Internet Events, Facebook Advertising, Internet Marketing and SEO

(there is a little intentional changing of small facts below to protect details of various businesses mentioned to protect those companies including my own)

Over the past two weeks facebook has made some changes to the way it is handling affiliate marketers. This is another wave in a series of changes over the past year where facebook has altered what ads are acceptable to be run on facebook.

I have been getting a steady stream of e-mails and phone calls from some of the biggest players in the industry asking me what is going on.

None of what I am saying is coming from inside of facebook, but instead what I have seen happening to my own campaigns, and from the campaigns of other big shot affiliate marketers.

The phone call or e-mail usually goes like this.

Super Affiliate: “Hey, How’s it going?”

Me: “Good! How are you?”

Super Affiliate: “So,….ah…have you noticed anything different about facebook ads lately?”

Me: “Yeh, I had some of my campaigns turned off”

Super Affiliate: (Now relieved that they were not the only one, now speaking in a stronger voice),

“Yeh! We were spending $xxxxx dollars a day on (dating/games/or education offers) and our ads just got turned off and retroactively disapproved.”

This has not been an uncommon conversation over the past few weeks.

facebook has been improving the quality of its ads over the past year. Many affiliate marketers I know, will run anything they can make money off of that doesn’t put them in jail.  (an exaggeration, but not by much). facebook on the other hand is trying to protect its users from illegal and unethical behavior of it’s advertisers.

In my opinion, and only in my opinion, I think that affiliate marketers have as a group simply pushed the edge too far, and facebook is being a bit “cautious” or maybe “suspicious”, or “protective” against any affiliate offers that are being run.

Some people I know, who I believe have been spending way over the cost of a new Porsche EACH DAY on facebook ads, have had ads removed that appear to be both legal and ethical in my opinion.

This is a strong move by facebook, as this is real cash in a very significant volume that facebook is saying no to.

Here is a personal example of an ad I tried to run in another country to test what is going on.

I actually tried to run a few different versions of the ad to be as compliant with the policies as possible.

The original ad was not in English, but below is the Google Translation into English.

The Title of the Ad was:

Online Dating

The image in the Ad was:

The body of the ad said:

Online dating site (Dating Name Brand). Please complete form
online to participate.

If you click on the ad, it takes you to a dating site called “SITENAME”, which is a very generic site, similar to Match.com or Eharmony, but in another country. The site is free, and I am guessing makes it’s money off of advertising, or plans on making its money that way.

The ad was submitted to be shown to Males, who were single, between the ages of 21 and 60 in that country. It is interesting to note that in the new dating guidelines for facebook it states that you should also select in the demographics of the user, whether they are interested in men or women. At the same time, for some countries there is no option to choose whether the user is interested in men or women.

The ad was rejected with the following explanation:

Ad Disapproval Reason(s):

* The content of this ad does not adequately reflect the product/service offered. Ads may not be false, misleading, fraudulent or deceptive.  Per section 4, ads must not make unsubstantiated claims, including but not limited to prices, discounts or product availability; use of current events in the ad text or image that create false association to be used for irrelevant commercial agenda; use of false qualifications to create a sense of relevancy; as well as the implication of dynamic ad content.  Any statement made within an ad must be accurate and relevant to all users.

Additionally, ads must disclose what action or set of actions is required to qualify or receive the product/service.  Offers requiring the submission of Personally Identifiable Information must disclose on the landing page how such information will be used and distributed.  This disclosure must be clearly and prominently displayed.

When I read the reason above, it does not seem to match up with ad I ran. I can’t quite figure it out.

Now on the other hand, the ads I have running for brick and mortar businesses are running just fine with no hangups.

My feel I am getting from this is simply that facebook is being extremely careful of affiliate offers, extremely careful.

My final analysis is that an affiliate offer is no worse or better than any other offer. A brick and mortar advertiser, or a large fortune 500 company, can also be deceptive, or criminal in their advertising. At the moment the affiliate marketers have simply pushed a little too far, and are getting pushed back. This creates a tremendous opportunity for brick and mortar businesses to be advertising on facebook because they are not competing with the overly profitable illegal affiliate offers. Since facebook is a bid based system, the price is simply going to be a bit less now than it would have otherwise.

Many affiliate marketers have been scrambling to find other sources of traffic, and I am sure that is big talk at Ad Tech this week.

Jason Akatif, founder of Ads 4 Dough stated that he keeps a spreadsheet with hundreds of traffic sources. It sounds like affiliate marketers will need to do the same, at least for a while. I am starting up a spreadsheet to do the same.

The cat may have just crept out of the bag, and is chasing a bunny.

When I have more info, I will let you know. 😉

All I can say is yes, the Epic/Azgoogle Playboy party  was the best party I have ever been to and one of the absolute best nights of my life.

Each one of us who went was given one of these to take with us 😉

Time: 3:30 a.m.

Location: The hardest party to get into at Affiliate Summit,  The Epic Ads Party @ Hugh Hefner Suite at Palms Hotel

Who: dk and un-named Playboy Playmate

The winner for dinner, is Daniel Boulud, on Saturday January 16th at 6:00 P.M.

(News Flash – Fight Club with Robert Drysdale 6X World Champion in Brazillian Jiu Jitsu added on Satuday at 3:00, see end of this post!)

Daniel Boulud has amazing food. It is comfortable as hell. You can just order drinks, or have a full dinner in the lounge very comfortably. Dress is business casual, probably save your Shoemoney t-shirt for the poker tournament. Please RSVP here

When we ate there for my wife’s dinner the food was out of the world, but I did not try their burger. Their Burger is $30, and is supposed to be out of this world, with Foi Gras on it, truffles, and is supposed to be to die for. I am definitely getting that! The salads and other food there are out of this world as well. This is the only place in Vegas I know of with a Michelin Star. These are from the French food rating company, and to earn even a singe star takes gourmet restaurants decades to accomplish.

Everyone in the Affiliate Marketing and Internet Entrepreneurial world is invited!

This is where all the cool kids will be on Satuday night before the poker tournament!

Please RSVP here

Fight Club! On Saturday, before dinner at 3:00, we are throwing a Fight Club at Shoemoney and my friend, Robert Drysdales gym. Robert Drysdale just texted me and gave me the thumbs up. We got lucky because he was  going to be out of town, and just changed his plans. It is $75 per person, which is a hell of a lot less than his usual fee to train someone. Sign up through RSVP link above. All are invited, space is limited.

I asked Tovio to write this up for us. It is a guest post on hotel options for ASW.
Also, to prepare for Vegas, please watch this video on how to give a lap dance.
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Now that I’ve recovered from PubCon, I’m looking forward to Affiliate Summit West, which takes place in Las Vegas January 16-19. Whenever I find out about a conference in Vegas the first thing I try to figure out is which hotel I’m going to stay at. ASW takes place at Rio, so I started my search based on that location for 4 nights stay starting January 16th. Unfortunately Rio is already sold out for Saturday, so that won’t be an option. Here are some options to consider:

Gold Coast and the Palms are close enough to the conference to walk. Gold Coast is the closest hotel and has some great rates – from $216 for the four nights, but it’s a pretty basic hotel and casino and is off the strip. Unless you have a really tight budget I wouldn’t recommend it. The Palms, which is across the street from the Gold Coast and Rio, is oriented toward a younger, hip party crowd and I found rates starting at $596 for the four nights.

If you want to stay at a really nice Strip hotel with short taxi rides (and who doesn’t), try Caesars Palace or Bellagio. These are both high-end hotels that will be a bit pricier for the four days – Bellagio starts at $706 and Caesars from $685. For more budget-friendly Strip options, I would go with Monte Carlo ($417), Luxor ($360), or Excalibur ($289). These are all comfortable hotels that are really good values.

The place I have decided to stay is ARIA. This high-end hotel’s grand opening will be on December 16th and it will feature not only luxury, but great technology in the rooms. I can’t wait to stay there. They have a “Winter Special” with rates from $786 for the four days, and offers a $75 resort credit. Vegas offers some great deals on hotels and you’re sure to have fun no matter where you stay.

Toivo Lainevool – VegasHotelSpecial.com

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Tovio is not sponsoring Purpose Inc for Affiliate Summit, this is simply a post of info. None of these hotels gave me a dam cent for this either!

It is 4 a.m., the party is finally over, I am exausted, but as good journalist I need to keep the public updated with what’s important right?

Azoogle, Alex Z. and Michael Sprouse pulled out all the stops for what was THE BEST PARTY I HAVE EVER BEEN TO.

On the bus ride home, I said to my wife, after this what is left? Seriously it was unbelievable. There will be a lot more shots that will show up my blog coming up, but a lot of them will never see the light of day. 😉

It was cool, Michael Sprouse used to be high up in the playboy corporation doing marketing for them. When the girls saw him, they were genuinely happy to see him. It made me proud!

If you can imagine just how wild a party could get, the absolute wildest, and turned back the volume just a quarter of a click, that is what I just experienced.

I stayed out of trouble and played Donky Kong. Free video games, are you kidding me?

All the while the whole event was actually done tastefully, and with a lot of grace and beauty. The food in fact was off the hook, and a huge surprise.

My wife and I got to hang out with Hugh Hefners brother Keith. I noticed something amazing. He constantly complimented all of the girls, and was warm and friendly to everyone he met. Very, very nice guy. Feel free to invite us over for old movies whenever you want!

Come back soon to see more of the pics, once I have time to edit through them.

I went out on one of these stands to get my picture taken standing over the pool, and a few of the Azoogle staff were kind enough to give me a little push into joining their pool party.

I will let these 11 pictures tell the story, and you can fill in what is not being shown with your own imagination.

Ha Ha! I honestly can’t believe I am saying that. I grew up in the 70’s reading playboy as a kid. In fact as soon as I could read, I was reading it! Before Maxim, and all these other mags, and even before sports illustrated’s swim suit edition, there was Playboy. I even read it for the articles, and as a kid just adored the cartoons!

It was marketing genius.

I think of myself as being fairly enlightened, and yet I am still a sucker for a pretty girl. Pretty much still just stops me in my tracks. You want to brand yourself? What if you could create a brand that would forever be associated with georgeous, yet classy girls? That is what Playboy did.

I have begun to have fun with affiliate marketing lately, thanks to my good friends running these cool companies. It is the funnest of all of the internet worlds I have dropped into so far. It is a fun world because they are not afraid to be exactly who they are, a bunch of guys purely interested in making money and having fun. O.K., so some of them exagerate how much money they make in affiliate marketing, but I do know there are some big bucks rolling around in this area, and plenty of guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in profit, who never did a day of college.

I’ve learned you can lose a nice bucket of money really quickly in affiliate marketing also. It is not for the weak of stomach, that is for sure.

But the real deal companies are rolling through hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Azoogle is unquestionably a huge mega force in this area.

So tomorrow I get to go feed the bunnies!

This should be absolutely fantastic, hilarious, and a photo opportunity like no other!

The perks that go along with being involved in the internet business world just rock!

Michael Sprouse (Azoogle Marketing Director) rocks for putting this together.

By the way, in addition to the trip to the Mansion, Michael is putting us all up at the W hotel with pool parties, brunches and the whole works.

It is probably worth running some Azzogle ads if you are not already, just for the parties 😉

And I will See You at the Mansion!