your point, the ugly ads, right? Let's say if I, if I stray away from, from our brand, right. Our brand is bright colors, pink packaging, this and that. Um, I've mentioned this before, like some of the ads where it's just like just blank background, picture of the product and it crushes cuz it's like, yeah, one, your packaging PA uh, pops this and that. But like it's not your standard, like branded ads where like, I'll have my, my co-founder, uh, Anket who's designed the entire branding. Right. Which mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, biased as this is. It's like, I think it's the, the most beautiful packaging in the world. But when he designs an ad versus another designer, he's thinking fully on branded elements, everything that needs to be perfect, but right. I would say like 90% of the time, the other ads that aren't perfect perform the best. Yeah. And that's why he's like, I'm not doing ads anymore. So to your point, ugly ads can convert very well.

Barry Hott (00:20:32):

And that's the fundamental of make ugly ads is like, not like don't make really ugly, bad ads. It's like make the less perfect version of the a you wanna make, but that doesn't fit well on a hat.

Ash Melwani (00:20:45):

<laugh> I

Rabah Rahil (00:20:47):

Love that. Um, I would push back a little bit here and well, first off, I totally agree with you guys. I think the biggest thing is one to Barry's point causation is way more important than correlation, but two, I think you always have to start with the goal in mind and like what's the goal. And so when people talk to me about CPMs, I'm like, what do you care if you're paying more to be in the room with all these rich people that are gonna buy something, versus you're gonna be in this room with all these plebes that are just tire kickers and never gonna buy anything? Like what do you care? Like, are you try, unless you're in running to your point, Barry, like, um, just reach campaigns or really just trying to maximize the impressions that you're getting at a certain rate. Like, unless you're running those campaigns, then CPMs are pretty much relevant to you.
Like who cares? Like all you want to do is like, if I told you I could get you lower CPMs, if I could told you I could get you lower cost per acquisition, what would you choose? Like, so I, I get really lost in the kind of CPM maxi debate, but, um, I will say that when I was running ads at my agency, it was always a question that I had for the brand owner where we would have brands that I think we've talked about this on past podcast, but we would have ads that were crushing it. Um, and they were seasonal, right? Like we had to ad that's like, get, get your gut ready for the, uh, holidays or whatever, and have like a little pumpkin in it, like the pumpkin emoji. And it would just crush. And so I would go to the brand owner and be like, Hey, like it's not October anymore.
Like it's not November anymore. Do you want me to change this out? Or like, should I just keep letting it ride? Or like, and so I think the broader point that you're making is really ENT, but it also needs to be balanced. So like one, you shouldn't one of the biggest things that improved me as a marketer was I stopped war shipping the, um, at the altar of aesthetic where it's like, just because something looks good and is incredible. Very rarely has any causation to its performance. Like it's very much so usually an ego thing. Um, but at the same time, you need to understand perception and understand where you're trying to position your brand. And so you need to understand that like possibly, like for example, like Eve St Loran or some sort of really fancy luxury brand will never run something that looks crappy performance aside. It just won't because there's this brand equity that is built into the perception of the brand. Whereas there can be you disagree. I love this. Give me your disagreement.

Barry Hott (00:23:19):

This is a hard one. I like this is really, really difficult. Um, because like I agree with what you're saying, fundamentally agree with what you've just said. The problem is that you're still talking about ads on a social platform and you're still talking about, you have to make stuff to meet people where they are, this is not TV. This is, is not print. Right. You're you can't, you have to make something that is relevant to the, the space or more people avoid it. Unless we're talking about kind of what Ash was saying earlier is like, if you're targeting with your creative, but I, I know we all know rich people. Okay. And rich people are just as dumb as the rest of us. Okay. And they like looking at the same content that we do, right. Like, just because they're rich doesn't mean that they don't look at memes and don't look at viral videos.
So like aesthetically, you still need to be conscious of that. I mean, will they do that? Absolutely not because they're pretentious and filled with ego. And as you just said, and I love, and I want on a t-shirt they do worship at the altar of aesthetic. I, I want stop worshiping at the altar of aesthetic TA tattooed on my body, or at least just on the t-shirt let's make that shirt. But that I, I don't think those brands would ever admit to that. And some actually do. I think there are some of those like luxury brands that have figured out are willing to play the game and are willing to make TikTok shit that is wacky and weird and fits the audience, but is still elevated in their way and still luxurious in their way. So it's a weird thing, but they can still make ugly ads.

Rabah Rahil (00:25:11):

I'll I'll I'll keep your 90 10 kind of going, I'll say you're 90%. Right. But I think the 10% is luxury vertical where the luxury vertical is just super pretentious. Like I've seen luxury, I've seen Gucci, I've seen really crazy high end brands run ads without CTAs.

Barry Hott (00:25:29):

Let me, let me, let me try something here. Okay. If you're selling private jet hours. Yeah. Okay. Let's is that a fair? Is that a fair, like super luxury, right? I

Rabah Rahil (00:25:39):

Don't know. Not really. It's a luxury commodity, but so it's a luxury commodity, not a luxury brand

Barry Hott (00:25:45):

Pick one. Okay. Pick one.

Rabah Rahil (00:25:47):

No, but you got, you see what I'm saying? Right? Like that's just, I do it's fair. A high spending fair point consumption versus like a Gucci bag or a me bien bag or, um, something fancy. That's totally different. Let's go Birken bag Birken bag. Yeah. Berken. So for people that don't know, this is made by air me super fancy bag. They start like 10, $20,000. And it's basically the glorified purse. It's it's really nice. Don't get me wrong. But they even have one with, uh, made, they did a collab with Birkenstock that it's made of old Birkenstock. But anyways, I digress.

Barry Hott (00:26:17):

Love it.

Rabah Rahil (00:26:18):

Birken Birken okay.

Barry Hott (00:26:20):

Fine. I, the supplies to any of it, this is my point, uh, is the, the difference I'm talking about is shooting this on an iPhone or shooting this on a red camera. Do, do you need to shoot the ad or the content showing the bag wherever it is in whatever location it is, does it need to be shot on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and lighting and models? Maybe the models, all the, the models we can, we can come back to, or can it just be shot on an iPhone and would that fundamentally be making an ugly ad in my opinion, yes. And or uglier version of the ad. And it's making the version that more people, luxury focused minded people as well would be more likely to not skip if they saw on their feed. That's my hypothesis. I haven't prove it.
Cuz I don't like working with the egos of people in luxury, um, or, or high fashion or whatever. But that is what I've seen repeatedly win over time is finding the more authentic way to shoot it or, or produce it or edit it that isn't fully polished, starting with a logo on the screen, you know, perfect fade, you know, edits like TikTok edits are harsh, man. Like they're not, they're not sweet, sweeping, beautiful things. They're zooms in, you know? So that's the kind of stuff that is subconscious that people pay attention to subconsciously. So that's what I think about.

Rabah Rahil (00:27:57):

I think it's a super valid response, but you just, this is why I love having conversations with you cuz you made me, oh, solidify my like my argument finally coalesced or not argument. But uh, my thesis finally coalesced was that luxury brands are inherently aspirational and you don't aspire to be shooting a film with like, that's why a luxury brands overspend. That's why like you wanna see this super polished thing. And so that's where my pushback comes in, where it's like, you can't that. That's why. So let me make my thesis even stronger. That's why they hate counterfeits. It's not because it hurts the business. It's because if I'm paying 10,000, 20,000, $30,000, I wanna be seen in a certain strata. Whereas if all these people are wearing all these fake Buren bags that have no money. And again, I'm not like this big class, I'm just trying to make the point sure.
Of like these people don't ha don't have the money to really actually afford this and they're faking it. And now you're lumping me in with them. Like Louis Baton had this huge issue with that, right? Where like their bags were just getting the, the print were just getting and now you see everybody caring where it's like, you can't afford a $7,000 duffle. What are you doing over here? And then it starts degrade again against that brand equity. And it stops becoming aspirational, which is every like you luxury. And this is, I guess the, the core of my argument, luxury brands are not built on utility. They're built on perception and perception is a function of status and status is a function of exclusivity. And the more you get away from that, the more it hurts the brand.

Barry Hott (00:29:29):

Let me, let me, let me clarify. I agree with what you're saying. I'm saying that you have to do that. What you've just said, build that like exclusivity or that, um, I forgot the word you just used, but it was, it was spot on like that is what you build in the frame, like in the shot, what is what's happening? What's being said what's being shown got, but I'm talking about how you show it. I'm talking about like the difference between the shooting it on iPhone and shooting it on a 200 millimeter, 2.8. I don't know how familiar you are with, you know, camera lenses. I am yeah. Shooting on a 2.8 lens. Like maybe that would, you know, maybe I will go get my 200 millimeter and shoot and shoot a something at 2.8 video. But like I think most people won't subconsciously understand what they've just seen and slide into their feed, but what they will subconsciously be doing is realize this is not normal and maybe it'll be for the better, but they'll know that it's more professional when you have that level of what, uh, for the viewer, what I'm talking about is background blur, uh, and, and depth of field and focused Boca.
That's the kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. Boca, that's the kind of stuff that people subconsciously understand when they're scrolling through is, is something was shot authentically on a mobile phone or inauthentically on a professional camera. And even that bar alone is enough to lose people's attention. So I'm saying that, that that is the, is the point is like, yeah, you absolutely need to still make it like special and spectacular and even more spectacular, but you have to find ways to make it also something that looks and feels for the platform, which is in a lot of ways, the that's fair, most luxurious thing that you can do is actually understanding how to make stuff for the right platform.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:24):

I'll I'll concede that that's fair. Um, okay. Enough luxury stuff. What do you guys, you guys ever, that

Barry Hott (00:31:30):

Was real. That was a great, it was really, really enjoy talking. And I'm not saying you're wrong by the way you like, I very well could be wrong. I just wanna make sure that's clear. Yeah. I very

Rabah Rahil (00:31:38):

Well, same, same, same, same.

Barry Hott (00:31:40):

I will say anyone who does work in luxury, who would like in the comments or somewhere say that I'm wrong. Fundamentally, that person does not understand what I'm talking about. So like yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:51):

Like,

Barry Hott (00:31:51):

Yeah, no I'm trying in terms of, so yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:54):

And to be fair, like aspirational luxury brands are kind of like a horrible, uh, bellwether for almost everybody. Like, unless you're a luxury aspirational brand <laugh> because they just do everything that is like counterintuitive to acquisition. Because again, like the less people that buy their products, but because they can charge X amount of dollars, like there's literally wait lists, like for example, like Rolex, you can't buy a role, a new Rolex. You have to actually be a previous owner. Ferrari's are the same way. Like you actually can't buy the new Ferrari. You have to have actually own a Ferrari for X amount of years to actually get the opportunity to buy a Ferrari. It's like, so there it's just in a totally different economic realm, but speaking of different, have you guys really wanted

Barry Hott (00:32:38):

To traffic? I really wanted to. I wanted to say

Rabah Rahil (00:32:40):

Something, oh, go, go for it. I'm so sorry. Get in it. I'm sorry. Get in it.

Barry Hott (00:32:43):

No, I was gonna say something about the industry, which is that similar to what you just said about like, you have to have a Rolex to get a Rolex for you to like get a job in luxury in, in high fashion. Like, especially in marketing, you have to have already been there. You have to have come from the lineage. Like they're not hiring me. And they wouldn't. And even if they did hire me, they wouldn't listen to me because they'd be like, no, no, no buddy you're this is not

Rabah Rahil (00:33:07):

How we got brand guidelines, Carrie, we got brand brand guidelines, Barry, come on.

Barry Hott (00:33:12):

Yeah. Like they would make the point. You were the point you were making, but they wouldn't consider listening to me like you. But so that's the problem. Uh, and I've seen it and I've, I've, I've worked, I've talked to these people. Um, so they think I'm an absolute lunatic. Um, just who we knows nothing, which is, which

Rabah Rahil (00:33:29):

Is to be fair. You are an absolute lunatic, but we still love you.

Barry Hott (00:33:32):

I'll take it. <laugh> I'll

Rabah Rahil (00:33:34):

Okay. So swinging from the super high end Birken bag to the plebes <laugh> um, have you guys ever run traffic campaigns? Have you ever seen any success with those

Barry Hott (00:33:45):

Ash? I'll let you go.

Ash Melwani (00:33:47):

<laugh> um, no. Uh, have not, um

Barry Hott (00:33:52):

<laugh> no, you haven't run them or no. You haven't

Ash Melwani (00:33:54):

Seen success. No, I haven't seen results. Um, however, um, I actually, I, I have a point to this cuz I did want to bring this up cuz I think it ties into what we've been trying to do with like influencer marketing. Um, I think a lot of people now are taking the approach of like, how do I feed my top of the funnel? Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the, the consensus I feel right now is that when you're running TikTok, you're running Facebook. It's more like, it's not truly top of the funnel. It's more so like yeah. There's some new people kind of coming in there, but the majority of it right now, especially people running full funnels right now, it's just constantly just hitting this like wave of people. Right. So if you go back and look at your ad account, your frequency is like 10, right.
Even though you've spent 10 million. Right? So here's where I feel like the, the premise of like why Facebook is trying to get you to like run traffic campaigns or they're trying to get, or like TikTok is trying to get you to run video view campaigns is so that you are adding to the top of the funnel so that the rest of your account can start to kind of stabilize and, and convert more people right now. I don't think that the traffic quality coming in from these campaigns is ideal. I would rather the quality, I would rather the traffic come from influencers where I'm paying X amount for just like, say reach or awareness, say like TikTok views, um, or reach on Instagram. I'm not necessarily looking for a direct ROI. I'm looking. I would then see one, all right, am I getting like fine? Am I getting discount code sales from, you know, their code and link buy or whatever, find that that's one metric to see if they're working. But my overall approach after the fact of having like a team of influencer start talking about Avi is to see if the rest of my funnel is performing well. So I wanna see Facebook get better. I wanna see TikTok get better. I wanna see our blended costs come down. Even though I may not see a direct ROI from the influencers. Right. So sorry, wait, Ash,

Speaker 4 (00:35:59):

What are you optimizing for? For the um, influencer stuff?

Ash Melwani (00:36:03):

Really honestly just reach engagement. And then if there is some type of ROI on like code sales, right? So we give 'em a code and if there's sales over there, the, the

Rabah Rahil (00:36:14):

Campaigns are optimized around reach and engagement or their conversion

Ash Melwani (00:36:17):

Campaigns. No, no I'm talking, I'm talking like straight up influencers, like posting on their accounts. Oh, tracking, tracking track. I thought you're talking about paid media. Not paid, no paid. No, no, no, not paid, not paid tracking. I'm just trying to get why this awareness. Why not? Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So I'm just talking about like organically posting. Right? I want that organic reach because mm-hmm when I say like that people coming into, like my like ecosystem will now start to, my ads will start to perform better because like, hell yeah. There's just more people in there. Right. And like more qualified traffic and me trying to get qualified traffic myself through traffic campaigns or, or video view campaigns right now to your guys' point. Yes. I will whitelist these accounts and you know, run conversion campaigns and mm-hmm, <affirmative> obviously like try to get the, you know, hit their audience and, and pick up, you know, that low hanging fruit too.
Um, but truly, truly top of the funnel is now where I'm gonna put my eggs in the influencer basket and see if like the rest of the ecosystem starts to perform well. And we saw this last year when we were whitelisting, when some pretty engaged influencers and the minute we stopped everything kind of like leveled back up. Right. So when you're driving that top of interesting funnel awareness, everything else starts to do better, which is why like TikTok, when you're running TikTok ads, it's still discovery. And you're still getting a ton of views, whether or not somebody like clicks through and buys something, everything else performs better. And that is truly what we've been seeing recently. Like when I like the last week I've like ran a ton of TikTok ads, especially we, you know, we reached out to a ton of U GC creators on Twitter when we started running these ads like this week, Facebook got better again. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because now we're spending a little bit more on TikTok could be

Speaker 4 (00:38:03):

Coincidental just saying, but

Ash Melwani (00:38:04):

Okay. Yeah, it could be, it could be, but now there's a, there's a, there's a few points in time where running this type of stuff has helped. So that's why I think just funneling all this, like top of the funnel traffic through alter alternative channels, like influencers, heck even like billboards, TV ads, like what we'll get there at some point, but right now we're doing the influencer stuff. And like that's where like I'm putting my focus is let me feed Facebook, let me feed TikTok. Let, let me run my ads as is right. But let me just feed the ecosystem with more people, which is why I think back to your point, why Facebook is trying to get people to run traffic ads, which is why TikTok is trying to get people to run video view guys, because they want people at the top of the funnel, but it's not the right quality traffic to feed your top of the funnel in my opinion.

Barry Hott (00:38:50):

Well, I just wanna say the strategy you just outlined is great. We've talked about this before. I'm the big fan of it is smart. Uh, you, but it's, it's not like you, what you're doing is you're you're hearing the concept of like, all right, let's run link like campaigns. You're like, no, that's dumb. Let me take that premise and do that better. And that's beautiful. Right? That's, that's a great thing to do. But what Facebook is also doing by telling you to run the traffic campaigns is they're just trying to get your money, right? Like they're trying to do what you just said kind of, but they're really just trying to get your money and I wanna make this, I wanna shift from what you said to point out what I think is actually happening in a big part of why traffic campaigns perform so horribly. Um,

Rabah Rahil (00:39:37):

Do I mean by tin tin hat, tinfoil hat or yes.

Barry Hott (00:39:40):

Put it, you know, I recently saw there were, you know, some people on, um, Twitter that were talking about how they have success with it, especially when using existing post IDs. Um, I, I tested that a little bit. I saw, I, I kind of maybe some signs of life from that, but not really at scale, maybe what were you looking at though? Convert cost per conversion

Ash Melwani (00:40:03):

On, on that traffic

Barry Hott (00:40:05):

Campaign. Yeah. But okay. The thing that you wanna put your tinfoil hat on here for is that you have to look at your placement breakdowns, anytime, anytime you make a change like that and how you're telling Facebook to optimize, right. It's not just changing who it delivers to. It's changing how it delivers and where, so if you were to run a video view campaign, it's going to fundamentally deliver a lot in, um, either audience network or more network, the view, uh, the, uh, oh my God. I'm blanking on the name of it, but the placement where it's, uh, unskipable ads. Yeah. Right. They're the instream watch either. Yeah. Instream, thank you. Yep. In my brain. Um, so like that's not a good place if you're trying to get conversions, uh, it's not good place, a good place for a lot of ad reasons. Um, same thing with link clicks. If you optimize link clicks, you're gonna probably see a ton more, you'll see even more Facebook, mobile feed, which I think, you know, here's the tin, foil hat part that there are bot farms or phone farms, wherever that are reg that, that just click on ads. And I think that

Rabah Rahil (00:41:19):

If you get this podcast band Barry <laugh>

Barry Hott (00:41:23):

Can, I

Rabah Rahil (00:41:24):

It's easy. That's easy.

Barry Hott (00:41:26):

You're I

Rabah Rahil (00:41:27):

Don't think it's liable. You spilling tea here and now, now we can't even post it on YouTube now.

Barry Hott (00:41:31):

Yeah. If you <laugh>. No, there's no, there's no, <laugh> no, there's no nothing illegal about saying that. But like, you can, you can Google it. Not even like, like there are, you know, pictures and videos of people, like wherever in factories where there's just, you know, thousands of phones all logged into Facebook. And if they're just clicking ads just to like click on everything like that, that's I, I find it hard to believe that there's that many people on the platform that just click and don't do anything. Yeah. They literally click and you look in GA you look in triple a or wherever and you see that there's basically zero time on site. Like they're not, how are they not taking any actions? It makes no sense whatsoever. And it often is related directly to that placement. So you can control, you can do a traffic optimized campaign and just do Instagram feed and you know, you can control for that.
And it's, it's gonna still show it to different users, but at least you're controlling for that variable. And it will perform port worse than your conversion campaign, but it'll perform more similarly rather than when you do the auto placement version of it. So that's just something I want to call out. Like, I don't know what people are doing with that traffic campaign to make it work and worthwhile. Um, I, the only other thing I can think of the, that could be working is if you are not excluding your recent visitors, or if you're specifically targeting your recent visitors and you are using the more, the bigger, the attribution window that you use, the more likely those clicks will count to conversion. So if you let's say you're, I'm targeting, right? Like I can, you have two choices here <laugh> you can target, um, you can use, sorry.
You can optimize for link clicks, targeting people that have been to your site in the last seven days, or you can optimize two purchases, um, targeting people that have been to your site in the last seven days, same audience. Okay. Most websites that you run this for, especially the bigger the site is the more, if you run for traffic to that audience, you'll track more conversions. Especially if you're using seven day click one day view, or if you're using seven day click, because you're just like seeding clicks to just hope that they get attributed with conversions. Like it's yeah. That, yeah. You know what I'm like? Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:06):

Powerful interest attribution windows.

Barry Hott (00:44:08):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:09):

Yeah, exactly. It's like 180 days. And like, it's nonsense. Like if you've ever thought of Pinterest ever, we're gonna claim this attribution. It's, it's pretty

Barry Hott (00:44:17):

Egregious. You have a lot of clients that use P like a lot of triple oil.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:21):

Oh, you want some spill? You want some spill tea. This is crazy. So, uh, actually here fill some time for me. Let me pull some data up, cuz it's actually pretty impressive.

Ash Melwani (00:44:31):

So, so back to your point, right on the, on the, on the traffic, uh, campaigns, I, I think to your point, right? The, the quality of the traffic, when you look at GA, right, is almost nonexistent. Like bounce rate is like 90%. There's like an average duration of 0.5 seconds. Right. It's actually not worth it. However, I think the premise of doing it, if it worked right, was to fill up a top of the funnel approach, which would in theory, should in theory, right. Convert in the conversion campaign, that is the theory. That is what they say consider like there awareness traffic campaign. Yes. Consideration, conversion, whatever it doesn't work. Right. However, I have seen and looked at data and seen people running video views where it's a little bit more engaged than just traffic, where people are watching the videos, you know, they ended up getting, you know, decent cost per view.
And those are the people who are slightly more engaged, which is why I think TikTok is saying like, Hey, um, run video views, because that actually does generate a little bit better of a quality audience. That's kind of just hovering around your top of the funnel. And then, you know, talking to some other brands that are doing well on TikTok, organic, right. Just generating views from there and getting like more people into that audience, their ad seem to be doing a lot better too. Right. So when you fix that organic piece of it, which is in my opinion, I think is a lot, has a lot to do with video views right now, especially since everything on Facebook and Instagram is changing to video, TikTok is all video when you're getting that organic presence, everything else starts to seem to do better, which is why I think like Facebook is trying to get you to do that artificially, but it doesn't work, which is why you have to do it organically through views or even influencers

Barry Hott (00:46:28):

Or another platform,

Ash Melwani (00:46:29):

Which I, or another platform

Barry Hott (00:46:30):

I love what you're talking about there. Right? Like fundamentally bring people more people into the funnel somehow. Yeah. But I think traffic campaign is not the

Ash Melwani (00:46:38):

Right. It's not it for that. No.

Barry Hott (00:46:40):

Uh, but do that. Yeah. Bring people in.

Ash Melwani (00:46:42):

Yeah. No, it's, it's not,

Barry Hott (00:46:44):

We still did we sell enough for you RA

Rabah Rahil (00:46:46):

<laugh> yeah, I think you guys did. I just need to click one more thing here. Uh, so we have some really amazing data we're gonna start to publish, uh, and we have some Q1 to Q2 data that is pretty incredible. Um, so we track about 1.2, uh, billion in spend, uh, from Q1 to Q2 versus Q uh, three to Q4 of last year. Um, and so Facebook was actually down in spend 24%, uh, but still massive 854 million plus, uh, Google was up 21%. And so you guys gotta remember, this is pretty incredible because this is Q1 Q2 versus Q3 Q4 of last year. And Q3, Q4 is one the biggest spending quarters and two, the most expensive times to buy ads. So to be able to comp against that and still grow is pretty impressive. Um, I think that's probably off the back of Google or performance max.
Um, but we can actually debate about that. Um, TikTok spent absolutely exploded 243%, um, growth quarter Q1 Q2 of 2022 versus last year's Q3 Q4, which is incredible, but pins pins actually surpassed snap. So snap just fell off. A cliff pins was actually up 10%. Um, I mean it's a nothing burger it's 7 million, 7.6 million. Again, this is across 5,000 merchants plus 50 plus countries, but, um, pretty impressive that they grew 10%. Um, and then snap fell off almost 24%, uh, negative, uh, quarter Q1, Q2 versus Q3 Q4 last. So yeah. Pins is coming, coming back. I, I don't know. I've never seen it really work well. Um, I've seen it as a tertiary channel kind of to your point, Ash, of trying to drive like quality traffic with, you know, economics where you're, it's not traffic campaigns per se, but it kind of is. Um, but it's just obviously not as efficacious as TikTok. So yeah, I, I don't know pins. It's also making a little runback in the, um, in the markets as well, but, uh, yeah, that was a, it, I'm

Barry Hott (00:48:46):

Not, I'm not anti Pinterest just to be clear. Yeah. Like I didn't want like my friend, my Pinterest friends, I don't know if I have any Pinterest friends, but like I don't <laugh>, I, uh, Pinterest is great for visual products, you know, anything that luxury fashion, and also

Rabah Rahil (00:49:01):

Aspirational. Yeah.

Barry Hott (00:49:03):

Super like there's tons to do on there. And I've often and always in will now say that the there's more value, I think, to what you get put into Pinterest than what you can track getting out of it. I think there are, there's a lot that's so put you wind up getting from it, uh, at scale over time in particular, um, sorry, I shouldn't mean to cut you

Ash Melwani (00:49:23):

Off. No, I I, to your point, right. I, I guess my question to that is like, how are you seeing that value kind of come in, even if it's not immediate direct conversions, right. Even if, cuz we were running Pinterest ads like last year you shut around. Yeah. Like we, yeah, I think it's more of the organic play than anything. Uh, but we spent like 50 K on it. The attribution window said that we made 200,000 on it. Um, but it was not a single person in a post-purchase survey said that they came from Pinterest right. Or started on Pinterest. So

Barry Hott (00:49:57):

Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:49:59):

I don't know where this attribution window comes from or how can we just be clear?

Barry Hott (00:50:02):

Yeah. Let me be clear if I'm you selling what you sell. I would not be on Pinterest and not, not, you know, and maybe the new whole thing that people are saying like that tick put your tos on Pinterest, maybe, you know? Yeah. Whatever. But would I spend a cent on it? No, absolutely not. Yeah. Um, unless you're trying to sell like your, your hoodie, you know, or your sweatshirt, like they, maybe we

Ash Melwani (00:50:26):

Went, we went the recipe approach. Right? Cause a lot of people go to, that's actually pretty good for Pinterest for recipe recipes and stuff, which is where the majority of like, I don't know what you call it, but they pinned into their board and this, and I still don't understand how the, the platform works. But again, I don't know where the attribution comes from again to post purchase surveys, such a great way to validate where you're actually seeing, you know, top of the funnel or whatever it is not, not a single person's at it. And even if they did it still doesn't make enough to be like, all right, let me, let me put double the budget in there too.

Barry Hott (00:50:59):

L let me ask a question who is using Pinterest that isn't using Facebook or TikTok or Snapchat or

Ash Melwani (00:51:08):

Anything? I don't think YouTube. Yeah. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:51:11):

And so like, I think it matters too. Oh, go ahead, Barry.

Barry Hott (00:51:15):

No, that was it.

Rabah Rahil (00:51:16):

Yeah. Well I think it matters too. This is why, um, I think YouTube ads can be hit or miss where it matters. Like usually if you're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, like you usually fill in time, like you don't have an object, like an objective, like you're just, these are gap fillers. Whereas like a lot of times, if you're on YouTube, you're like wanting to consume a thing. Like, you know what I mean? And so like trying to sell somebody when they're trying to do a thing, isn't great versus like trying to sell somebody when they're just meandering around metaphorically on the interwebs is actually a great time to pitch them a product where it's like, oh, that's really interesting. So I think for Pinterest it's so for me anyways, the way I used to use it was, um, you're so objective driven where it's like, you're pinning things, you're doing these things like that.
And so maybe you to your point, Ash, you can retarget them. And to your point, Barry, on a, a platform when they're in more of a, um, hypervigilant state to buy. But a lot of people, you know, I'm gonna be putting my house together. So like, oh, that's a cool couch. This is a cool couch. This is a cool couch, but I'm not making the decision right then. And so I find it to be hard to close on Pinterest, possibly to your point, Ash again, like it might be some decent top of the funnel stuff that you can start to drip on 'em but then again, you start to get into some economic constraints of like, okay, it costs me X amount to get somebody in the funnel through Pinterest. And now it costs me Y Z to actually close them. When I could have just shown 'em a TikTok, sent them an email and then hit him with the Facebook ad and bitch bash Bosch. My AOVs fine. And I'm on my way to the next purchase. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:52:47):

Well, the way that I was sold on it is that Pinterest would have been another discovery platform, like a search platform. It was a Google, right. People are searching for, um, too small weight loss, weight loss, uh, tips, weight, loss, smoothies, whatever it is. Right. And then we would come up for it. That's a fair point. I just don't think it was enough. Like you said, it's just not enough where too small where I think, yeah, exactly.

Rabah Rahil (00:53:09):

It's too small of a platform. Premise

Ash Melwani (00:53:11):

Is there, but

Rabah Rahil (00:53:12):

Yeah, you need a Google and Amazon, a YouTube to actually have proper volume to capture that, especially at your scale. Right? Like maybe if you're just starting out, you can get stuff, but like you're trying to figure out how you can move proper money. Not where you can, can spend your next a hundred, $200. Yeah, exactly. Amazing Barry, any parting thoughts before we get into the creepy question?

Barry Hott (00:53:35):

Oh gosh, I don't, I haven't prepared. Um, no, I I'm. I I'm just, I've been enjoying this. I wish I could be doing this all the time. Uh, this is

Rabah Rahil (00:53:44):

A really fun one. This is a lot of fun. This was a good one. I love, yeah. I love part of the they're

Barry Hott (00:53:48):

Part. The all pretty turn, but I've watched a lot of them. <laugh> oh,

Rabah Rahil (00:53:51):

You have? Oh, that, that hits me deep in the fields. <laugh> um, okay, so here's the creepy question. What would you ti, what would the title of your autobiography be? Who wants to start? Oh, Ash, it feels like you're onto something. No, let's for, for context, Barry, we do, uh, just a weird off the wall question. Um, kind of a little bit of a brain teaser we've had, uh, what would you do with an elephant? Um, and that was Gina. Gina would become a YouTube influencer. We did, uh, more wheels or doors. Which one was that? Are you an inside the shower, dry off person or outside the shower? Dry off person. I mean, we're talking about high level cognitive stuff here, Barry.

Barry Hott (00:54:33):

Yeah. Well, the there's, you know, the, those are, you know, a or B questions. Those aren't as fun. You want, you want the big, you want the big, this is a, this is a full free form thought question. So

Rabah Rahil (00:54:44):

I, to be fair that the elephant one wasn't the El, the elephant one was not binary. Yeah, that was good. But, but I, I take your point.

Barry Hott (00:54:51):

Um, well, you, you, in our email earlier today, you said hot and bothered. Uh, which I, that's not bad. I love, I like that. It's not bad. I also own, I own hot and bothered.com. <laugh> do you really? That's awesome. Yes. I

Rabah Rahil (00:55:05):

Today's amazing.

Barry Hott (00:55:08):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:55:10):

For people that are just listening. Yeah, exactly. For people that are just listening, uh, Barry hot, his last name is spelled H O T T. Um, so that's the, that's the pun. That's actually not bad. I'd buy it hot and bothered. Amazing. Um, what about you Ash? You ready? Ash? Comforting.

Barry Hott (00:55:31):

Hey, that's not horrible.

Rabah Rahil (00:55:33):

Oh my gosh. That is not horrible. That those are both heat. Those are both heat. I gotta tell you if there's any publishers out there, you need to option this ASAP. <laugh> ASME. Anything. That's pretty good. We need to have that as a, some triple well segment or something. That's hilarious.

Barry Hott (00:55:49):

That's your YouTube. That's actually, that's

Rabah Rahil (00:55:51):

Your hilarious

Barry Hott (00:55:51):

YouTube or like Twitter

Rabah Rahil (00:55:53):

Screens or something

Barry Hott (00:55:54):

Like that. Oh, we

Rabah Rahil (00:55:55):

Should. That is hilarious. I have nothing now. Yeah. You guys wrecked me. I shouldn't should have went first.

Barry Hott (00:55:59):

That's your office hours. That's your Ash. I know office hours. It's

Rabah Rahil (00:56:02):

Just like, that's amazing. We were gonna do ocean hours, but Ash me anything's even better. That's incredible. That's

Barry Hott (00:56:10):

Incredible.

Rabah Rahil (00:56:11):

<laugh> what do I, I know, right? We got a green light. This, we need a new slack channel ASAP. Yeah. Uh, what would I do? Hot and bothered. Ask me anything. Hows are really good. I don't know if I can come back from this. What would I do? Um, man, I got nothing. What's a good, I don't know. I have to punt. What would I, what would I be? Auto autobiography, hot and bothered. Ask me anything. Well, sign off first Barry. And I'll think of something. Tell the people how they can follow you, how they can get more involved with, with Barry hot, how they can get hot and bothered. You're doing some cool stuff with Jess at hire fire team too. I really enjoy those. Those are it's pretty funny. Thanks, man. I really like that.

Barry Hott (00:56:52):

Thanks man. We're we're we're doing some more stuff. I'm hoping to be doing more stuff like that on my own, on my own YouTube. Maybe I'll do an interview show called hot and bothered where I just bother people. That's for an hour's.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:02):

That's really good. Um,

Barry Hott (00:57:03):

It's a great idea. Um, but yeah, uh, Barry hot.com. That's uh, two teas, uh, and find me on Twitter at Bing hot and uh, you know, hopefully more fun stuff for me in the coming months, but nothing too crazy right now. <laugh> that's just, just doing and doing stuff. Fun stuff like this.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:21):

<laugh> amazing. Hanging out in Brooklyn, living the life.

Barry Hott (00:57:25):

<laugh> yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:26):

Um, Ash, do the spiel. Let the people know if they're buy a vitamin shop, what do they need to do?

Ash Melwani (00:57:32):

<laugh> if you need some collagen in your life, you need to reverse the signs of aging and you got a vitamin shop near you. Go check it out. You'll find us on the shelves. Tell them that your favorite collagen is Avi. Take a picture of it, send it to me on Twitter or retweet, shave everything. Um, but yeah, follow me on Twitter at ASME Milani. Um, also on mentor pass, uh, check me out there if you need any advice on paid media. Um, also looking for more. Yeah. And Barry too. Oh,

Rabah Rahil (00:58:02):

You're you're on mentor pass. Why didn't you say that? We love Kenny here.

Barry Hott (00:58:05):

Oh, I amazing. I should have said that.

Rabah Rahil (00:58:08):

I fuck that. It's all

Barry Hott (00:58:09):

It. It's like on my

Ash Melwani (00:58:11):

Sign up, sign up for some time with Barry, get some hot takes in there. Let's

Rabah Rahil (00:58:14):

Go. Let's go. That's actually not a bad one either. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:58:18):

And then last thing, if you are a U GC creator hit me, my DMS, um, looking for a ton of creators so far, I've had over 150 people send us some, uh, some content and we're trying to create a massive roster paid obviously. Um, but in my DMS, so, yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:58:35):

Amazing. And if you are looking to, uh, step up your influencer game, we just did a great pod, uh, with Josh about influencer, I think. Was it LA last week? Wasn't it? Or two weeks? Two weeks. That two, two ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah, he crushed. It was a really, really good one. Um, if you wanna get more involved at triple well, we are try triple. No, no, no more try. Actually we're triple whale.com. You see I'm flustered by the title of the autobiography. Um, triple.com. We're on the whale or bird app at, uh, triple whale. And then if you want to subscribe to our amazing newsletter, it is every Tuesday and Thursday, it goes out called whale mail. You can do that right on the Twitter app. Um, man, I can't believe I asked the question. I didn't have the answer. I feel like I'm,

Barry Hott (00:59:17):

That's what I was shocked by.

Rabah Rahil (00:59:19):

I can't, I had an answer. I know your guys' answers were too good and they rattled me

Barry Hott (00:59:24):

And you stalled it long enough for me to, you know, tried to fill up. I'm thinking for you. I can't think of

Rabah Rahil (00:59:30):

Anything. I written nothing. Right.

Barry Hott (00:59:32):

I like, I figure about like the shiny shoes or you know, like the shiniest shoes on the block or something. I

Rabah Rahil (00:59:39):

Was, I was thinking sneaker puns. Yeah. Like

Barry Hott (00:59:42):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:59:42):

Bare feet. Maybe I can call it bare feet, little sneaker pun. Huh? No, nothing Ashe isn't into it. You got nothing. I three big planes and I can't, I can't get self self-titled unbelievable.

Barry Hott (00:59:55):

<laugh> unbelievable. Is that somewhat who's who's autobiography is called unbelievable. I feel like, can we do, can we do a contest? Like

Rabah Rahil (01:00:04):

Oh amazing.

Barry Hott (01:00:05):

Best one. The comments gets a little, some, some,

Rabah Rahil (01:00:08):

Yeah, I'll send you some triple whale swag. Whoever wants it. You can pick out, uh, some t-shirt and socks and gimme the title of my autobiography. Put it in the, uh, the comments section either on the YouTube video or on the Twitter that we put out. Look at that. Yeah. Look at that. People helping people. It's powerful stuff. I love it. Love it. Amazing Barry. This is incredible. We have to have you back on make your regular or something. This is really interesting, man. I love the way you approach acquisition, the way you think of marketing, the way you just, uh you're so even keeled, but at the same time, have very like the way I would describe you is, uh, strong opinions, weekly held. And I think that's a really good way to live life where you believe in what you believe in. But if you are encounter different data or something like that, you will absolutely, um, change your mind a reverse course. And I think that's a really, really productive way to live. Not only in terms of marketing, but in terms of going through your life. Um, congrats again, literally

Barry Hott (01:01:00):

I'm literally gonna cry. That was very nice. That was beautiful. That was very beautiful. I had to make for my, he doesn't talk to me like

Rabah Rahil (01:01:06):

No title.

Barry Hott (01:01:07):

<laugh> I really work hard to, to, to do that, to like what you just, I need to like write that down. What you just said.

Rabah Rahil (01:01:15):

Put my trouble.

Barry Hott (01:01:16):

I'm

Rabah Rahil (01:01:17):

In trouble with the pod, with the podcast best. I'm sorry, Ashley. No, I love you. The podcast partner. That's actually nice alliteration. All love

Barry Hott (01:01:23):

To all love.

Rabah Rahil (01:01:24):

Amazing folks. Thank you so much for joining us. If you do enjoy the podcast, be sure to share it. Tell your friends to subscribe, go subscribe to our YouTube channel. Um, go follow Ash, go follow Barry, go follow our triple. Um, I'm also on mentor pass. If you wanna go gimme some money for sneakers and then I think that's it guys. Another one in the books. I really appreciate the time. Um, and we'll see everybody next time. Thanks so much.

Barry Hott (01:01:47):

He's out.

Podcast

This is Working RIGHT Now In Media Buying... - W/ Barry Hott

March 18, 2024

1:01:58

Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale
Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi

Guests

Barry Hott

Episode Description

in this episode, we pull back the curtain on what is working right now in media buying and what you might want to consider doing. #Adspend

Notes & Links

📧Subscribe to Whale Mail for exclusive industry insights and in-depth marketing breakdowns: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tripl...

🐦 Follow us on Twitter for Industry insights https://twitter.com/triplewhale

Follow the people featured in this episode here:

- Rabah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabahrahil
- Ash's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashvinmelwani
- Barry's Twitter: https://twitter.com/binghott

Transcription

Barry Hott (00:00:00):

The more that I can have more ads that are getting more people to take more valuable actions that I can track. The more that those ads are also leading to other impact beyond just the conversions that we're tracking. That's my like firm belief.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:23):

And we are back folks for your favorite DTC podcast. And boy, do we got a screamer for you? The man with the plan, Barry hot. How are you? How's the VDO. How's the new baby. He didn't gimme the hat. He didn't, he has a lot of drip. Didn't gimme the drip, he's wearing some swag. Um, but, uh, how are you doing Barry?

Barry Hott (00:00:44):

I'm good. Car's good. Baby's good. Baby's great. Baby's daycare amazing. Uh, very exciting times, uh, for, for that baby.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:52):

Amazing first baby. Correct? First

Barry Hott (00:00:54):

One. Yeah. Number, number one. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:57):

Don't, that's amazing. Do it

Barry Hott (00:00:58):

Ever again? Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:01:01):

And then not a baby, but look at that baby face my partner in crime. Ashvin wan Ash, how are you? How you doing always swag out. Looking good that, that P OD swag that Ron just dropped, dropped all the cookies. He let everybody know. Yeah. Yeah. Thread was heat. That thread was heat.

Barry Hott (00:01:19):

Yep. That's it. The secret's out. We're always giving out our secrets.

Rabah Rahil (00:01:23):

It's tough. I know you guys are so giving. It's so great. Oh, I'm going into God mud here. I gotta gotta hit this. Uh, gone, go this
Too bright over. Um, alright folks. Well, we're actually gonna get into a lot of stuff. Barry is one of the best acquisition marketers, retention, marketers, just overall big brain guy. And I love him. He always has hot takes, but, um, the data and logic to back them up. So let's just jump in. What are you seeing kind of working in the ecosystem and then we can kind of just fish bash that off of kind of what Ash has seeing and, and let's just start to jump into some combos. So, Barry, what do you, what are you seeing people succeeding with right now? What should people be staying away with in terms of, uh, acquisition and specific paid?

Barry Hott (00:02:06):

Yeah. You know, I've been meaning to tweet this and I don't like giving away my secrets. I'm I'm still getting used to Twitter and, and the idea of giving away what is working I'm, I'm still really not accustomed to this. So like I'm like giving away a value, a very simple, this is not, not revolutionary what I'm about to say, but it is a value bomb and I'm gonna drop, uh, which is that images <laugh> are working real good. <laugh> I've

Rabah Rahil (00:02:37):

Been saying really?

Barry Hott (00:02:38):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been saying it too, actually. I haven't been seeing it, but I've been seeing it. Uh, yeah. Uh, you know, I preach a lot about video and I think video fundamentally is a future. And I often, I often think that images are, I'm seeing images, working and scaling in a lot of places because those are brands that aren't getting video to scale as well. So, you know, there's some chicken in, there's some egg, uh, going on there, but I am having some success with some images. Uh, so, and I'm having fun producing it, um, and coming up with image ideas and playing with that. So that's what I'm seeing right now. Start with that.

Rabah Rahil (00:03:20):

Let me jump in and then, and then you can rattle off Ash. Yeah. Two things. One. Are you seeing that across the whole funnel or when I was used, when I was running my agency, we saw images crush on retargeting more than videos. Yeah, of course. Um, but so I didn't know if it was, if there was a certain stage of the funnel that's crushing at, and then do you also think it's because you can have a higher creative velocity with images just because they're inherently easier to iterate make than, um, videos, even short videos are kind of a lift, unless you have like the, the Ash influencer set up where he has a thousand people, billion people and sending him creative throughout this whole thing. Um, it can be challenge. Yeah, exactly. It can be challenging, right. To keep up that creative velocity to ensure that you have that throughput to, um, scale. So those are my two questions and I'll toss it over to Ash

Barry Hott (00:04:11):

So much to address there. <laugh> um, first and foremost, the like the whole image working and retargeting thing, I would probably, you know, historically think about that being maybe related to just being cheaper inventory that if you're retargeting and Facebook's trying to like, you know, I think you guys know me well enough. So I don't know if someone watching would know, I, I'm kind of almost like a, um, conspiracy theorist in terms of, Facebook's trying to just get credit for the easiest conversions. It can rather than driving actual incremental conversions. So I have typically thought that Facebook, when it can get a cheap click from someone that's already in funnel is going to do so with the hopes of that, it's just gonna take credit for it. So that's why I would expect to see some retargeting image stuff historically have worked that way. Um, but hard to say if that's true or not, and if that was true or still is what I'm actually seeing right now, however, is images working well in prospecting and across several accounts that I have access to, um, and that I'm working on, which is interesting. Um, and I think it might, I don't, it's not, they're not accounts that are also even like shitting out a billion images. They're not oh, okay. Um, yeah, we, we probably we'll start more because we're, you know, what we're seeing working compared to video and how scalable some of it can be. Um, part of me thinks that it has a lot to do with the relaxation of the 20% text rule. Mm-hmm <affirmative> from the past. That's

Rabah Rahil (00:05:53):

Great point. That's actually a really good point

Barry Hott (00:05:55):

That, yeah, that, I think that was, was something, you know, if I had one small regret about the last year, it would be not immediately capitalizing on text in ads. Um, I remember, you know, the reason why that 20% text rule was a thing was because it prevented advertisers from making tech heavy ads, which were a bad experience for users on Instagram and Facebook, or, you know, early on, or even just Facebook early on. But I think what we've learned now is that it actually is, it can be done in a spammy way and it can be done in a positive, useful way where you can have three big words that takes up more than 20% of the screen. And it not feel like shit. It can feel nice. It can feel helpful. It can, you know, maybe it still is spammy. Maybe it still is very ad, you know, focused and I to wear. There's still a lot to unpack there from a real like subconscious user psych or sorry, consumer psychology, whatever standpoint. But I think thinking about how Facebook originally like disallowed that, and then started to, uh, just have it penalize your ads, and then now has moved away from that completely. It's really interesting to see that kind of self-regulation shift. And now I'm playing with that more and it's allowing for really strong copywriting to prevail. That's what I think I'm seeing

Rabah Rahil (00:07:27):

When that market cap shrinks. You want that money? <laugh> um, the

Barry Hott (00:07:32):

Other thing don't know if it's relates to that, but maybe I

Rabah Rahil (00:07:34):

I'm teasing. I mean, it is what it is at the end of the day. They they're, they're taking haircuts less than most people though, to be fair <laugh> um, but sorry, keep cutting you off Ash. I'll give it to you after this, but to, to your point, Barry, the, the 20% rule is such a really pressuring point because what I've seen, um, just anecdotally is really impactful testimonial ads in images where you can have these kind of longer testimonials, you have this nice lifestyle image or person that you can relate to mm-hmm <affirmative> and then you kind of read their story. And it's almost like in a, not a meme format, but it's a really nice consumable, like where before you couldn't do that, and you have this gorgeous testimonial, and this is like this, you know, three or four sentences of just awesomeness mm-hmm <affirmative>, but you'd have to put in the text or something like that. Nobody like, it's your point? Copy helpful. But I see ads in terms of a hierarchy where I creatives at the top. Right. I do creative headline text. That's kind of like the, the hierarchy for me. Um, and then CTAs, obviously last, but, um, anyway, just wanted to throw that in there. Ash, take us away.

Ash Melwani (00:08:33):

Okay. So I, I got a lot here. All right. Let's good. Because, because I think this entire year from what I've been doing at Avi and what I've been kind of putting out on Twitter is that we've been testing like 20 to 40 creatives a week. And purely based on the fact that they were static images, right? It's a lot easier to pump out that much more creative than videos, right? You gotta get content creators, this and that pay influencers. Like it's a deliver of love. But, um, we found that just getting two or three designers and just pumping out creatives was the easiest way to go. Okay. Um, to your point on the, the text rule, as soon as that was lifted in my head immediately, everybody post iOS update was saying, you're creative is going to do the targeting, right. And at the same time, this is when that text rule kind of like went away.
And in my head, I was like, all right, how do I do, how do, how do I get my creative to do the targeting, utilizing text on our graphics? Right? So if you see any of our ads, look at our ad library, look at the stuff that I'm tweeting out. Literally our main headline is on the creative and I fully believe that is why we're able to target the right person to come to our website and purchase. Right? So two things here is that, uh, and Barry, you tell me what you're saying, but basically at least on our static images, our cost per click is typically a lot higher. Uh, click through rate is a lot lower, but our conversion rate is very, very high. Like I'm talking seven to 10% conversion rate on our Landers because I think because the creative is very targeted to the specific problem that like, for example, say goodbye to hair loss, you're talking to somebody who wants to address this problem and you're getting that right person to your page and they're converting, right?
Mm-hmm <affirmative> so what we're seeing is higher conversion rate, higher cost per traffic, right? I'm looking anywhere from three to $5 cost per Clipse, which is tougher to scale, right? It is very tough to scale this. Um, which is why I think we've moved into this. Like if our, if our end C is like at X KPI, we're good to go. Um, getting like your cost per click to get lower on, like on an image is very tough because then you give up the conversion rate, right? So recently what we decided to test was more videos. Okay. TikTok style videos, U C style videos, we're testing everything and we're putting it all into the same adset video, statics, everything, what I've noticed. And this is where triple will has helped us significantly is that the first click is gonna start to come from the video, right.
Because one that has higher clickthrough rates and lower CPCs. Okay. Um, but lower conversion rates, then what I end up seeing is that our static images will not get as much volume, but they'll get a lot of conversions because they're also last click. So because we're running this full funnel approach where everything's in one campaign, everything's being driven by this like highly engaging video, which is your top of the funnel really within this campaign. And then people are converting on the static images, which is what you mentioned is it does perform better on retargeting, right? So looking at like a first click basis, the video is where it's driving the awareness on the last click basis. Our static images are, are performing really well right now. Um, so that was kind of us shifting over the last couple weeks because of the algorithm change and they're pushing more videos. And we wanted to say on top of that, but I've found that it's been, we've been able to scale a little bit more during a slower period of time for us because we've added videos into the mix that may or may not be converting on the first touch, but they're, they're basically setting it up for the, the static images to kind of convert later down the funnel within, within that same campaign. Um, cool. But yeah. Thoughts,

Barry Hott (00:12:23):

Can I ask, can I ask a question?

Ash Melwani (00:12:25):

Yeah.

Barry Hott (00:12:26):

What attribution, I hate to have to do this. I don't really wanna spend this time talking about this the whole time, but we might. Yeah. What attribution setting are you using?

Ash Melwani (00:12:35):

One day clicks.

Barry Hott (00:12:36):

Okay. Okay. The

Ash Melwani (00:12:38):

G none of that one day view, none of that. None of that

Rabah Rahil (00:12:42):

View theories, chew

Barry Hott (00:12:43):

Throughs. Good.

Ash Melwani (00:12:44):

Yeah, none of that.

Barry Hott (00:12:45):

Okay. So that's

Ash Melwani (00:12:46):

Not

Rabah Rahil (00:12:46):

To cut you off there, but let me, let me, uh, pull some people along that aren't there. Um, first click attribution is what as is talking about and last click attribution, their different attribution models, and then, uh, N C or N CPA is just your new customer, um, CPA. So just to make sure that everybody that isn't hip to the game is following along conversation. Mr. Hot is to you.

Barry Hott (00:13:07):

And then I'll add the one day click attribution setting is a setting in Facebook, which controls how Facebook delivers and also reports. So those are separate, all separate things. Um, but they all can relate. So interesting hearing that you're doing the one day click, I, you know, mostly do approve. <laugh> like, I'm a

Ash Melwani (00:13:24):

Big one day click guy.

Barry Hott (00:13:25):

<laugh> um, there, there are some oddities I've seen in terms of like, I I'll be very honest. I don't think that I try to waste time breaking down the differences in CPCs, conversion rates, CTRs, whatever between anything. I expect them to all be different. And I'd like to talk about why. Right. And I, this is a tweet, this is a Twitter thread. I'm like, I have drafted that. Like, I've dying to like launch, but it's like 50 tweets. So I don't, I don't think it's appropriate for Twitter thread.

Ash Melwani (00:14:04):

I do. I do wanna just preface that before. Cause I know where you want to go with this is that I fully do agree that yeah, there isn't a correlation between CPC, CTR and CPA. Yeah. Right. However, I do think the creatives that do have the better soft metrics are easier to scale at higher budget.

Barry Hott (00:14:26):

I, because I understand that. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Keep going.

Ash Melwani (00:14:29):

So keep going. One thing is that when we were scaling from 20 to 30 K a day, right. That large jump, we saw our average CPC increase up until like the average of fours. Um, obviously we're taking up more inventory from Facebook. We're obviously, you know, our cost for traffic is gonna increase, but our conversion rate doesn't increase at that same rate unless we're making changes. Right. So then my CAC is gonna increase on a, on just a, a fully mathematical equation. Right. So, yeah, I agree up until a certain point that there's going to be like the sweet spot within budget and like your, I guess, cost of traffic, but that video that's getting like a dollar click and maybe a lower conversion rate can scale a little bit more aggressively. And, and that's just, just, that's just how I've been seeing it recently, cuz like we've, we've cut back budgets during the summer. But in the last couple weeks we were able to scale a little bit just by throwing in some videos that we're sending low tra uh, low cost traffic at a lower conversion rate, but then having the status pick up that retargeting as well. Well, so yeah,

Barry Hott (00:15:33):

I, I appreciate all that and I, I don't have anything wrong with that. Yeah. Right. Like I think what I'm trying to say is there's multiple and this is the thing you'll you'll own like this is what my brain is just constantly going around in circles on stuff like this. And I love talking about this, but like there are just so many variables that we can't possibly see that are impacting this. So when I think about just simply ad a versus ad B two, two unrelated ads, okay. They're not an iteration of each other, even if they were similarly related, we could talk about that. But let's say they're two different ads. I don't care if they're images or videos. I don't care if they're the same or different. Okay. One of them is going to have a better CPC or better CTR than the other.
One of them is going to be delivering more to younger users. One of them is gonna be delivering more to older users. Maybe it'll be similar. Maybe it'll be more relevant to peop to men. Maybe it'll be more relevant to women. Maybe it'll be more relevant to people in Washington or Miami or Detroit, all of those variables. And plus placement, Instagram stories, Instagram feeds real Facebook, right column. All of these variables are more or less relevant to the ad. And then the user is going to react differently to them in those different placements. So I just have given up on trying to make sense of like, oh, if I get my CPCs up here, it'll do this. Because from what I've seen, both my doing this myself and also like analyzing other people's work is so often it's like, yeah, they found a data correlation, but it is not at all the causation.
Right. That's why so many people think that CPC relates to CPA directly because if you set your systems up in a way that in a certain way, then it will like there there's so many ways that those can correlate because of they, they kind of should. But that doesn't mean that they're caused by that. So I don't know if I've helped here or if I've made a good case about anything cuz it's really just, I'm just pointing out. It's really fuzzier and blurrier. And I just care at the end of the day about getting the cost per conversion down. Yeah. For the most part, like 90% of what I care about is that, and then the other 10% is me worrying a little bit, just a little bit about if I focus too hard on conversions, am I actually limiting myself in terms of impressions or reach or clicks?
Maybe some of those other things, maybe I do want more traffic. Maybe I just want more people to just see the ads, even if they're not, there are other intrinsic brand value things. Um, but for the most part, my firm belief, this is again that 90% is that the more that I can have more ads that are getting more people to take more valuable actions that I can track. The more that those ads are also leading to other impact beyond just the conversions that we're tracking. That's my like firm belief. And that's why when I, when I hear, when I talk about like make ugly ads, right? Like, and people talk, say like, oh, don't make ugly ads. It hurts your brand. I'm like, no, it doesn't because I'm getting more people to pay attention. I've already, I've doing that better. And I'm getting more people that are interested in buying and taking action. Therefore I have a, I'm having a much bigger overall impact with my ads than anything else. I'm definitely not saying make ugly ads that are actually Gar actually, ah, sorry, actually garbage and people don't like or piss people off. Don't do that. Yeah. But that's my whole spiel. Like it's a big, that was a big one. Sorry. I ate up a lot of time there.

Ash Melwani (00:19:35):

No, I, I, I, I think it's great because like, even to your point, the ugly ads, right? Let's say if I, if I stray away from, from our brand, right. Our brand is bright colors, pink packaging, this and that. Um, I've mentioned this before, like some of the ads where it's just like just blank background, picture of the product and it crushes cuz it's like, yeah, one, your packaging PA uh, pops this and that. But like it's not your standard, like branded ads where like, I'll have my, my co-founder, uh, Anket who's designed the entire branding. Right. Which mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you know, biased as this is. It's like, I think it's the, the most beautiful packaging in the world. But when he designs an ad versus another designer, he's thinking fully on branded elements, everything that needs to be perfect, but right. I would say like 90% of the time, the other ads that aren't perfect perform the best. Yeah. And that's why he's like, I'm not doing ads anymore. So to your point, ugly ads can convert very well.

Barry Hott (00:20:32):

And that's the fundamental of make ugly ads is like, not like don't make really ugly, bad ads. It's like make the less perfect version of the a you wanna make, but that doesn't fit well on a hat.

Ash Melwani (00:20:45):

<laugh> I

Rabah Rahil (00:20:47):

Love that. Um, I would push back a little bit here and well, first off, I totally agree with you guys. I think the biggest thing is one to Barry's point causation is way more important than correlation, but two, I think you always have to start with the goal in mind and like what's the goal. And so when people talk to me about CPMs, I'm like, what do you care if you're paying more to be in the room with all these rich people that are gonna buy something, versus you're gonna be in this room with all these plebes that are just tire kickers and never gonna buy anything? Like what do you care? Like, are you try, unless you're in running to your point, Barry, like, um, just reach campaigns or really just trying to maximize the impressions that you're getting at a certain rate. Like, unless you're running those campaigns, then CPMs are pretty much relevant to you.
Like who cares? Like all you want to do is like, if I told you I could get you lower CPMs, if I could told you I could get you lower cost per acquisition, what would you choose? Like, so I, I get really lost in the kind of CPM maxi debate, but, um, I will say that when I was running ads at my agency, it was always a question that I had for the brand owner where we would have brands that I think we've talked about this on past podcast, but we would have ads that were crushing it. Um, and they were seasonal, right? Like we had to ad that's like, get, get your gut ready for the, uh, holidays or whatever, and have like a little pumpkin in it, like the pumpkin emoji. And it would just crush. And so I would go to the brand owner and be like, Hey, like it's not October anymore.
Like it's not November anymore. Do you want me to change this out? Or like, should I just keep letting it ride? Or like, and so I think the broader point that you're making is really ENT, but it also needs to be balanced. So like one, you shouldn't one of the biggest things that improved me as a marketer was I stopped war shipping the, um, at the altar of aesthetic where it's like, just because something looks good and is incredible. Very rarely has any causation to its performance. Like it's very much so usually an ego thing. Um, but at the same time, you need to understand perception and understand where you're trying to position your brand. And so you need to understand that like possibly, like for example, like Eve St Loran or some sort of really fancy luxury brand will never run something that looks crappy performance aside. It just won't because there's this brand equity that is built into the perception of the brand. Whereas there can be you disagree. I love this. Give me your disagreement.

Barry Hott (00:23:19):

This is a hard one. I like this is really, really difficult. Um, because like I agree with what you're saying, fundamentally agree with what you've just said. The problem is that you're still talking about ads on a social platform and you're still talking about, you have to make stuff to meet people where they are, this is not TV. This is, is not print. Right. You're you can't, you have to make something that is relevant to the, the space or more people avoid it. Unless we're talking about kind of what Ash was saying earlier is like, if you're targeting with your creative, but I, I know we all know rich people. Okay. And rich people are just as dumb as the rest of us. Okay. And they like looking at the same content that we do, right. Like, just because they're rich doesn't mean that they don't look at memes and don't look at viral videos.
So like aesthetically, you still need to be conscious of that. I mean, will they do that? Absolutely not because they're pretentious and filled with ego. And as you just said, and I love, and I want on a t-shirt they do worship at the altar of aesthetic. I, I want stop worshiping at the altar of aesthetic TA tattooed on my body, or at least just on the t-shirt let's make that shirt. But that I, I don't think those brands would ever admit to that. And some actually do. I think there are some of those like luxury brands that have figured out are willing to play the game and are willing to make TikTok shit that is wacky and weird and fits the audience, but is still elevated in their way and still luxurious in their way. So it's a weird thing, but they can still make ugly ads.

Rabah Rahil (00:25:11):

I'll I'll I'll keep your 90 10 kind of going, I'll say you're 90%. Right. But I think the 10% is luxury vertical where the luxury vertical is just super pretentious. Like I've seen luxury, I've seen Gucci, I've seen really crazy high end brands run ads without CTAs.

Barry Hott (00:25:29):

Let me, let me, let me try something here. Okay. If you're selling private jet hours. Yeah. Okay. Let's is that a fair? Is that a fair, like super luxury, right? I

Rabah Rahil (00:25:39):

Don't know. Not really. It's a luxury commodity, but so it's a luxury commodity, not a luxury brand

Barry Hott (00:25:45):

Pick one. Okay. Pick one.

Rabah Rahil (00:25:47):

No, but you got, you see what I'm saying? Right? Like that's just, I do it's fair. A high spending fair point consumption versus like a Gucci bag or a me bien bag or, um, something fancy. That's totally different. Let's go Birken bag Birken bag. Yeah. Berken. So for people that don't know, this is made by air me super fancy bag. They start like 10, $20,000. And it's basically the glorified purse. It's it's really nice. Don't get me wrong. But they even have one with, uh, made, they did a collab with Birkenstock that it's made of old Birkenstock. But anyways, I digress.

Barry Hott (00:26:17):

Love it.

Rabah Rahil (00:26:18):

Birken Birken okay.

Barry Hott (00:26:20):

Fine. I, the supplies to any of it, this is my point, uh, is the, the difference I'm talking about is shooting this on an iPhone or shooting this on a red camera. Do, do you need to shoot the ad or the content showing the bag wherever it is in whatever location it is, does it need to be shot on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and lighting and models? Maybe the models, all the, the models we can, we can come back to, or can it just be shot on an iPhone and would that fundamentally be making an ugly ad in my opinion, yes. And or uglier version of the ad. And it's making the version that more people, luxury focused minded people as well would be more likely to not skip if they saw on their feed. That's my hypothesis. I haven't prove it.
Cuz I don't like working with the egos of people in luxury, um, or, or high fashion or whatever. But that is what I've seen repeatedly win over time is finding the more authentic way to shoot it or, or produce it or edit it that isn't fully polished, starting with a logo on the screen, you know, perfect fade, you know, edits like TikTok edits are harsh, man. Like they're not, they're not sweet, sweeping, beautiful things. They're zooms in, you know? So that's the kind of stuff that is subconscious that people pay attention to subconsciously. So that's what I think about.

Rabah Rahil (00:27:57):

I think it's a super valid response, but you just, this is why I love having conversations with you cuz you made me, oh, solidify my like my argument finally coalesced or not argument. But uh, my thesis finally coalesced was that luxury brands are inherently aspirational and you don't aspire to be shooting a film with like, that's why a luxury brands overspend. That's why like you wanna see this super polished thing. And so that's where my pushback comes in, where it's like, you can't that. That's why. So let me make my thesis even stronger. That's why they hate counterfeits. It's not because it hurts the business. It's because if I'm paying 10,000, 20,000, $30,000, I wanna be seen in a certain strata. Whereas if all these people are wearing all these fake Buren bags that have no money. And again, I'm not like this big class, I'm just trying to make the point sure.
Of like these people don't ha don't have the money to really actually afford this and they're faking it. And now you're lumping me in with them. Like Louis Baton had this huge issue with that, right? Where like their bags were just getting the, the print were just getting and now you see everybody caring where it's like, you can't afford a $7,000 duffle. What are you doing over here? And then it starts degrade again against that brand equity. And it stops becoming aspirational, which is every like you luxury. And this is, I guess the, the core of my argument, luxury brands are not built on utility. They're built on perception and perception is a function of status and status is a function of exclusivity. And the more you get away from that, the more it hurts the brand.

Barry Hott (00:29:29):

Let me, let me, let me clarify. I agree with what you're saying. I'm saying that you have to do that. What you've just said, build that like exclusivity or that, um, I forgot the word you just used, but it was, it was spot on like that is what you build in the frame, like in the shot, what is what's happening? What's being said what's being shown got, but I'm talking about how you show it. I'm talking about like the difference between the shooting it on iPhone and shooting it on a 200 millimeter, 2.8. I don't know how familiar you are with, you know, camera lenses. I am yeah. Shooting on a 2.8 lens. Like maybe that would, you know, maybe I will go get my 200 millimeter and shoot and shoot a something at 2.8 video. But like I think most people won't subconsciously understand what they've just seen and slide into their feed, but what they will subconsciously be doing is realize this is not normal and maybe it'll be for the better, but they'll know that it's more professional when you have that level of what, uh, for the viewer, what I'm talking about is background blur, uh, and, and depth of field and focused Boca.
That's the kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. Boca, that's the kind of stuff that people subconsciously understand when they're scrolling through is, is something was shot authentically on a mobile phone or inauthentically on a professional camera. And even that bar alone is enough to lose people's attention. So I'm saying that, that that is the, is the point is like, yeah, you absolutely need to still make it like special and spectacular and even more spectacular, but you have to find ways to make it also something that looks and feels for the platform, which is in a lot of ways, the that's fair, most luxurious thing that you can do is actually understanding how to make stuff for the right platform.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:24):

I'll I'll concede that that's fair. Um, okay. Enough luxury stuff. What do you guys, you guys ever, that

Barry Hott (00:31:30):

Was real. That was a great, it was really, really enjoy talking. And I'm not saying you're wrong by the way you like, I very well could be wrong. I just wanna make sure that's clear. Yeah. I very

Rabah Rahil (00:31:38):

Well, same, same, same, same.

Barry Hott (00:31:40):

I will say anyone who does work in luxury, who would like in the comments or somewhere say that I'm wrong. Fundamentally, that person does not understand what I'm talking about. So like yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:51):

Like,

Barry Hott (00:31:51):

Yeah, no I'm trying in terms of, so yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:31:54):

And to be fair, like aspirational luxury brands are kind of like a horrible, uh, bellwether for almost everybody. Like, unless you're a luxury aspirational brand <laugh> because they just do everything that is like counterintuitive to acquisition. Because again, like the less people that buy their products, but because they can charge X amount of dollars, like there's literally wait lists, like for example, like Rolex, you can't buy a role, a new Rolex. You have to actually be a previous owner. Ferrari's are the same way. Like you actually can't buy the new Ferrari. You have to have actually own a Ferrari for X amount of years to actually get the opportunity to buy a Ferrari. It's like, so there it's just in a totally different economic realm, but speaking of different, have you guys really wanted

Barry Hott (00:32:38):

To traffic? I really wanted to. I wanted to say

Rabah Rahil (00:32:40):

Something, oh, go, go for it. I'm so sorry. Get in it. I'm sorry. Get in it.

Barry Hott (00:32:43):

No, I was gonna say something about the industry, which is that similar to what you just said about like, you have to have a Rolex to get a Rolex for you to like get a job in luxury in, in high fashion. Like, especially in marketing, you have to have already been there. You have to have come from the lineage. Like they're not hiring me. And they wouldn't. And even if they did hire me, they wouldn't listen to me because they'd be like, no, no, no buddy you're this is not

Rabah Rahil (00:33:07):

How we got brand guidelines, Carrie, we got brand brand guidelines, Barry, come on.

Barry Hott (00:33:12):

Yeah. Like they would make the point. You were the point you were making, but they wouldn't consider listening to me like you. But so that's the problem. Uh, and I've seen it and I've, I've, I've worked, I've talked to these people. Um, so they think I'm an absolute lunatic. Um, just who we knows nothing, which is, which

Rabah Rahil (00:33:29):

Is to be fair. You are an absolute lunatic, but we still love you.

Barry Hott (00:33:32):

I'll take it. <laugh> I'll

Rabah Rahil (00:33:34):

Okay. So swinging from the super high end Birken bag to the plebes <laugh> um, have you guys ever run traffic campaigns? Have you ever seen any success with those

Barry Hott (00:33:45):

Ash? I'll let you go.

Ash Melwani (00:33:47):

<laugh> um, no. Uh, have not, um

Barry Hott (00:33:52):

<laugh> no, you haven't run them or no. You haven't

Ash Melwani (00:33:54):

Seen success. No, I haven't seen results. Um, however, um, I actually, I, I have a point to this cuz I did want to bring this up cuz I think it ties into what we've been trying to do with like influencer marketing. Um, I think a lot of people now are taking the approach of like, how do I feed my top of the funnel? Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the, the consensus I feel right now is that when you're running TikTok, you're running Facebook. It's more like, it's not truly top of the funnel. It's more so like yeah. There's some new people kind of coming in there, but the majority of it right now, especially people running full funnels right now, it's just constantly just hitting this like wave of people. Right. So if you go back and look at your ad account, your frequency is like 10, right.
Even though you've spent 10 million. Right? So here's where I feel like the, the premise of like why Facebook is trying to get you to like run traffic campaigns or they're trying to get, or like TikTok is trying to get you to run video view campaigns is so that you are adding to the top of the funnel so that the rest of your account can start to kind of stabilize and, and convert more people right now. I don't think that the traffic quality coming in from these campaigns is ideal. I would rather the quality, I would rather the traffic come from influencers where I'm paying X amount for just like, say reach or awareness, say like TikTok views, um, or reach on Instagram. I'm not necessarily looking for a direct ROI. I'm looking. I would then see one, all right, am I getting like fine? Am I getting discount code sales from, you know, their code and link buy or whatever, find that that's one metric to see if they're working. But my overall approach after the fact of having like a team of influencer start talking about Avi is to see if the rest of my funnel is performing well. So I wanna see Facebook get better. I wanna see TikTok get better. I wanna see our blended costs come down. Even though I may not see a direct ROI from the influencers. Right. So sorry, wait, Ash,

Speaker 4 (00:35:59):

What are you optimizing for? For the um, influencer stuff?

Ash Melwani (00:36:03):

Really honestly just reach engagement. And then if there is some type of ROI on like code sales, right? So we give 'em a code and if there's sales over there, the, the

Rabah Rahil (00:36:14):

Campaigns are optimized around reach and engagement or their conversion

Ash Melwani (00:36:17):

Campaigns. No, no I'm talking, I'm talking like straight up influencers, like posting on their accounts. Oh, tracking, tracking track. I thought you're talking about paid media. Not paid, no paid. No, no, no, not paid, not paid tracking. I'm just trying to get why this awareness. Why not? Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So I'm just talking about like organically posting. Right? I want that organic reach because mm-hmm when I say like that people coming into, like my like ecosystem will now start to, my ads will start to perform better because like, hell yeah. There's just more people in there. Right. And like more qualified traffic and me trying to get qualified traffic myself through traffic campaigns or, or video view campaigns right now to your guys' point. Yes. I will whitelist these accounts and you know, run conversion campaigns and mm-hmm, <affirmative> obviously like try to get the, you know, hit their audience and, and pick up, you know, that low hanging fruit too.
Um, but truly, truly top of the funnel is now where I'm gonna put my eggs in the influencer basket and see if like the rest of the ecosystem starts to perform well. And we saw this last year when we were whitelisting, when some pretty engaged influencers and the minute we stopped everything kind of like leveled back up. Right. So when you're driving that top of interesting funnel awareness, everything else starts to do better, which is why like TikTok, when you're running TikTok ads, it's still discovery. And you're still getting a ton of views, whether or not somebody like clicks through and buys something, everything else performs better. And that is truly what we've been seeing recently. Like when I like the last week I've like ran a ton of TikTok ads, especially we, you know, we reached out to a ton of U GC creators on Twitter when we started running these ads like this week, Facebook got better again. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because now we're spending a little bit more on TikTok could be

Speaker 4 (00:38:03):

Coincidental just saying, but

Ash Melwani (00:38:04):

Okay. Yeah, it could be, it could be, but now there's a, there's a, there's a few points in time where running this type of stuff has helped. So that's why I think just funneling all this, like top of the funnel traffic through alter alternative channels, like influencers, heck even like billboards, TV ads, like what we'll get there at some point, but right now we're doing the influencer stuff. And like that's where like I'm putting my focus is let me feed Facebook, let me feed TikTok. Let, let me run my ads as is right. But let me just feed the ecosystem with more people, which is why I think back to your point, why Facebook is trying to get people to run traffic ads, which is why TikTok is trying to get people to run video view guys, because they want people at the top of the funnel, but it's not the right quality traffic to feed your top of the funnel in my opinion.

Barry Hott (00:38:50):

Well, I just wanna say the strategy you just outlined is great. We've talked about this before. I'm the big fan of it is smart. Uh, you, but it's, it's not like you, what you're doing is you're you're hearing the concept of like, all right, let's run link like campaigns. You're like, no, that's dumb. Let me take that premise and do that better. And that's beautiful. Right? That's, that's a great thing to do. But what Facebook is also doing by telling you to run the traffic campaigns is they're just trying to get your money, right? Like they're trying to do what you just said kind of, but they're really just trying to get your money and I wanna make this, I wanna shift from what you said to point out what I think is actually happening in a big part of why traffic campaigns perform so horribly. Um,

Rabah Rahil (00:39:37):

Do I mean by tin tin hat, tinfoil hat or yes.

Barry Hott (00:39:40):

Put it, you know, I recently saw there were, you know, some people on, um, Twitter that were talking about how they have success with it, especially when using existing post IDs. Um, I, I tested that a little bit. I saw, I, I kind of maybe some signs of life from that, but not really at scale, maybe what were you looking at though? Convert cost per conversion

Ash Melwani (00:40:03):

On, on that traffic

Barry Hott (00:40:05):

Campaign. Yeah. But okay. The thing that you wanna put your tinfoil hat on here for is that you have to look at your placement breakdowns, anytime, anytime you make a change like that and how you're telling Facebook to optimize, right. It's not just changing who it delivers to. It's changing how it delivers and where, so if you were to run a video view campaign, it's going to fundamentally deliver a lot in, um, either audience network or more network, the view, uh, the, uh, oh my God. I'm blanking on the name of it, but the placement where it's, uh, unskipable ads. Yeah. Right. They're the instream watch either. Yeah. Instream, thank you. Yep. In my brain. Um, so like that's not a good place if you're trying to get conversions, uh, it's not good place, a good place for a lot of ad reasons. Um, same thing with link clicks. If you optimize link clicks, you're gonna probably see a ton more, you'll see even more Facebook, mobile feed, which I think, you know, here's the tin, foil hat part that there are bot farms or phone farms, wherever that are reg that, that just click on ads. And I think that

Rabah Rahil (00:41:19):

If you get this podcast band Barry <laugh>

Barry Hott (00:41:23):

Can, I

Rabah Rahil (00:41:24):

It's easy. That's easy.

Barry Hott (00:41:26):

You're I

Rabah Rahil (00:41:27):

Don't think it's liable. You spilling tea here and now, now we can't even post it on YouTube now.

Barry Hott (00:41:31):

Yeah. If you <laugh>. No, there's no, there's no, <laugh> no, there's no nothing illegal about saying that. But like, you can, you can Google it. Not even like, like there are, you know, pictures and videos of people, like wherever in factories where there's just, you know, thousands of phones all logged into Facebook. And if they're just clicking ads just to like click on everything like that, that's I, I find it hard to believe that there's that many people on the platform that just click and don't do anything. Yeah. They literally click and you look in GA you look in triple a or wherever and you see that there's basically zero time on site. Like they're not, how are they not taking any actions? It makes no sense whatsoever. And it often is related directly to that placement. So you can control, you can do a traffic optimized campaign and just do Instagram feed and you know, you can control for that.
And it's, it's gonna still show it to different users, but at least you're controlling for that variable. And it will perform port worse than your conversion campaign, but it'll perform more similarly rather than when you do the auto placement version of it. So that's just something I want to call out. Like, I don't know what people are doing with that traffic campaign to make it work and worthwhile. Um, I, the only other thing I can think of the, that could be working is if you are not excluding your recent visitors, or if you're specifically targeting your recent visitors and you are using the more, the bigger, the attribution window that you use, the more likely those clicks will count to conversion. So if you let's say you're, I'm targeting, right? Like I can, you have two choices here <laugh> you can target, um, you can use, sorry.
You can optimize for link clicks, targeting people that have been to your site in the last seven days, or you can optimize two purchases, um, targeting people that have been to your site in the last seven days, same audience. Okay. Most websites that you run this for, especially the bigger the site is the more, if you run for traffic to that audience, you'll track more conversions. Especially if you're using seven day click one day view, or if you're using seven day click, because you're just like seeding clicks to just hope that they get attributed with conversions. Like it's yeah. That, yeah. You know what I'm like? Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:06):

Powerful interest attribution windows.

Barry Hott (00:44:08):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:09):

Yeah, exactly. It's like 180 days. And like, it's nonsense. Like if you've ever thought of Pinterest ever, we're gonna claim this attribution. It's, it's pretty

Barry Hott (00:44:17):

Egregious. You have a lot of clients that use P like a lot of triple oil.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:21):

Oh, you want some spill? You want some spill tea. This is crazy. So, uh, actually here fill some time for me. Let me pull some data up, cuz it's actually pretty impressive.

Ash Melwani (00:44:31):

So, so back to your point, right on the, on the, on the traffic, uh, campaigns, I, I think to your point, right? The, the quality of the traffic, when you look at GA, right, is almost nonexistent. Like bounce rate is like 90%. There's like an average duration of 0.5 seconds. Right. It's actually not worth it. However, I think the premise of doing it, if it worked right, was to fill up a top of the funnel approach, which would in theory, should in theory, right. Convert in the conversion campaign, that is the theory. That is what they say consider like there awareness traffic campaign. Yes. Consideration, conversion, whatever it doesn't work. Right. However, I have seen and looked at data and seen people running video views where it's a little bit more engaged than just traffic, where people are watching the videos, you know, they ended up getting, you know, decent cost per view.
And those are the people who are slightly more engaged, which is why I think TikTok is saying like, Hey, um, run video views, because that actually does generate a little bit better of a quality audience. That's kind of just hovering around your top of the funnel. And then, you know, talking to some other brands that are doing well on TikTok, organic, right. Just generating views from there and getting like more people into that audience, their ad seem to be doing a lot better too. Right. So when you fix that organic piece of it, which is in my opinion, I think is a lot, has a lot to do with video views right now, especially since everything on Facebook and Instagram is changing to video, TikTok is all video when you're getting that organic presence, everything else starts to seem to do better, which is why I think like Facebook is trying to get you to do that artificially, but it doesn't work, which is why you have to do it organically through views or even influencers

Barry Hott (00:46:28):

Or another platform,

Ash Melwani (00:46:29):

Which I, or another platform

Barry Hott (00:46:30):

I love what you're talking about there. Right? Like fundamentally bring people more people into the funnel somehow. Yeah. But I think traffic campaign is not the

Ash Melwani (00:46:38):

Right. It's not it for that. No.

Barry Hott (00:46:40):

Uh, but do that. Yeah. Bring people in.

Ash Melwani (00:46:42):

Yeah. No, it's, it's not,

Barry Hott (00:46:44):

We still did we sell enough for you RA

Rabah Rahil (00:46:46):

<laugh> yeah, I think you guys did. I just need to click one more thing here. Uh, so we have some really amazing data we're gonna start to publish, uh, and we have some Q1 to Q2 data that is pretty incredible. Um, so we track about 1.2, uh, billion in spend, uh, from Q1 to Q2 versus Q uh, three to Q4 of last year. Um, and so Facebook was actually down in spend 24%, uh, but still massive 854 million plus, uh, Google was up 21%. And so you guys gotta remember, this is pretty incredible because this is Q1 Q2 versus Q3 Q4 of last year. And Q3, Q4 is one the biggest spending quarters and two, the most expensive times to buy ads. So to be able to comp against that and still grow is pretty impressive. Um, I think that's probably off the back of Google or performance max.
Um, but we can actually debate about that. Um, TikTok spent absolutely exploded 243%, um, growth quarter Q1 Q2 of 2022 versus last year's Q3 Q4, which is incredible, but pins pins actually surpassed snap. So snap just fell off. A cliff pins was actually up 10%. Um, I mean it's a nothing burger it's 7 million, 7.6 million. Again, this is across 5,000 merchants plus 50 plus countries, but, um, pretty impressive that they grew 10%. Um, and then snap fell off almost 24%, uh, negative, uh, quarter Q1, Q2 versus Q3 Q4 last. So yeah. Pins is coming, coming back. I, I don't know. I've never seen it really work well. Um, I've seen it as a tertiary channel kind of to your point, Ash, of trying to drive like quality traffic with, you know, economics where you're, it's not traffic campaigns per se, but it kind of is. Um, but it's just obviously not as efficacious as TikTok. So yeah, I, I don't know pins. It's also making a little runback in the, um, in the markets as well, but, uh, yeah, that was a, it, I'm

Barry Hott (00:48:46):

Not, I'm not anti Pinterest just to be clear. Yeah. Like I didn't want like my friend, my Pinterest friends, I don't know if I have any Pinterest friends, but like I don't <laugh>, I, uh, Pinterest is great for visual products, you know, anything that luxury fashion, and also

Rabah Rahil (00:49:01):

Aspirational. Yeah.

Barry Hott (00:49:03):

Super like there's tons to do on there. And I've often and always in will now say that the there's more value, I think, to what you get put into Pinterest than what you can track getting out of it. I think there are, there's a lot that's so put you wind up getting from it, uh, at scale over time in particular, um, sorry, I shouldn't mean to cut you

Ash Melwani (00:49:23):

Off. No, I I, to your point, right. I, I guess my question to that is like, how are you seeing that value kind of come in, even if it's not immediate direct conversions, right. Even if, cuz we were running Pinterest ads like last year you shut around. Yeah. Like we, yeah, I think it's more of the organic play than anything. Uh, but we spent like 50 K on it. The attribution window said that we made 200,000 on it. Um, but it was not a single person in a post-purchase survey said that they came from Pinterest right. Or started on Pinterest. So

Barry Hott (00:49:57):

Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:49:59):

I don't know where this attribution window comes from or how can we just be clear?

Barry Hott (00:50:02):

Yeah. Let me be clear if I'm you selling what you sell. I would not be on Pinterest and not, not, you know, and maybe the new whole thing that people are saying like that tick put your tos on Pinterest, maybe, you know? Yeah. Whatever. But would I spend a cent on it? No, absolutely not. Yeah. Um, unless you're trying to sell like your, your hoodie, you know, or your sweatshirt, like they, maybe we

Ash Melwani (00:50:26):

Went, we went the recipe approach. Right? Cause a lot of people go to, that's actually pretty good for Pinterest for recipe recipes and stuff, which is where the majority of like, I don't know what you call it, but they pinned into their board and this, and I still don't understand how the, the platform works. But again, I don't know where the attribution comes from again to post purchase surveys, such a great way to validate where you're actually seeing, you know, top of the funnel or whatever it is not, not a single person's at it. And even if they did it still doesn't make enough to be like, all right, let me, let me put double the budget in there too.

Barry Hott (00:50:59):

L let me ask a question who is using Pinterest that isn't using Facebook or TikTok or Snapchat or

Ash Melwani (00:51:08):

Anything? I don't think YouTube. Yeah. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:51:11):

And so like, I think it matters too. Oh, go ahead, Barry.

Barry Hott (00:51:15):

No, that was it.

Rabah Rahil (00:51:16):

Yeah. Well I think it matters too. This is why, um, I think YouTube ads can be hit or miss where it matters. Like usually if you're on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, like you usually fill in time, like you don't have an object, like an objective, like you're just, these are gap fillers. Whereas like a lot of times, if you're on YouTube, you're like wanting to consume a thing. Like, you know what I mean? And so like trying to sell somebody when they're trying to do a thing, isn't great versus like trying to sell somebody when they're just meandering around metaphorically on the interwebs is actually a great time to pitch them a product where it's like, oh, that's really interesting. So I think for Pinterest it's so for me anyways, the way I used to use it was, um, you're so objective driven where it's like, you're pinning things, you're doing these things like that.
And so maybe you to your point, Ash, you can retarget them. And to your point, Barry, on a, a platform when they're in more of a, um, hypervigilant state to buy. But a lot of people, you know, I'm gonna be putting my house together. So like, oh, that's a cool couch. This is a cool couch. This is a cool couch, but I'm not making the decision right then. And so I find it to be hard to close on Pinterest, possibly to your point, Ash again, like it might be some decent top of the funnel stuff that you can start to drip on 'em but then again, you start to get into some economic constraints of like, okay, it costs me X amount to get somebody in the funnel through Pinterest. And now it costs me Y Z to actually close them. When I could have just shown 'em a TikTok, sent them an email and then hit him with the Facebook ad and bitch bash Bosch. My AOVs fine. And I'm on my way to the next purchase. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:52:47):

Well, the way that I was sold on it is that Pinterest would have been another discovery platform, like a search platform. It was a Google, right. People are searching for, um, too small weight loss, weight loss, uh, tips, weight, loss, smoothies, whatever it is. Right. And then we would come up for it. That's a fair point. I just don't think it was enough. Like you said, it's just not enough where too small where I think, yeah, exactly.

Rabah Rahil (00:53:09):

It's too small of a platform. Premise

Ash Melwani (00:53:11):

Is there, but

Rabah Rahil (00:53:12):

Yeah, you need a Google and Amazon, a YouTube to actually have proper volume to capture that, especially at your scale. Right? Like maybe if you're just starting out, you can get stuff, but like you're trying to figure out how you can move proper money. Not where you can, can spend your next a hundred, $200. Yeah, exactly. Amazing Barry, any parting thoughts before we get into the creepy question?

Barry Hott (00:53:35):

Oh gosh, I don't, I haven't prepared. Um, no, I I'm. I I'm just, I've been enjoying this. I wish I could be doing this all the time. Uh, this is

Rabah Rahil (00:53:44):

A really fun one. This is a lot of fun. This was a good one. I love, yeah. I love part of the they're

Barry Hott (00:53:48):

Part. The all pretty turn, but I've watched a lot of them. <laugh> oh,

Rabah Rahil (00:53:51):

You have? Oh, that, that hits me deep in the fields. <laugh> um, okay, so here's the creepy question. What would you ti, what would the title of your autobiography be? Who wants to start? Oh, Ash, it feels like you're onto something. No, let's for, for context, Barry, we do, uh, just a weird off the wall question. Um, kind of a little bit of a brain teaser we've had, uh, what would you do with an elephant? Um, and that was Gina. Gina would become a YouTube influencer. We did, uh, more wheels or doors. Which one was that? Are you an inside the shower, dry off person or outside the shower? Dry off person. I mean, we're talking about high level cognitive stuff here, Barry.

Barry Hott (00:54:33):

Yeah. Well, the there's, you know, the, those are, you know, a or B questions. Those aren't as fun. You want, you want the big, you want the big, this is a, this is a full free form thought question. So

Rabah Rahil (00:54:44):

I, to be fair that the elephant one wasn't the El, the elephant one was not binary. Yeah, that was good. But, but I, I take your point.

Barry Hott (00:54:51):

Um, well, you, you, in our email earlier today, you said hot and bothered. Uh, which I, that's not bad. I love, I like that. It's not bad. I also own, I own hot and bothered.com. <laugh> do you really? That's awesome. Yes. I

Rabah Rahil (00:55:05):

Today's amazing.

Barry Hott (00:55:08):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:55:10):

For people that are just listening. Yeah, exactly. For people that are just listening, uh, Barry hot, his last name is spelled H O T T. Um, so that's the, that's the pun. That's actually not bad. I'd buy it hot and bothered. Amazing. Um, what about you Ash? You ready? Ash? Comforting.

Barry Hott (00:55:31):

Hey, that's not horrible.

Rabah Rahil (00:55:33):

Oh my gosh. That is not horrible. That those are both heat. Those are both heat. I gotta tell you if there's any publishers out there, you need to option this ASAP. <laugh> ASME. Anything. That's pretty good. We need to have that as a, some triple well segment or something. That's hilarious.

Barry Hott (00:55:49):

That's your YouTube. That's actually, that's

Rabah Rahil (00:55:51):

Your hilarious

Barry Hott (00:55:51):

YouTube or like Twitter

Rabah Rahil (00:55:53):

Screens or something

Barry Hott (00:55:54):

Like that. Oh, we

Rabah Rahil (00:55:55):

Should. That is hilarious. I have nothing now. Yeah. You guys wrecked me. I shouldn't should have went first.

Barry Hott (00:55:59):

That's your office hours. That's your Ash. I know office hours. It's

Rabah Rahil (00:56:02):

Just like, that's amazing. We were gonna do ocean hours, but Ash me anything's even better. That's incredible. That's

Barry Hott (00:56:10):

Incredible.

Rabah Rahil (00:56:11):

<laugh> what do I, I know, right? We got a green light. This, we need a new slack channel ASAP. Yeah. Uh, what would I do? Hot and bothered. Ask me anything. Hows are really good. I don't know if I can come back from this. What would I do? Um, man, I got nothing. What's a good, I don't know. I have to punt. What would I, what would I be? Auto autobiography, hot and bothered. Ask me anything. Well, sign off first Barry. And I'll think of something. Tell the people how they can follow you, how they can get more involved with, with Barry hot, how they can get hot and bothered. You're doing some cool stuff with Jess at hire fire team too. I really enjoy those. Those are it's pretty funny. Thanks, man. I really like that.

Barry Hott (00:56:52):

Thanks man. We're we're we're doing some more stuff. I'm hoping to be doing more stuff like that on my own, on my own YouTube. Maybe I'll do an interview show called hot and bothered where I just bother people. That's for an hour's.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:02):

That's really good. Um,

Barry Hott (00:57:03):

It's a great idea. Um, but yeah, uh, Barry hot.com. That's uh, two teas, uh, and find me on Twitter at Bing hot and uh, you know, hopefully more fun stuff for me in the coming months, but nothing too crazy right now. <laugh> that's just, just doing and doing stuff. Fun stuff like this.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:21):

<laugh> amazing. Hanging out in Brooklyn, living the life.

Barry Hott (00:57:25):

<laugh> yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:57:26):

Um, Ash, do the spiel. Let the people know if they're buy a vitamin shop, what do they need to do?

Ash Melwani (00:57:32):

<laugh> if you need some collagen in your life, you need to reverse the signs of aging and you got a vitamin shop near you. Go check it out. You'll find us on the shelves. Tell them that your favorite collagen is Avi. Take a picture of it, send it to me on Twitter or retweet, shave everything. Um, but yeah, follow me on Twitter at ASME Milani. Um, also on mentor pass, uh, check me out there if you need any advice on paid media. Um, also looking for more. Yeah. And Barry too. Oh,

Rabah Rahil (00:58:02):

You're you're on mentor pass. Why didn't you say that? We love Kenny here.

Barry Hott (00:58:05):

Oh, I amazing. I should have said that.

Rabah Rahil (00:58:08):

I fuck that. It's all

Barry Hott (00:58:09):

It. It's like on my

Ash Melwani (00:58:11):

Sign up, sign up for some time with Barry, get some hot takes in there. Let's

Rabah Rahil (00:58:14):

Go. Let's go. That's actually not a bad one either. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (00:58:18):

And then last thing, if you are a U GC creator hit me, my DMS, um, looking for a ton of creators so far, I've had over 150 people send us some, uh, some content and we're trying to create a massive roster paid obviously. Um, but in my DMS, so, yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:58:35):

Amazing. And if you are looking to, uh, step up your influencer game, we just did a great pod, uh, with Josh about influencer, I think. Was it LA last week? Wasn't it? Or two weeks? Two weeks. That two, two ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah, he crushed. It was a really, really good one. Um, if you wanna get more involved at triple well, we are try triple. No, no, no more try. Actually we're triple whale.com. You see I'm flustered by the title of the autobiography. Um, triple.com. We're on the whale or bird app at, uh, triple whale. And then if you want to subscribe to our amazing newsletter, it is every Tuesday and Thursday, it goes out called whale mail. You can do that right on the Twitter app. Um, man, I can't believe I asked the question. I didn't have the answer. I feel like I'm,

Barry Hott (00:59:17):

That's what I was shocked by.

Rabah Rahil (00:59:19):

I can't, I had an answer. I know your guys' answers were too good and they rattled me

Barry Hott (00:59:24):

And you stalled it long enough for me to, you know, tried to fill up. I'm thinking for you. I can't think of

Rabah Rahil (00:59:30):

Anything. I written nothing. Right.

Barry Hott (00:59:32):

I like, I figure about like the shiny shoes or you know, like the shiniest shoes on the block or something. I

Rabah Rahil (00:59:39):

Was, I was thinking sneaker puns. Yeah. Like

Barry Hott (00:59:42):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:59:42):

Bare feet. Maybe I can call it bare feet, little sneaker pun. Huh? No, nothing Ashe isn't into it. You got nothing. I three big planes and I can't, I can't get self self-titled unbelievable.

Barry Hott (00:59:55):

<laugh> unbelievable. Is that somewhat who's who's autobiography is called unbelievable. I feel like, can we do, can we do a contest? Like

Rabah Rahil (01:00:04):

Oh amazing.

Barry Hott (01:00:05):

Best one. The comments gets a little, some, some,

Rabah Rahil (01:00:08):

Yeah, I'll send you some triple whale swag. Whoever wants it. You can pick out, uh, some t-shirt and socks and gimme the title of my autobiography. Put it in the, uh, the comments section either on the YouTube video or on the Twitter that we put out. Look at that. Yeah. Look at that. People helping people. It's powerful stuff. I love it. Love it. Amazing Barry. This is incredible. We have to have you back on make your regular or something. This is really interesting, man. I love the way you approach acquisition, the way you think of marketing, the way you just, uh you're so even keeled, but at the same time, have very like the way I would describe you is, uh, strong opinions, weekly held. And I think that's a really good way to live life where you believe in what you believe in. But if you are encounter different data or something like that, you will absolutely, um, change your mind a reverse course. And I think that's a really, really productive way to live. Not only in terms of marketing, but in terms of going through your life. Um, congrats again, literally

Barry Hott (01:01:00):

I'm literally gonna cry. That was very nice. That was beautiful. That was very beautiful. I had to make for my, he doesn't talk to me like

Rabah Rahil (01:01:06):

No title.

Barry Hott (01:01:07):

<laugh> I really work hard to, to, to do that, to like what you just, I need to like write that down. What you just said.

Rabah Rahil (01:01:15):

Put my trouble.

Barry Hott (01:01:16):

I'm

Rabah Rahil (01:01:17):

In trouble with the pod, with the podcast best. I'm sorry, Ashley. No, I love you. The podcast partner. That's actually nice alliteration. All love

Barry Hott (01:01:23):

To all love.

Rabah Rahil (01:01:24):

Amazing folks. Thank you so much for joining us. If you do enjoy the podcast, be sure to share it. Tell your friends to subscribe, go subscribe to our YouTube channel. Um, go follow Ash, go follow Barry, go follow our triple. Um, I'm also on mentor pass. If you wanna go gimme some money for sneakers and then I think that's it guys. Another one in the books. I really appreciate the time. Um, and we'll see everybody next time. Thanks so much.

Barry Hott (01:01:47):

He's out.

One Tab
To Replace Them All

Supercharge your growth with a purpose-built ecomOS for brands and agencies.

Before ...
Shopify
Ads Manager
Klaviyo
TikTok
Pinterest
Bliss
Triple Whale