The Real Reason Your Ad Campaign Is Failing (And How to Fix It!)

Exploring Call Tracking PlatformsIntroduction and Initial Thoughts
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Jim Banks: [00:00:00] I was looking the other day, somebody was talking about, which is the best kind of,call tracking platform, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

And I looked at it and I thought to myself. there's loads of really good call tracking platforms out there. There's Phonexa, there's CallRail, and there's, Ringba and whatever else,

Robert Adler: Retreaver.

Jim Banks: Right? They, but they're like, I keep looking at it. I keep thinking, I know that, they, they're all like a, a plus plus plus, 

You, so you get, you, you buy a license and then you pay more money for this. If you want this, you've gotta pay more money. Pay more money for this, pay more money, And.

Robert Adler: Usage model. Yep.

Jim Banks: Yeah. 

Cost Implications of Call Tracking
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Jim Banks: And, and, and what was really interesting is way back, probably, I think probably my second job in digital right, was working for a company that did what, what we called least cost routing, 

So instead of the calls that people made from their phones to their mobiles or whatever, routing through like the, the. Expensive routes, we would find a, a kind of a cheaper route to send that call. and a lot of people were, were also using us because [00:01:00] we had access to a whole bunch of phone numbers, And we were selling these phone numbers for I, I guess the equivalent of about A buck each. So it was a dollar, a dollar, a phone number. and because I was, I was one of the salespeople of these phone numbers, right? So what I was in doing is I was encouraging people To buy blocks of phone numbers,

And, and anyone that's bought from retriever or. Call rail or whatever they probably are. This, this might sound like a very similar conversation. So what you need to do is you need to buy blocks of phone numbers, whether they're 800 numbers or numbers in a particular geographic route, or numbers that are in a particular block, sequentially, num numbers, 

So we used to say, let's buy a really memorable phone number with, this. Let, let's say it's. 7, 8, 9 or four eight at the end. At the beginning or whatever, whatever you, whatever the kind of format was, But I would say, look, you're gonna be running marketing campaigns.

You probably want to have one number for each of these, So why [00:02:00] don't, why don't you buy a thousand of these numbers? It's a thousand pounds or whatever it was, a thousand dollars, To buy the numbers and then obviously you, you pay for the minutes that you consume. And again, it was like, I know that, that in a lot of cases they're charging, a, a reasonably hefty amount of money for the, the kind of per minute, 

Robert Adler: But it was Mm-hmm.

Jim Banks: we as ours, were a lot cheaper, As, as a result. so for me, I'm thinking to myself, these, these guys, all of these kind of tracking platforms they must be making like, so much money on the back of selling the numbers, Because again, if you, if you have a sort of base level, they typically run from anything from maybe a couple of bucks up to maybe five or six bucks.

Per number, And if somebody wants to buy five numbers, 'cause they've got five billboards and they wanna have a separate number for each billboard or whatever, That's five numbers. Six, six bucks each, maybe five bucks each, right? So it's 25, 30 bucks a month, For the numbers, So before you've spent [00:03:00] or made any money in calls, 

Or spent money on calls, you're 360 bucks out of pocket. Already. And and if you want to, and if you want to have like RTB functionality, that's an additional upsell. And if you want to have recordings in some platforms, that's an additional upsell. And then if you want transcriptions, that's another upsell.

And again, I think a lot of people that go, go into media buy and they go into it thinking, I'm just gonna run this 'cause everyone's talking about a particular campaign type or whatever, and they go, I'm just gonna go and run that. And they don't really understand some of those. Incidentals in the backend that can really add up and, and really bite you in the ass.

I just wondered whether you'd had any experience of people complaining about that. Or, or whether they're even aware of it.

Robert Adler: Yeah, there's a lot of that and it's, so the, the call space, especially on the, let's call it the services side, like the SaaS side. People have absolutely no idea how much that stuff really costs. [00:04:00] because that's one of the industries where it is almost always passed down by cost and it just keeps extrapolating out until it gets to the consumer.

so like for example, some of them will do, the normal permanent fee and, and all that kind of stuff, but the vast majority of people that use these platforms don't recognize that the fee is on outbound and inbound. And when you take an inbound and then dial your agent, that's both. It's not just one.

So people sit there and they go, I don't understand it. It says like 0.8 a minute. And I'm like, yeah, but then where did it go? It went to another one. 

Strategies for Reducing Call Costs
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Robert Adler: So when I was running mine, my pay per call network, one of my, I guess I secret is way too overstated of a term for this because it's so common knowledge, but no one does it, is I did two things.

one, I didn't go through telco. All my, pay per call stuff went to my vendors, directly to their call floor through sip.

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Robert Adler: I didn't pay for the fricking per minute, I'm paying for my server. It's fine. but then the second was, is that why are you paying them for call recording at an extra per minute [00:05:00] fee when you already have the recording, it's going through your server.

So save it, use transcription, which by the way is free. And then you literally just have the same thing. But that's I think a quarter of a cent per minute or something like it does add up like it really does. because some of, some of the, the, the kind of services, the, the length of the call is like really lengthy. It could be like 30, 40, 50 minutes. For the call, the call duration, minutes to an hour.

Jim Banks: so for me it's, again, as you say, if it's like you're paying for two calls, the inbound, the outbound, and double, 

So you're paying double times, the 40 minutes, times, whatever the kind of per minute is, right. And then per minute for the transcription. And it, as you say, it really can significantly jack up, you may get, get You may go, Hey, I'm making 60 bucks a, a call. But then when you take off your, your running cost, you go, I'm netting out at 25 or whatever, and I, it costs me 30 to acquire it.

Robert Adler: I'm losing five bucks AKA kind of call, even though you [00:06:00] think you are like rolling in money and everything else, But you, you are clearly not right. I just wondered whether that was something that you had sort of any experience of, of looking at as, as far as, Yeah,so yes, there's, there's definitely like. The problem is how it's laid out like the whole term. Nickel and diming literally should have been made for pay per call. but more importantly, because there's no clean way to do it otherwise. So when you're using, for example, Twilio is your trunk, 

They're charging you per minute. They're also charging you for the recording. They're also charging you for the numbers. So you have to bill based on their billing. And that's why a lot of this just extrapolates out all the way down. but at the same time, there's small tweaks you can easily do to save some money depending on where you are in the chain.

The problem is the people that have no option, and that's like the people that are, for example, running inbounds. if you're running Google search and you're running inbounds, nothing is gonna change the fact that you need a phone number for them to call. unless Google starts doing [00:07:00] VOIP over SERPs on a phone like it, other than that, it's gonna be through a phone call anyway at any point somewhere.

And that's gonna incur the minute fee.

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Robert Adler: so it doesn't matter on that. The other thing is, is the, the tact on fees. And that's been a bigger thing, where now. On top of, for example, certain vendors having extra fees, there's now fees that then go onto those fees because it's an added service as a input on that output.

So for example, flag potential, let's say tire kickers or like flag people that sound like fraud or whatever it is, That requires the transcript, So you need to run the transcript that you're paying for in order to use the words to look at the flat. So it just keeps going and going all the way down.

Everyone could internalize this. but honestly, most of them don't have the technology to do it, nor do they have the time. And a lot of the stuff like this isn't really worth it. But the price impact is astronomically different.

Jim Banks: Yeah, because,

Robert Adler: Like it is, like people are, I'm not talking 10%, [00:08:00] I'm talking fricking 60%, 70% savings.

Like it's not 10%. It's astronomical.

Challenges in Call Tracking and Lead Generation
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Jim Banks: Because I, I was looking at, like insurance. I used to do a lot of credit cards, like back in the day, like adverse credit card applications. And we used to get paid a certain amount of money for each application. And the person, the company that was buying them from us, they used to incur.

For each, inbound inquiry that we sent them. So ev every single phone call or form fill that we sent them, they incurred a $25 fee for processing, they had to process the fee and, and we used to say to 'em, look, we, we know you guys have got like a, a sort of a, a screening process in terms of these are the sorts of things that would, would automatically trigger a decline.

In terms of, if it was, let's say it was somebody that was. Under the age of 25. They, they would go, it's, it's under the 20, under the age of 25, living at home, no credit cards at all or whatever. No, no credit history. There's, there's a, there's a very good likelihood they're gonna be declined.

[00:09:00] For even, an adverse credit, credit card. And, and we used to say to them, why don't you send us your. Like underwriting criteria, right? And we can build that into our, model it into the way in which we screen the calls for you, right? So that when they get to your call center, which, which is, I think what a lot of what's happening now is that pre-screening, 

Is, is they're, they're being pre-screened, which improves the quality, which makes it better for the person buying the call. And as long as that's reflected in what they're paying for them, great. In a lot of cases, I think sometimes the, the person who's generating the calls are on the hook for a lot of that sort of hygiene stuff themselves.

And the person buying them is not paying for the privilege of having a better screened call as a result of it. But, but to go back to it, it's but they said, oh no, we, we can't tell you what the, the, the kind of underwriting criteria is. And we're like, okay, well then in that case, we're just gonna continue to send you all the shit leads that we've got, That we know are gonna be declined. as it is, we were, we were doing hosts and posts, so we weren't [00:10:00] sending them the forms. We were sending them the kind of. The, the, the API feed with the, with the data, right? 'cause we knew as soon as that kind of rejection came back that we, we could, we actually guarantee was gonna happen.

We had a whole bunch of other stuff ready to go, that we could offer the person as an alternative to that, right? Because again, we looked at it from the point of view of this person is just in, in a lot of cases people say, oh, they're looking for a credit card, and, and it's No, in a lot of cases they're looking to buy Christmas presents for their kids or something like that.

quite often it, it could be a, this warehouse got, has got a whole bunch of stuff that's been bought from Temu and they can go in and buy a thousand dollars worth of stuff and we'll give 'em a thousand dollars worth of credit and they can pay it down over a period of time. So it's, it's there was loads of other ways in which we could, we could spin that.

because I think sometimes there, there is a people thinking, oh yeah, they're just looking for, for whatever it is, but the underlying reason that they're doing that is not for that. It's there's some other reason as to why they want the money in the first place. Like

Robert Adler: Oh yeah. And, and I think, I wanna say one of the earlier [00:11:00] episodes I gave the example of like buying the declines from like the realtor or the loan officer, like that kinda stuff. It's a layup. it's like there you, you want a house, you got denied for a house. And then you were told the reason you got denied for the house was your credit.

And then by the way, this dude needs help with credit. Like it's a layup. It literally is easy, but also. People need to run their LTVs on the difference. And that's the huge difference that I didn't look at nearly soon enough, was the aspect of, if you start to look at the differences in how they come in against LTV, you can start to notice that these aren't just better or worse short-term, sometimes they're astronomically better long term.

And a lot of those are like, buying the declines from mortgage, for example. The contact rate was the same, but the enrollment rate was double.

Jim Banks: Yeah.

Robert Adler: Because they were literally told, this is what you've been trying to get for months or years, and you were told everything is good, and then you went and you tried to get it.[00:12:00] 

And by the way, you're not able to get it now because of this one thing. And then you get a call and they're like, yo, that one thing we can help you with that you're gonna be like, you know what? Nah, no, we don't need that right now. Of course you're gonna at least listen to it. You're gonna at least hear it out.

So that's, but the enrollment rate was double, the stick rate was double LTV was like, it, it just, it bubbles up so easily across everything. it literally is just the whole picture.

Jim Banks: Yeah. Yeah. 

Optimizing Lead Generation and Marketing Strategies
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Jim Banks: It's, I, I think it's, again, it's sort of like, and, and people say, so a, a lot of people go, well, what's the best. The best platform. And I think there is no such thing as the best platform, right? Because so much of it is really gonna depend on your use case, your industries, the, the kind of specific things that you are looking for.

But I, I just, I know I started off the, the kind of the rant on,the, the kind of the cost of the calls, But I, I looked at it and I remember we used to buy these numbers, right? These lease, lease cost rooting numbers that the kind of the, the 800 numbers and what have you, we would buy them on the wholesale [00:13:00] market for A cent each, I think they were like stupidly, stupidly cheap to buy the numbers, Because the, the, basically the telephone companies made all the monies on, on the, the minutes, That's where their money, money was, So they would almost give the, give the, the numbers away for free, 

So again, I, I think, somewhere along the way I, again. Maybe somebody that's listens to this podcast or watches this podcast will come up with and go, that's a fucking great idea, Jim. I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna do something with it. I hope somebody does. But somebody is going to come up with an idea that basically allows somebody to get their own numbers right, for a fraction of the cost, 

And then they can just go. Import the numbers. Here's my CSV with all my numbers, Rather than you have to connect a number pool and you need eight numbers in the pool, otherwise you don't have whatever, So I, I just think somebody's gonna come up with that and they're gonna sell the, the numbers for sub a dollar, maybe 85, 90 cents or whatever it might be.

And they might sell, more numbers in bulk. So you know, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets per [00:14:00] number. and then, and then that way the, the number side of things is not the thing that's gonna nail people to the mass as far as, running campaigns and being able to do granular targeting.

Really

Robert Adler: there's, so here's, so here's the problem with that. You can get the numbers all you want. If the platform won't let you bring them in, you can't use 'em.

Jim Banks: True. True.

Robert Adler: it's still, it's still based on the trunk. So like they can still say I have my own numbers, but then they have to actually like route the number there.

And if they're gonna do that, that requires them to do setup. So you might save the $3 per ip, but then they might hit you with a $50 fee to set it up and like that. And that's the problem, It's like it's a slippery slope because the numbers to me are the last thing. Everything before the number has to be set up in order for the number to work, right?

It has to have a target. It has to be able to have an in intake and a call source. But also you need to have something that can actually handle the call. Like you need to be able to actually route the call and do the call and all that kind of stuff. The number is literally the last piece. but it's also one of the most expensive for a bulk rate, [00:15:00] so it's It really just depends. But also the, the ironic part is, is that if you were to supersede this, like you did your own in front of Ringa, it doesn't save you any money unless you also cut out Ringa entirely. So it's it, it's about whether or not you wanna maintain the platform and whether or not the savings you would have would offset the cost of that.

Jim Banks: Because I, I kind of like, dipped my toe in pay per call a little bit. it's not been my core competency. I'll, I'll openly admit that, and I know I said on a previous episode if somebody wants to come along and train me, nobody's come along and volunteered so far. But hopefully somebody does.

But, but, but what was really interesting for me was. 

Real-World Examples and Best Practices
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Jim Banks: That, when, when I I, I set up some campaigns and, and set up on a few networks, again, I, I had no intention of running on the network. I know the money for me was gonna be in the direct relationships with the advertisers, 

again, I've got some super cool ways of, being able to identify in specific locations specific,types of, of industries, again, if it, if I wanted to go and fine. All the dental surgeries in, [00:16:00] Malibu or whatever it might be. I can just drill into the map.

It'll give me all the names of them. I can go and get the LinkedIn addresses, the phone numbers, the addresses, I can see whether they're part of a chain, all that sort of stuff. And I can drill in and I can build them, a sort of a map and a model around that. Then what I can potentially do again, I've had this thought.

What I can do is I can pick up the phone and just call one of them and say, look, I'm generating leads for other kind of dental surgeries in, in Malibu, and I, I'm, I'm generating more leads for the, for. The, then the person that kind of I'm sending them to can handle. I'm just wondering, do, do you buy leads from anyone?

And they might say, yes, we do, or No, we don't. Or whatever They say, no, we don't say, well, can I send you maybe three, three to five leads and you can just check out the quality, see what they like, and if you like them, then maybe I'll come back and we can have a conversation afterwards and you can let, let me know what you think about buying them moving forward.

And that's probably, again, it in total it might cost you. 50 to a hundred bucks to set up that campaign and run it right. Couple of bucks to do the phone calls. again, you've gotta be, have, have the chops [00:17:00] to be able to pick up the phone and call the person and whatever else.

But you know, that, again, that's, that's pretty easy to do if you've got the sales background. I have. and it's, it's easy to train somebody to do that. It's not, it's, if you think about it, it's well, I'm gonna give you the course for free. It's sure, why not? Most people are not

Robert Adler: Well, there's also.

Jim Banks: stuff.

There's, there's also call centers that you could hire for this, and it's not like a fricking 50 employee minimum to hire them. Like you can literally hire one agent for four hours a day. So even if people want to try, they can try it, even if they're not like, let's call it comfortable doing the calls themselves.

'cause, 'cause it, because again, I think I, I get confused with so many affiliates that think, they go, oh, the, the, the kind of call centers open Monday to Friday, nine to whatever it's like. Well, that's when the call center is open. You can just do whatever you wanna do, right? If you want to, if you only wanna run calls between six and nine in the evening, 'cause and you wanna do it Thursday and Friday, 'cause you know that's when 90% of the calls convert for you based on your historical data.

Do that. Because, you have a, you have a quota, if your quotas like to deliver 10, 10 calls a a [00:18:00] day or whatever, and you can do 10 calls in two hours, do that, right? you don't need to run. The whole kind of, the whole gamar, right? I mean that, that's always the thing that's amazed me, that people just assume that they're looking for nationwide.

It's I don't care about nationwide. I just wanna drill into where, where there's the most demand, right? If again, looking at this map, I can pull it up. I look at in the middle, right in the middle, there's hardly any dental surgeries in the Midwest, it's 'cause everyone's got no teeth 'cause they chew tobacco and things like that.

But you know. I'm stereotyping so many people here. I, I'm pretty sure we're not gonna have any hillbillies or rednecks watching our, our, podcast.

Robert Adler: I don't know, man. I hope

Jim Banks: Maybe,

Robert Adler: but you never know.

Jim Banks: Who knows?

Robert Adler: but no, it's that. But that is the point. 

The Disconnect Between Marketing and Sales
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Robert Adler: And, and honestly like the, the level of disconnect between, let's call it the business side, the marketing side and the sales side has not, is, it's nothing new. Everyone in this industry knows it. Everyone in every industry relating to one of those three knows it,

The sales guys always sell stuff. You don't actually have the marketing guys sells something that gives 'em [00:19:00] false expectations, and then the service side sits there and goes, what the hell am I supposed to be delivering right now? And when? And then the, it's just the perpetual cycle of that, just over and over.

but the problem is, is now we're in a paradigm shift and we're in a position where the level of specialization that one of those people have. Is now something you can get close to with AI to the point where you might not actually need them in that now. And that's where it's never gonna replace expertise.

It's gonna replace like how you do things, but it's not gonna replace the fact that you still don't know how to put the right words into the prompt to make it do the thing you're trying to make it do. And that's gonna take a while to, to really, get better. but. The, the real disconnect with all this is it's also the channel.

so like email, like email for example. If you're not nationwide, I don't run you. On email because the filtering down to the Geo on records alone for certain scale of lists is simply [00:20:00] not logical compared to just having something to roll through and send. So I would rather, instead of filter down the list to what you want, I'd rather just not mail you.

And I'll just mail something else entirely. And that kind of goes back to the framing and the perspective, right? It's all about how you look at the equation. And that depends on what side of the table you're on. If you're an advertiser, you don't care. It's I, I take the, I take the leads as they come in, I take the click as they come in.

And internal, we control yes, but like blah, blah, blah. But on the other side, you're like, I send what I can if they can't make money off of it. It. They obviously aren't good at sales and they need some help with that, and then if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But the disconnect is when you get to that point and you say, listen, the offer doesn't make sense for me to run.

More times than not, the advertiser will say the same thing that is completely irrelevant and shows me that they do not understand marketing at all. And they're like, I don't understand, man. We're the best offer out there. No. You're not in [00:21:00] any way, shape or form no matter what, because you're assuming that those people are only going to people that asked a question, what product am I looking for?

And you are the answer. And that's because that's what you do all day, is try to find those people. I am putting an offer in front of someone I think they may want. It's not that they already do. So no, it's not that you, you could be the best a hundred percent. You could be the best paying, the best converting, and the best thing ever.

But if the EPC on your email is 30 cents, and I run a completely different industry, that applies better to the demographics of that person. I don't give a crap. If you're the best person in your industry when the under other industry is $3 EPCs, you are fighting for the sending spot to that person at that time.

You are not fighting to be the best blue widget company at that person, for that person at that time. [00:22:00] I don't care. If I cared, that's what Google would care about. That's what Bing would care about. And that's why you are used to intent buying. I am demographic marketing and every single time these guys do that, they always think it's intent marketing.

And I'm like, you don't understand even what your buying, so why would I listen to you like this? Makes no sense. But that's, that's the

Jim Banks: say that, like they, they, they may well be the best offer in their industry, but it's like. Their industry is not what is only in front of your audience. And as you say, like why would you want to go? I can send 5 million emails to, to my list and make, a buck 53 bucks, 50 for each thousand emails I send or whatever it is, 

why would I want to kind of like throw that offer into my rotation and then reduce that to a buck 50? It might be great for them 'cause they're making good sales, but it's I'm like completely killed. I'm getting crushed as a result. That's, that's why I've [00:23:00] never understood, I, I used to, when I mailed I used to say to people, well, what sort of guarantee, what are you gonna pay me a guaranteed like CPM?

And they'd be like, well no. And I'm like, well, in that case, in that case, you're not getting a spot in the rotation because like at the moment that like I mail consistently and I make that much consistently. So unless you can match that. And, and we'll take a chance with it again. like it could be, it completely does five times better than that.

And in which case, fantastic. We'll completely switch you other stuff out and put you in there because it makes sense for it to do that, right? But we're not gonna just throw you in there just 'cause you think it's a good, good mail, good offer to mail, right? 

Robert Adler: so here, here's an actual realistic situation of this exact thing that I went through. So I was mailing, homeowner data specifically. I was doing, I think like HVAC declines or something like that. So all I can really count on is that they have something they're willing to put money into their home for, and they have a home of which they at least have the consent to.

Fix an appliance, right? So it could be a lease, it could be a rent with they might know the landlord, [00:24:00] whatever. It's, and I remember getting, I got on a call with, I won't say who, but there's literally only four of them. So it's pretty easy to figure out, the home cable companies.

Like when you first move in, you're like, I need cable tv, or I need cable internet. You know what they pay on a conversion, like eight to $12 on something like that. And they're like, but we're the best in the industry. Yay. And I'm like, okay. Not even close compared to home security. Nowhere close.

And they're like, but we're the best capable company. And I went, I don't care because when I mail you, I make 2 cents an email. When I mail them, I make $73 an email. Tell me again how you're the best. no, because again, they're targeting based on intent, and I'm targeting based on sending slot and demographics.

But that's in every single thing, right? It's all cause and effect. And when you're buying, all is your effect and what causes it goes [00:25:00] against. But me as a marketer, I'm not loyal. I'm not an in-house mailer, right? I don't only mail my brand. I mail any brand I can find that will give me compensation on their data, my data, whatever it is, right?

But I need to know what it is and I need to know what it'll make. And at the end of the day, I have a responsibility to make a certain amount on anything, whether that's more or just like enough or whatever it is, that does not change the fact of at the end of the day. The equation bubbles up from I press button.

Button causes actions. Actions cause something either that's opens, clicks or revenue or it's this list, that list this list or it's this relay that relay this relay or whatever setup it is at the end of the day. It is, we sent X, we got Y, and that notice I never said niche or advertiser

Jim Banks: And, and that and.

Robert Adler: it doesn't matter.

Jim Banks: And it's always amazed me that, again, I think affiliates, they, they look at the platform, [00:26:00] they go, oh, it's there's was way too much complication and, and there's things like, waiting and priority and stuff like that, and they don't understand why you would do that.

And I'm like, well, you do that because. As you, as you say, if, if I've got five,buyers on the backend, Buyer A might pay me 20 bucks, buyer C might pay me 10 bucks, right? So you think that buyer A is gonna make you twice as much money, but if buyer C is so much better at converting and whatever else, 

They could make so much more money for you. So you just need to look at it. I sent them this many calls, this many calls turned into this much money. That equates to a revenue per click, And then that way you can then apply weighting and modeling based on that. And, and to be honest with you, I've seen people complaining, oh, this is, this is shit.

This is crap. blah, blah, blah, like RTB platforms. It's if an RTB buyer is shit, cut them outta the rotation, completely. Get

Robert Adler: It's not hard.

Jim Banks: You can, you don't have to take whoever they offer up, You have the right of first [00:27:00] refusal on every single thing that comes through, 

It's called a blacklist. You can say, I don't wanna see them in my rotation. On the display side of things, I have like a, a bunch of white lists. I have a bunch of blacklists, and that's built up based on, I know that this, anyone that sends me traffic from here right, is, It's crap. And anyone that sends me traffic from here is good, 

So depending on which, which kind of like things I'm running, I can then say, okay, that's a good offer. 

The Rise of MFA Sites
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Jim Banks: I'm gonna run the white list. That's a bad offer. I'm gonna run that with a very, very extensive blacklist, right? I, I, I saw the figure the other day. I'm trying to think where I read it. And it was basically saying that, I think, again, I think there's an event coming up called programmatic io or something, and.

Robert Adler: so.

Jim Banks: Yeah, and, and they were talking about, the amount of money that was met was basically made by. Basically ma, MFA sites made, made for advertising or made for ad sense as it used to be in, in my day, back in the day. and apparently the number has gone up from [00:28:00] $20 billion a year to 26. Billion dollars a year.

Which is fucking insane. And the problem is there is 128,000 of these publishers with these MFA sites. You, you've seen them, you see a clickbait kind of ad, you click on it and it's just got thousands of ads on it, right? And all of those ads are placements. All of those placements carry a cost.

If you are an advertiser on them, you're paying for that. That placement. Some of them, The, the, the simple, the system would work great. You have advertisers on one side, publishers on the other, but in between that there's this mele of people in interfering in that, that nice thing

Robert Adler: Oh yeah.

Jim Banks: And they're introducing that. 

The Role of Yield Optimizers
---

Jim Banks: There's, there's companies called it yield optimizers. Their job is to work for the publishers and maximize the yield. and as in the money that the publisher makes from the ad spots that run on the site, right? So you think I'm buying a, a banner placement on that site.

What you're actually [00:29:00] buying, even if it was a video, you're buying a video, right? That might last for six seconds. And then it rotates. And another one shows, right? So somebody watches like five seconds of a video and the video changes, right? So they may have gone out, it was a great video, but like the back, the banner's gone, right?

Oh, well, I'll wait for it to come round again. But the, the, the banner never comes round again because they've got so many in

Robert Adler: Exactly.

Jim Banks: right? And then you scroll down. But the one at the top is still going through rotation. So even when it's not in screen, it's still click, in, in racking up. Impressions, impressions.

Impressions. 

Ad Placements and Impressions
---

Jim Banks: So some of these sites, I think the, yahoo.com, the mail, daily mail, they have tens of billions of dollars of, of clickable or, or, revenue generating impressions every single day. It's just insane, So there's loads of inventory available. So people say, I'm gonna buy traffic from the Google Display Network.

That's where most of the unsold stuff that Google doesn't. Is not able to [00:30:00] sell. That's where it all ends up on that remnant exchange, They can sell that stuff all day long, right on the Google Display Network through these sites like the, like I said, the Daily Mail, Yahoo, whatever. So again, I always look at it from the.

What's the placement? Where is it on the site? Is it above the fold? Is it below the fold? If it's below the fold, not interested whatsoever. I look at all the, the kind of the publishers that, that, that, or the, the, the networks or platforms that I can buy ads on. I know who all the yield optimizers are.

I'm like, don't wanna have any traffic from them. So I automatically, as soon as I set up, set up a campaign, I'm adding all of my, my knowledge into. The blacklist, Of publishers database, like networks, who, who do I want, who do I want traffic from? So before you even start, you can apply some, some logic to mitigate for some of the risks that people go, well, I tried display as it was horrible.

It's it was horrible because you just ran it with everything. everything switched on and you got slaughtered quite

Monitoring Ad Blocks
---

Robert Adler: you know, so you know how a lot of people, you know how a lot of [00:31:00] people do the uptime monitoring just to make sure that their stuff doesn't go down or whatever. so I added a little thing onto that, and what I did is, is not only did I do uptime monitoring, I think I did every.

30 minutes or whatever, just so it was something. But the other goal was, is that it would look at the number of, ad blocks on each page. And if the ad blocks ever went up AKA, they added another AdSense block or a rev content block or like an out brainer to bullet block, I would get a notice. Then when I get a notice, it would actually watch my bids on that site more.

'cause it will assume that I will start losing more because of the dilution of ad blindness. So like with all that kind of stuff, we put those into a lot of our, our systems, but then we also applied it to mail. and that's, that's a lot of the aspects of people don't know what they don't know.

But people also have no idea how much of a hand other people you don't know have in your daily transactions. 

Understanding Traffic Sources
---

Robert Adler: Like you have absolutely no idea how many people [00:32:00] are sitting between you and the actual advertiser. If you're running, oh, I can track the links. Doesn't matter. Like it literally doesn't tell you.

It gives you an idea, but it doesn't tell you enough. I looked at a link yesterday, 23 redirects. Like I seriously sat there and I'm just like, your conversion rate just dropped by 80% just from mobile, trying to keep up with the redirects, like this is, this is not gonna end well. But also the offer paid like $45 and he was getting like $5.

That's how many times it was brokered. So it's but, but this is the part, and this is why I wanna spell this out so everyone fully understands. That $4 lead was sold. As a $40 lead from the guy that has the quality $40 leads, because it was sold all the way upstream to him. So to you, you have no idea that that was only a $4 lead and he has no idea that it was sold for 40 and that disconnecting the.

Difference is literally just like watching a cascade of accounts [00:33:00] receivable over like fricking 45 to 60 days. But now that's why you're like, I don't understand why some of these sources, the quality just really sucks and you can't narrow it down 'cause it ain't a site, it's a person. that's the people that don't know.

This is crazy. Like they don't understand that sources can be multiple sources at all. that was, I can't believe I have had that conversation with media buyers. Like I cannot believe. I actually was like, so this is a source. They're like, well here's where they come from. And he brings up a page and he goes, just this page.

And I went. So what you're, you're buying like the sense block on this page? And he's no, no, no, just this page. And I'm like, but there's more than just that page. there's other pages where they come from what are we talking about here? He didn't know that. Like he never thought about where the people came from to get to that page.

And it was an MFA site. And then I went on there and I clicked on a,click here to expand. you know that the little thing, right? And when I [00:34:00] clicked it, it clicked on his ad and took me to his website and he went, oh, I wonder why it's not converting. And I went, gee, it took you weeks to find this.

but that's the whole point is that to them is a shitty little cheapo leader, whatever it is, right? To the advertiser though, it's the same thing they thought they were buying the whole time. And then you start to figure out that the guy buying from site a. Is great. that's good quality, right?

But you don't know site a a hundred percent of their traffic is search arbitrage and it's all from rev content, or it's all from Bulah or Outbrain or all these other stuff that maybe you don't like the quality, but you can't filter it 'cause you don't know. So it's like

Jim Banks: right? So everything that happened before then was completely unknown, So

Robert Adler: What? 

Search Partner Networks
---

Robert Adler: What do you think the Google partner network was? Everyone's oh, it's AdSense. No, that, that's the, that's true. I take it back. That is the display network, the con, whatever you wanna call it, GDN, content Network, whatever. It's, [00:35:00] but then there were the search partners. You ever wonder what those were

Jim Banks: Well, so funny enough, actually, this week, did you see it this week? They, they, they announced that they're going to make, for people that run search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns, they're going to allow placement specific data for, Sites that are the Search Partner network, 

Or Google Partner Network. which is typically, it's, it's most of the, the other sites that are not google.com, right? So your YouTubes, your, ad mobs, your,all those, all those sorts of things, right? They've got a whole bunch of sites, right? Google Finance, but there's also a, a whole bunch as, as well that,they, they, they used to be, they were all high quality.

Sites, so people like, ask.com and what have you, they were all Google search partners. 'cause they weren't, they were better than the, the sort of Google Display Network, but, but obviously it wasn't a Google owned property, so they had to have a distinction for that. And they're gonna make that data [00:36:00] available.

So to enable you to be able to exclude it and what have you. But again, I don't, I, I haven't I saw it, it said, you're gonna get the impression data, but you're not gonna get the conversion data. And I'm like, well that's not really helpful. I wanna be able to see what's going on.

There. So there's a, there's a reason, and that's because that's basically the concept of search arbitrage, monetization. So like the, the, back in the day when they were taking more mail traffic on stuff like that, I think, I think it was, I know Yahoo was huge for a while, especially with

Still is still

Robert Adler: but then. Yeah. And still is. And then there's Bing obviously and all that. to my knowledge right now, I don't think Google is allowing mail, but they're allowing like regular other stuff, but they're also making changes, so who knows? But the main thing was, is when I was mailing, we would actually mail that all day.

And we would, not saying Google, but like in general search feeds and. For the aspect of only needing intent, but not needing someone to follow through. Sometimes there are lists where it would actually back out for both of us because the [00:37:00] brand would have enough remarketing budget and they wanted to cut down the initial find acquisition cost, and I had that locked, so that was easy to find.

Initial click. I just couldn't take them through the entire process. But that's what remarketing education is. For, so I'd find these guys and I'd get like an EPC running their offer of five or 10 cents. But then if I could run to a keyword page that has them, I'd make 60 cents. But they would still make the money off of that, like they would still be profitable.

So it's just, it's a different methodology. But the interesting part was it's the majority of these guys were all people that literally said they don't take affiliate traffic. They don't want affiliate traffic. They don't need it. They, they never trusted it. It's nothing they would ever want. And then meanwhile there's us, the majority of what they're buying is all affiliate traffic that they would've gotten for half price if they just had an affiliate program.

But instead now they're literally paying double to buy the exact same click from another person that's just off charging.

Creative Advertising Strategies
---

Jim Banks: because, because, because ultimately, I, I've always maintained that, I used to run a whole bunch of stuff that [00:38:00] was like a Trojan horse, right? I called it a Trojan horse because, certain types of products were not allowed to be advertised. Again, if you, if you think about your, your marijuanas and your.

again, I know that obviously guns is a big thing in the States, but you can't advertise them online. But again, think of how easy it would be to throw a quiz page up and then the quiz page takes people through to a knife page or a gun page, or a marijuana page, or whatever you want it to be, right?

'cause that's one step. Remove from the original point of entry. So the point of entry is the clean, right? So again, it's, it is almost like it's a search arbitrage model, right? Your, your. Basically creating a screen or a Trojan horse, right? That is a compliant, legit white, white, proper white, proper white hat.

Offer that. Google loves. They go, yeah, we we're quite happy for you to have that. It's a quiz, right? Personality test or whatever it is, whatever the quiz is, doesn't really matter, right? But it takes them through to whatever's on the backend, right? So again, it could be gummies, it [00:39:00] could be C, B, D, whatever it is.

All the things, all the things that people have gone, I'm really struggling. I dunno how to sell these products. I can't get anyone that will, I can run ads on, right? So it's well maybe you want, you might wanna try that as an alternative way to, to find a route through.

Robert Adler: I am gonna have to find you. I keep getting this ad, it's like once a month and I freaking forget to screenshot it every time. And I need to for you 'cause it is probably one of the best ads I've ever seen for, I'm not allowed to advertise this on Facebook, but you know what the hell I'm selling. And it was like the ad was a picture and it was.

We do not sell weapons in any way, shape, or form, but our weapon would be if it was one, well nevermind it's not a weapon. So anyway, about this plush little, teddy bear we have below that is extremely aggressive with really, really rigid angles and has the ability to, let's say, attach an extra light for extra visibility during night.

And it like literally all the way through and they're like, but we [00:40:00] don't sell weapons at all. And I'm like, okay, that's good, but now I'm gonna go to the lander. And I go to the lander, and the lander is just a reminder, still not weapons. And then as soon as you add to card, it goes, but it's a weapon though. And I'm like, I'm like, oh, this is good. 'cause you don't even have to cloak if you go that far. Like if you're, if you're that

Jim Banks: like literally your Facebook's, your Googles and what have you, they just want plausible deniability. Well, when it was up, when it, when we saw it, it was fine. It was talking about teddy bears, right? The fact that people wanted to sell other stuff after the, after the fact is on them, right?

That's, that's on the person buying and the person selling to kind of like have that, right? it's, again, I, I just think if you think it, think things through in a more, like lateral way, you'll, you will arrive at, at kind of an answer, right? So again, there's so many things where we used to sell.

prescription medication for erectile dysfunction. Viagra for want of a better way of putting it, or, whatever. Yeah, it's hard industry. [00:41:00] Love it. But, but again, it, it, it, it was one of those things, like eventually it got to the point where, it wasn't, it wasn't a permitted to to be sold product, right?

You could sell it all day long. Organically SEO and what have you, right? But you couldn't run paid ads. But again, it was so much like ultimately the if, if you ran a quiz, right? The quiz could have any number of questions, whether it's 1, 2, 10, 50, whatever. You, we'll, we'll give you a personality.

Assessment and the personality assessment will always land on exactly the same place, right? Doesn't matter what the end, it could be a whole bunch of blurb, you, you've identified, there's this person, this person, this person, this is the product we recommend, and it's this, right? And it's the same product for every single outcome, right?

Where the outcome doesn't matter. I used to say, I used to sell insurance for a living, and you, you'd knock on people's door and you'd say, Hey, is there anyone in the house that. Is is in a company pension and they go, no, no, no. We're all in a company pension. Well, good, I've got something for you. Didn't matter what if they said No, none of us are in, well, it really wouldn't, whatever they answered, I had, I had something [00:42:00] for, it didn't matter.

I, I could always have something to sell, have a conversation with people. 'cause the answer that I

Robert Adler: but that's 'cause you understood the consumer. That's the difference though, is is you know, and, and to take this back and wrap that concept is you understood that your consumer was not a yes to your pre-qual question. You understood that the consumer was someone that needed it, whether they understood or not, and that is like only one more step people need to do during setup, but they never do it.

They're just like, oh, we sell cars. I'm finding people that sell that, that need a car, and you're like. But what about people that are about to need a car? What about the people that don't know that they need it? Or like they just found out right now they need a car. Like they're literally in your bay right now being told that their axle is cracked.

Like that guy you didn't think of five minutes ago, why are you not geofencing Your competitors on actual freaking [00:43:00] auto repair places like this kind of stuff is not hard to do. 'cause they assume if you're there, you already. Paid. And you're like, no, you're there. 'cause insurance told them to go there or they'll have to pay.

But then they get to go, I don't like them. Let me get in another quote. And you can be that quote. It's it's not that hard to understand, but they don't look that

Hyper-Local Campaigns
---

Jim Banks: But that's, again, that's the whole point. I mean like, because we all have one of these things, a cell phone, right? That is the smartest kind of device on the planet, and it's virtually with people 24 7, right? most people, I don't even go to the toilet without taking my phone with me. It's not that I wanna do anything with it, I just wanna take it with me just so I've got it right.

I'm not gonna answer any phone calls if somebody calls me and I'm in the bathroom, but I just wanna

Robert Adler: But then you know that you missed a call and that's the important part.

Jim Banks: But, but you know, you can run a hyper-local campaign and the device is the targeting, right? It's the proximity of that device, So again, it could be, if you're selling a [00:44:00] product that is for people that are pet owners, 

There are dog parks all over the country. So you can say, find me, people that were within a, in a dog park within the last. 60 days, 30 days, whatever it is, Th let's say 30 days. Find me people that were in a dog park for the last 30 days. They're one of two things. They're either somebody exercising or.

A dog owner, Chances are they're a dog owner. most people, if you're gonna go running, they're not gonna go, I'm gonna run in a dog park and get tripped over by people with dogs on leashes, I just want to run kind of like, without that, IM impediment, right? So most people in dog parks are dog owners, right?

So again, if you have a vet service or teeth, teeth bad, bad, bad breath for dogs, whatever it is, vitamin supplement doesn't matter, There's, there's. A, a bazillion thing. So you can have like ads that will be able to target people based upon their proximity, right? but it's the device, 

You don't need to you don't, you can imply that they're a dog owner by virtue of the fact they've been to a dog park within the last 30 days. [00:45:00] What you can also do is, let's, let's say it was a hotel, right? People that been to a luxury hotel chain or whatever, you can actually target people, 

And if That like you can target people between six and nine in the morning, or nine and 12 or 12 to one or whatever, like lunchtime right after dinner. Like whatev, whatever it is, you can target them on times of the day. You can also target, based on the number of times people have been to a location, right?

And exclude those people. Because the chances are if somebody has been to a place 30 times in the last 30 days, they work

Robert Adler: They work

right? So they're probably not going to be interested in, Mm-hmm.

Jim Banks: Booking, booking a room at a hotel because they're the person that's cleaning out the toilets in the hotel or whatever it might be.

They, they're, they're, a person who works in that location rather than is visiting it because they're in need of what's that particular location is offering. And that's where, again, I think so many people are now running ads on places like App Loving. 'cause you can do these rich, rich, immersive in-game kind of.

Page [00:46:00] takeovers, and it just takes over the whole screen. But people are in a game and then, they have the ads that kind of pop up because they need to have ads in order to not have to pay for the actual

Robert Adler: Hey, whatever works.

Jim Banks: And people go, oh yeah, actually that's quite good. I might like that.

And, and before you know it, they're, they're off and they're on geo site and, and away you go. But I, I, again, I just think that, that, media buyers really need to understand the, the psychology behind some of user behavior to understand what sort of. Things to bring to the table. Again and just, just on this

Robert Adler: but also It's just a survey away. Like it's, it's not, it's not hard to figure out that a person with an iPhone 11 walking into a T-Mobile store is a good person to try to get to buy a phone from you instead. it's, it's, it's not, anyway.

Jim Banks: And, and and, and I think so much of it is you just need to ask questions, right? like, when, when you have a thank you page, there's nothing I hate more than you get a thank you pages. Thank you. Someone who will be in touch. It's is that it? Seriously, you're leaving me with a thank you.

Somebody will be in [00:47:00] touch. Not even a hey, again, let, let's say for argument's sake, it's Let, let's say you are selling a, a kind of, a subscription service for a meal delivery service or whatever it might be, right? You, you could kind of like have some sort of like a survey, 

So who are you buying for? Family, just me, whatever it is, So what, what sort of age bracket are you? 25 to 34, 35 to four. what are you a man or a woman? Blah, blah, blah, So all of a sudden. Instead of it just being a name and address, a phone number, a credit card, you've got the, the, the age group they're in, the gender they're in, 

They've got so much information just because they become a customer of yours. And you have that, that probably their level of enthusiasm for your, you as a brand is at its highest. The minute they've clicked, submit the entry to, submit to buy the product. They get the thank you great elation.

It's Now they've gotta wait for the product to come. So the kind of the elation of kind of buying is defeated by because they sit sink down. 

Post-Sale Upsells
---

Jim Banks: So if you offer them up something [00:48:00] after they've done that, and again, that's where I think some of these kind of post sell upsells that don't necessarily need to be yours.

They could be ancillary. E affiliate offers. Again, if you think about like your, to your example of, people that buy a home, if, if you are a real realtor, I used to say if you're a real estate person, you sell a home, So yeah, you make a great commission on, on selling that home, 

You go, we made like a ton of money. But you think if you actually sell that home, the person that buys that house is gonna move in there. They could very well move to two or three other locations in the next whatever, But when they move into their home. What you should have is when they go get in there, you should, when you go around and, and they get the keys, you can go in, yet you send the cleaners in to make sure it's all okay and what have you.

You go in and you have a pack that is a, a welcome pack and it's welcome to the area. Here's the TV company that you can hire to like connect cable TV if you need it. here's a, a, a local plumbing service. Here's a, a local dentist nearby. Here's this, here's this. And these can all be [00:49:00] affiliate offers, 

And you could probably make another. 20 30% in ancillary revenue upsells, just on that book, Because people can open it and go, oh look, there's a phone number. There'll go that number. That could be a pay per call number bang. Yeah, I'm looking for a tree surgeon to come round and clean up the garden or whatever it might be, 

I need my HVAC servicing 'cause I've just moved in and it smells a bit funny, They, they all these things that people will, will have, they, again, new house move in, They've got all these strong desires that I'm gonna rip this out, rip this out, put this in, put this in, I'm gonna put new guttering in, new this, new that right.

Their enthusiasm will kinda wane over over time, but that, that initial enthusiasm. They're gonna go somewhere. They could go to Google, they could go to chat, GPT, wherever it is, right? Or they can go to the welcome pack. Welcome, Bob and Jim to your new home. It's fantastic to have you here.

We are delighted to see you here, Here's some things, here's some local restaurants nearby. Here's also a kind of a, a directory of all these places that, that, we think would be helpful for you based on [00:50:00] other people that we've helped in the past, right? Done, doesn't, doesn't cost you much money.

make, again, it may cost you a few bucks to put one of those packs together Once you've got it done easy. Even if you wanted to

Robert Adler: can't get more.

Jim Banks: But I,

Robert Adler: you can't get higher intent.

Jim Banks: I would make it a ring binder with paper in rather than a pdf. 'cause PDFs can easily get filed away and forgotten.

Whereas that folder, I've, I've got one in my house, It's it sits underneath, it's a ring folder and I. Well, quite often from time to time, if something happens with our boiler, we need some issue or what have you. I'll get it out. Is there anything in there about boilers? And I'm looking at it so I know that sort of stuff works 'cause it worked on me.

And I'm sure it's worked on everyone that's ever bought a house that they found one at

Robert Adler: Oh yeah. That's exactly what it is. Especially, especially for example, the guys that used to run Netflix free trials and all they would do is buy the ability to put them on Domino's Pizza boxes before the delivery drivers went out. It's like you'd pay a dollar and you'd get a guaranteed $9. And they did this in seven states at a certain point.

not [00:51:00] with corporate. Corporate, both like smaller ones. It's insane how much there is 'cause the people are gonna do it anyway.

Jim Banks: Yeah,

Robert Adler: They're gonna look at it anyway.

Jim Banks: yeah,

Robert Adler: But yeah.

Closing Remarks and Future Plans
---

Jim Banks: So, Rob, this has been a good episode, I think. Thank you so much for your time, for everyone watching. Thank you for yours. we're on the right podcast this week. I know. I was busy last week. We had a bit of a glitch where, I thought you were on the other podcast. I had, I had a really good, interesting guest on that, which I'm really looking forward to putting out.

But but yeah, it's, it's it's, it is been a, it is been a good a, a good time. Have you got any travels coming up soon or are you like you, you

Robert Adler: Thankfully no. Yeah, hopefully I get to chill at home for a little bit. 'cause we just did the New York and then, I don't really go to the ancillary stuff towards, Q3, Q4, unless I have to. So most likely it'll be like West again in, I think they moved it to February, something

Jim Banks: so. I dunno.

Robert Adler: but yeah, that'll be the next one, most likely for.

Jim Banks: Cool. Well, good. I'm looking. FII know we, we like coming up in the not too distant future. We're gonna have some guests. I'm really excited to, to see what that [00:52:00] brings to the table. It's, it'll be nice to have a different, a different dynamic, different viewpoints, and we can grill them and see what they've got to say.

so yeah, so obviously if you haven't subscribed to the channel, please make sure you do that. If you're listening to us on, a, kinda like a Spotify or a Apple Podcast. Don't do that. Just kind of like listen to his on YouTube and watch his on YouTube. It's so much better.

Robert Adler: Unless you work for one of those companies in which we are totally only saying, subscribe through those

Jim Banks: of course, of course, of course. I forgot my bad. yeah. Good. So anyway, we'll talk soon and piece out everyone.

Robert Adler: Have a good one.