Why Most Media Buyers FAIL and How You Can Beat the Odds

Jim Banks [00:00:00]:
Hey everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Media Buying Podcast here with Rob. How you doing, my friend?

Rob Adler [00:00:04]:
Good as always, buddy. How you doing?

Jim Banks [00:00:06]:
Good. I'm like hating the fact that we're getting into winter now. It's like here in the uk we put our clocks back. There's always quirky period of time when we're an hour, hour difference. So in some respects we're closer. But it does throw all meetings that I have out the window because I think some of the platforms I work with, they, they're okay and they work out that there's an hour's difference. I think the clocks go back in the States on the 2nd of November. Oh yeah, ours went back last weekend.

Jim Banks [00:00:33]:
So it's. So we're, we're closer now than we've ever been in that respect. But it does, it makes a complete mess of when you're trying to do things and organize events.

Rob Adler [00:00:42]:
You know what's, you know, what's actually funny about that is you remember I used to live in Arizona and in Arizona they don't do daylight savings time, so they don't actually shift the time. So when it happens to everyone else, your entire schedule on your calendar just goes forward or back an hour. So you're like, oh, so now I'm going to wake up an hour later, but it's an actual hour later I'm going to do. But then no one else is following it, so everyone else is still waking up at the same time doing this. It's, it's so weird when that happens once or twice.

Jim Banks [00:01:09]:
And the stupid thing is, again, I don't know the reason that the clocks change in the States, but here in the UK it was because back in the 1800s or something, farmers could have more daylight to tend their crops. And you're thinking like nowadays they've got industrial lighting, solar powered lighting, they've got massive machines that can do a field in about 10 minutes. There's just really no need for it to change. But, but they do and it is what it is. But we're now at the point now, five o' clock in the day, in the evening, pitch black outside and, and people start getting really sad. But again, I'm not going to get really sad because for me it's, I'm like really, really excited that I've managed to secure a ticket to go to Affiliate Summit in Vegas. 12th to 14th January, I will be there. I'm going to be adopting my usual spot in the Chandelier Bar in the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

Jim Banks [00:02:01]:
So if you're going to be at the Affiliate Summit. Come and see me in my office. Be, be great to see you. Will you be there, Rob?

Rob Adler [00:02:08]:
I should be, yes. And by that I'm there, obviously I also mean the Chandelier Bar. So, yes, I will meet you there.

Jim Banks [00:02:15]:
Yeah. It's funny, I've got loads of friends that from time to time will go, Jim, I'm in the Cosmo and I've been in the Chandelier Bar and I couldn't see there. And I'm like, you do know I live in the uk. I don't actually live in the Chandelier Bar. Even though a lot of people think that I do. I always think I've wasted an opportunity. I think in the Cosmopolitan Hotel they have like a program, like a loyalty program. Every single time I run up a bill, I've never, ever gone, well, here's my loyalty card.

Jim Banks [00:02:43]:
I don't even, I don't have a loyalty card for the Cosmo. And I'm thinking, what a missed opportunity. I must have spent thousands, probably tens of thousands of dollars in there over the years on various drinks.

Rob Adler [00:02:56]:
But, but, but you did also hold the title on Foursquare as the governor for how long? Like, it was a year.

Jim Banks [00:03:02]:
I was the mayor. I was the mayor for quite a while.

Rob Adler [00:03:04]:
Sorry.

Jim Banks [00:03:05]:
But there's a guy that is the mayor now and I'm sure, I'm sure he either calls in remotely or he works there. He's probably cleaning up or something like that because he's. Oh yeah, he's, he's checked in something like 23 times in the last 30 days. And I'm like, there's just no way anyone would be alive if they spent 23 days in one place, particularly in Vegas. Imagine if you had. I, I did an 11 day stint once. I had two conferences with a weekend in between the two and I stayed in Vegas for 11 days and it was probably the worst experience I've ever had in my life.

Rob Adler [00:03:38]:
Because, yeah, it, it goes a bit and, and don't get me wrong, I lived there for a year. But it, it's when you can't escape because you have signed a lease, it hits differently. But yeah, it's the, the weather is definitely something that you need to get used to. But also, it ain't just the weather when it comes to Vegas, it's like everything, it's the whole ex. It's the Vegas experience. Yeah, it's the best term for it really.

Jim Banks [00:04:05]:
And the stupid thing is again, when I was in, in Vegas I was in the same hotel, I think I stayed in planet Hollywood for 11 days straight. But I had a suitcase full of dirty, dirty washing. And at the weekend I thought, well, I got nothing to do. There's nobody else in town. I know there's a few people that live there, but you know, there was nobody else in town. I was there like off the grid. So I thought, I don't want to do, I'll just go and take my, put, put all my dirty laundry into a suitcase. I, and I went to one of the laundrettes that they have off, off the sort of strip.

Jim Banks [00:04:33]:
And I'm thinking, oh, this place is. I'm sure I've seen this particular launderette in an episode of CSI Vegas where somebody got shot in the car park. And I just thought, oh again, I would never ever expect like a normal sane person to do it. But somebody like me, I'm quite happy to go in there and just watch my undies going around and spinning. And I took my laptop and I'm thinking, well, that's another stupid thing. Why would you take a, an expensive laptop to a laundrette to do work? I should have just gone in there, taken all my jewelry off, watches, everything.

Rob Adler [00:05:04]:
Oh yeah, just leave it there. Just run out for a quick errand. Just come back. It'll be nice and clean and definitely in the same spot you left it. Oh, Lord.

Jim Banks [00:05:13]:
Yeah, no, yeah, so, so for me, I mean I had notification yesterday that, that the Q3 Q3 results for Meta and also for Google came out. They both done incredibly well in the most recent kind of update. Did you, did you have a chance to look at those at all?

Rob Adler [00:05:31]:
I haven't. It's still on my reading list. But I am more than happy for you to tell me.

Jim Banks [00:05:35]:
Yeah, I threw it all into Claude and it basically said, tell me, give me the kind of TLDR of what happened. According to this, it says search results met his most recent filing was filed yesterday. Total revenue reached 51.24 billion, representing a 26% increase compared to Q3 2024, driven primarily by increased advertising revenue. No surprises there. They said income from operations was $20.5 billion, up 18% compared to the third quarter. This was the real kicker for me. Net income came to $2.71 billion though this was significantly impacted by a one time income tax charge of $15.93 billion related to the one big beautiful Bill Act. Oh, I'm like, holy crap, that's a ton of money.

Rob Adler [00:06:32]:
Yeah, I'm Gonna need that. I'm gonna need that link whenever we're done here. And I'm interesting.

Jim Banks [00:06:37]:
Is that like a hallucination? And that seems to me to be a bit. Well, hold on.

Rob Adler [00:06:43]:
While you keep reading, I'll just go ask another place to see how they hallucinate it and then we'll compare.

Jim Banks [00:06:49]:
But as I say, diluted EPS earnings per share was A$5 reflecting the impact of this one time tax charge. And then basically said they got a ton of cash in the bank. $77.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents and money marketable securities as of December 31, 2024. So they got lots of money, plenty of money to go out and acquire businesses and everything else. They're executing well on its core advertising business while maintaining a strong balance sheet to fund its investments in AI Reality Labs and emerging technologies. So I think it's safe to say that Tometa did well. They had a good Q3 compared to the previous year. And again I'm always a bit confused because I talked to a lot of my friends who run media buying agencies that kind of specialize in Facebook and they're really struggling.

Jim Banks [00:07:39]:
Right. So I'm thinking, well Meta doesn't seem to be struggling, they seem to be doing okay. So there must be somebody coming along to kind of spend money. I don't know who.

Rob Adler [00:07:48]:
So I just took a look at it. So according to Perplexity. So we'll see which one is hallucinating more. But the detail says the big beautiful bill was because the law that was passed in July set a new corporate alternative minimum tax that forced Meta to record a valuation allowance against their federal deferred tax assets. So basically, basically they weren't allowed from what I can understand from that and granted like this is a quick read of a summary but it sounds to me like they were allowed to stretch out a, like a deferral on something and the bill changed that they couldn't do it anymore. So then it was now due to. That would be my guess. But it says it's.

Rob Adler [00:08:32]:
It caused a temporary spike in the effective tax rate to 87%. I'm gonna need a fact check on that one. But that's interesting. Like that's, that's nutty also that's. I need to look into how much of that went to their AI side because that's been another interesting thing about not to tangent off to the side but like this is actually relatable especially is when Google is doing their announcements now about like their AI stuff and I'm not sure if you've seen that, but they're really harping on the whole last month we did 4.3 trillion tokens or this month we did. Yeah, they're counting all their internal stuff too.

Jim Banks [00:09:09]:
Yeah, so.

Rob Adler [00:09:10]:
So like when Gmail looks at something and now it's an LLM doing it, they're counting those tokens towards that. At least that would be my assumption. But based on that, that changes how they report where revenue is coming from and where cost is going to. Facebook doesn't have that because Facebook is doing a lot of open source models and they're doing a lot of research into this. Could help with X, Y and Z. And of course they're using it internally but they can't just openly say this is what we're doing with that. This is this, this is that. But they'll write off the research and they'll write off the other spots of it.

Rob Adler [00:09:43]:
So that's interesting to me to see how much of that would actually go towards the AI research on something like Meta versus on something like Google.

Jim Banks [00:09:51]:
Because.

Rob Adler [00:09:52]:
Because Meta has meta AI, Google has Gemini, but Google is monetizing it. Yeah, Meta really isn't yet. Technically.

Jim Banks [00:10:02]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:10:02]:
But you know, I did just get a disclaimer from Facebook saying they're using.

Jim Banks [00:10:07]:
Their AI to enhance the advertisers experience. Or at least that's what they tell you that they're doing. Right. Personally, I don't think they are enhancing the experience and that's probably just my years of experience of buying media. But yeah. And according to this, it said based on search results, Alphabet's most recent filing was same day. Again thinking like why would you do them on the same day? It's almost like a competition, like two people choosing, choosing teams in, in the.

Rob Adler [00:10:31]:
Parking or that was the day it was just due and that was the last.

Jim Banks [00:10:33]:
Maybe, maybe, yeah. But they said Alphabet's Total revenues reached 102.35 billion, a significant increase from 88.27 in the prior year driven by growth in Google Search and other Search and other and Google Cloud. So obviously Google Cloud has taken on a lot more revenue based upon the fact that more and more people are using Gemini and so on. The Nano Banana and what have you says income from operations was 31.23 billion, up from 28.5 in the prior year, indicating improved operational efficiency. Net income came to 34.98 billion compared to 26.3 in the previous year, showcasing strong profitability. Net income per share increased to 289 from 214, highlighting enhanced earnings per share. Looking at 2025 Q2 results as additional context, Google services revenue increased 12% to 82 billion, reflecting strong performance across Google search and others, Google subscriptions platforms and devices and YouTube ads. So I, I read somewhere that, that YouTube ads generated over $10 billion in Q3, which again is huge, you know.

Rob Adler [00:11:46]:
Oh yeah.

Jim Banks [00:11:47]:
And again, I, I know a lot of people that are like really big, big on, on YouTube ads and others that are really against. I'm in the. I'm against it because it doesn't really float. Float my boat in a PMAX campaign. But I've run YouTube elsewhere, so. Total operating margin was 32.4%, which it benefited from strong revenue growth and continued efficiencies in the expense base. Alphabet is showing consistent double digigit growth across its core business segments, with particularly strong performance in cloud and ongoing profitability improvements driven by operational efficiency.

Rob Adler [00:12:22]:
So quick question. Yeah, this will be. So we just did. Alphabet and Meta were the two that we just looked at, right?

Jim Banks [00:12:29]:
Yeah, yeah.

Rob Adler [00:12:29]:
Even though I'm just. Can I share my screen real quick?

Jim Banks [00:12:33]:
Sure, I guess.

Rob Adler [00:12:34]:
I know it's gonna look weird for a second for all of you. Just bear with us for a moment.

Jim Banks [00:12:38]:
It'll look super weird for anyone that's listening in on a podcast that program like Spotify.

Rob Adler [00:12:43]:
Well, I'll look, I'll explain it. I'll explain it too. But, but, but the visual is worth it. That's why I want to.

Jim Banks [00:12:49]:
Okay, knock yourself out.

Rob Adler [00:12:52]:
So I'm gonna close these and so on this. Here's the perplexity page for hopefully you can see it.

Jim Banks [00:13:02]:
Yep. Just give me one sec.

Rob Adler [00:13:04]:
Yep.

Jim Banks [00:13:06]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:06]:
For those of you on the podcast, we're making you wait for no reason and I apologize for that. But the main. And I'll just zoom this in for when that goes. All right. So is the screen share on and Good.

Jim Banks [00:13:17]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:18]:
All right, so with this green line is Google.

Jim Banks [00:13:23]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:24]:
And that is Meta. Notice the spread, but also notice the flip.

Jim Banks [00:13:29]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:31]:
So these are. If I'm right, these came out right around the pole. So you have these where they're starting to spread and come up. But here's the interesting part about these is when you click in.

Jim Banks [00:13:46]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:47]:
They legitimately mention that for meta, which by the way, that chart though, like this is a five day.

Jim Banks [00:13:58]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:13:59]:
But here it is. Is Meta. Meta cratered 10.2. Right. Multiple analysts downgraded because following the disappointing earnings and elevated AI spending.

Jim Banks [00:14:08]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:14:09]:
But the main thing that they mention is is that they actually put in here one of the reasons that it was going down was because of the tax bill.

Jim Banks [00:14:17]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:14:17]:
But because they. They ended up, they were like, that's a huge hit. So that was interesting to see on there. And it definitely mirrors everything you just said in terms of the growth, in terms of the cost, in terms of the spread and how they went up and down. Like, everything matches on that. But you're, you're not wrong. Like, their revenue is going up. But I also just keep hearing about people not able to do more.

Rob Adler [00:14:39]:
And you start to wonder whether or not it's consolidation or if it's like we're just not seeing what's actually happening somewhere or we're just not seeing what actually is going on.

Jim Banks [00:14:49]:
Yeah. I've done E Commerce for many, many years, Right. I'm doing more lead gen now. But, you know, with Shopify, they have this kind of thing. It's probably one of the most addictive things I've ever had the opportunity to do. But what they do is like on the Shopify page, they have a kind of a live sort of screen that shows you the map of the world and it shows you all the purchases that are made.

Rob Adler [00:15:10]:
Right.

Jim Banks [00:15:10]:
And it shows you how much kind of money is being spent per basically, per second, crazy amounts of money that kind of goes through. I genuinely, again, I genuinely thought last year, all that's the challenges that have been going on in the world. The war in Ukraine and so on and so on. I just assumed that there would be a downward turn in terms of the revenue. Right.

Rob Adler [00:15:31]:
I did, too.

Jim Banks [00:15:32]:
That was spent on Shopify stores, but they had a massive uplift in terms of sales. I'm thinking, to me, just, again, I just didn't see it. But. But then I work into every tiny, tiny percentage of the. The overall market, right?

Rob Adler [00:15:44]:
And my mind's the same, right? Because the majority of the time I'm on lead gen. I'm not even on E Comm. So, like, I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh, lead gen is great and it helps with these companies. And then Shopify's hey, go look at this on Black Friday. And I'm like, holy crap.

Jim Banks [00:15:57]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:15:57]:
And don't get me wrong, I understood, and I've always understood that Shopify transacts a lot of money. And I do understand the difference between revenue and profit and everything else. But when your actual numbers are making, or not even making, when your actual numbers are scrolling as fast as one of my programs is writing fake data to test an interface. But your stuff is real. That's insane. Yeah, Like, I, I, I literally remember seeing the number in front of 2 decimals increase in less than 5 seconds. And I was like, what is happening? That was a million dollars in five seconds. And I remember watching that and I went, I gotta give them credit.

Rob Adler [00:16:45]:
Because you know that someone on their team was like, we should not expose how much money we do. We should not expose what we're doing or orders or anything. And then someone else was like, no, but there will be some people that respect this and the openness. Hi, I'm one of those people that respects the openness. And after that, I sent you five clients.

Jim Banks [00:17:04]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:17:04]:
So that's the thing is with all of those. I love companies that do it even if they're not big. But the stats don't look good if you're not big.

Jim Banks [00:17:11]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:17:12]:
So the volume and all of that. Especially coming up to Black Friday right now and when this is going to get dropped, please, if you have not watched it, look for those. I'm going to say, I'm going to say Shopify. I'm going to say there were a couple others, right? I don't think Stripe did one. I think it was Shopify. And then there was like two or three others. But find them, watch them, because it is nuts, it is insane and it is a reality check.

Jim Banks [00:17:38]:
But it's really interesting. And again, the way you watch it, because I'm, I'm in Europe, right. You typically will see at the beginning of the day in Asia, everything's crazy and things are quiet in the States and there's still transactions being done. Right. And there's a lot of people in Asia that are buying things from stores in the States. So you see all these kind of things going backwards and forwards and, and everything else. But then like, you'll get, things will come online in, in parts of Europe and then they go offline in parts of Europe and come on on the east coast and then they go off on the east coast and come on on the West Coast. And it's really interesting to see as the, the kind of the, the globe turns around, right.

Jim Banks [00:18:14]:
The shift in terms of volume and maximum peak volume. Right. Increases from one place to another to another and then eventually ends up on. I don't know, I don't know if Hawaii is the kind of the last time zone before it goes into the next day. But, but it's really fascinating to watch. And again, I, I typically, on the day that Black Friday happens, I typically set that up On a completely separate screen. I've got it on all the time. It's just, to me it's almost.

Jim Banks [00:18:40]:
It's E commerce porn. Right. I just love watching it. It's so. Oh, it's so. It's amazing.

Rob Adler [00:18:45]:
It's amazing. It's amazing because you get so much, you get so many insights into, into not only what is happening, but also the company itself. So like, so like, for me, and I'll give two quick examples, the first example is, is that when I watch that data and I watch the stuff going through, right. I'm a programmer, I'm a developer, I do a lot of like architecture on like tech stuff. When I see that, all I'm thinking about is that the guy that's running that store is not only able to compute that number of revenue that quickly, but then keep it live. Live, right. Quote, unquote, and then stream it to how many people with no issue. Yeah, that's the person I want running the platform that I get paid from.

Rob Adler [00:19:27]:
Yeah, like that's, that's how I look at that. But there's, but there's stuff like that and then there's the other, which is two. I love watching whenever someone gets an order from a dark spot because some dude is at six in the morning just ordering something from somewhere else or like one in the morning and then their map is, well, we don't need to show this because no one's there. And then just out of nowhere, just something just comes out of nowhere and goes back and you're just like, oh my God. But yeah, it's, I love it. It puts a real number to what everyone talks about in terms of what is happening, which is awesome.

Jim Banks [00:19:59]:
Yeah. And, but, but again, I think, I think again because, because it's typically the, the percentage of the revenue that Shopify take for their processing and then obviously the payment gateways that they also take their, their piece of the pie in terms of the payment processing. Right. So you work it out and go again, I can't remember what the number was last year, but let's, let's call it $11 billion. Maybe somebody can leave in the comments what the actual number was. But you know, but if it was $11 billion and Shopify taking close to 3% of the fees that have been transacted on their platform, that's a lot of money in one day. Similarly, if Stripe and PayPal and whoever else they get their, their 2, 3% or whatever it is, again, huge numbers there. And again I'm always amazed at how many businesses do that kind of transaction volume and for that reason and they have one day when they do amazing and then the rest of the time they don't.

Jim Banks [00:20:49]:
But they still have Shopify plus as their platform. And I'm thinking, well, the rest of the time like they're really overpaying for their platform. They should be. Yep. They should probably just suck it up and work, maybe work out which is going to be more cost effective. Shopify Standard versus Shopify plus. Right? Because invariably people always end up paying for more than they need. Similarly with like email platforms like Klaviyo, right.

Jim Banks [00:21:11]:
They might have a lot of email going out during kind of the month of November because of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving and so on. Right. But then other parts of the year, right, they never downgrade the amount, right. So even if you, you clear out your database, right. You still end up paying for a lot more records in your database than you have. Right? Maintain with anyone that runs email campaigns, right? They always say, oh my email platform is very expensive, right? So let's say they pay Klaviyo 600 bucks a month or whatever it is because they got so many thousands, hundreds of thousands in their database, right? The first question I always ask is how much, how much email do you send to your database on a monthly basis? And for me, if they go, well, we don't send anything. Well, that's why it's expensive. If you have whatever your, your quota is, let's say you've got 10, 10,000 records in your database, you can mail up to 10x your your quota.

Jim Banks [00:22:04]:
So that means in theory you can, you can email a hundred thousand emails per month. And if you only mailed 8,000 or 10,000, then that's why your platform has cost you. Seems like it's costing you a lot of money, you just haven't used it to its full potential.

Rob Adler [00:22:20]:
Oh yeah. And it, the funny thing is too is, and let's be honest, you're giving them credit, you're giving them credit that they've even started on the platform before they start complaining about the price of it. Because the majority of people already will do literally nothing. And then they'll just be like, well this is a lot to set up. And I'm like, so it's an in depth platform. So it's a, it's a detail oriented thing. You're setting up that if they're asking these questions, hopefully they're using them. And if they're using them, doesn't that make them a good platform at Least you don't know yet because you haven't tested.

Rob Adler [00:22:51]:
But the, there's so much of that, like so many people that buy like the extra like analytical stack when Google Analytics is just fine, like it'll work for the vast majority of people. You're not buying leads on a cpc, CPL and doing all that. You're fine, you're good with analytics.

Jim Banks [00:23:06]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:23:07]:
But if you are doing something else and that is your livelihood or your income or something else, maybe you want something specific to your use case where like that 20% of traffic that came from this one traffic source that just never makes it to the page. Maybe they don't load JavaScript, maybe they don't come in the first place. Maybe it's blocked. Yeah, maybe that loss is now worth paying for a better tool. And then when it is, it's worth it.

Jim Banks [00:23:34]:
One of the tools I always put in place if I'm, if I'm working on my own sites or I'm working with a client where we're responsible for sending traffic and trying to generate leads and what have you, right? One of the tools we always put in place is Lucky Orange, right? And see people say, oh, I love Hotjar. I find you can choose your own poison, right? I really, really love Lucky Orange. And the reason I love it is I can actually look at heat maps and see what's going on on the site. But I can also play back the recordings of people to see where the kind of, where the friction is, Right. My job is to try and eliminate as much friction as possible. And it's amazing. You only need to watch probably 15 to 20 recordings to see the challenges of what people are struggling with, right? Then you've got some, something you can take back to the developers to say, can we make this change to the site? And here's the evidence to support the fact that that's actually what we should be doing, right? I'm not doing it based on gut feel. It's based on data, right? The data says do this, this will be the outcome.

Jim Banks [00:24:33]:
And again, I've seen situations where people are trying to generate leads and they go, oh, I can't afford to spend, to spend $40 for a lead. I can only afford to spend 20. And I say, right? I say to them, look, well, in that case, you have, you have a choice. You can either improve your experience and try and improve your conversion rate. Improve your conversion rate. You might bring your cost per lead from 40 down to 20 just by improving it that way.

Rob Adler [00:24:56]:
Exactly.

Jim Banks [00:24:58]:
And really that's probably the only thing they can do other than that they could try and get more volume and see if there's some scale there. Find other platforms where you know, potentially the leads might be cheaper. But generally speaking, if people want volume, want scale. Right. That scale will come at a cost of incrementally more like cost per lead. Right. Because you're trying to put more, more sort of throughput. Right.

Jim Banks [00:25:19]:
And, but that's when you know you need to improve the ad copy but also the user, user's experience when they get to your page. Right. And, and it always amazes me. People want 15 fields filled in. I'm like why do you need 15? What. Get as least amount of information as possible to get the lead validated to be able to be done you on the back end. Then you can try and get the additional information after the event. Right.

Jim Banks [00:25:43]:
But don't waste the opportunity of getting the information to begin with.

Rob Adler [00:25:46]:
Exactly right.

Jim Banks [00:25:48]:
And then ask for more information.

Rob Adler [00:25:50]:
And that's, and that's the main thing is like your job as a, as a, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna say marketer because in my mind this is a marketer, not salesman. Thing is your job is to put as little resistance between you and whatever click you just bought to get to whatever your goal point is. So if your goal point is to get a conversion, for example, you also need to remember I'm not just talking about fields or pages, I'm talking about how they're laid out or structured. So maybe if you have, for example I'll use, I'll use an affiliate example. Right. Like life insurance. Life insurance is a good example. There are short forms, they pay eight bucks.

Rob Adler [00:26:34]:
There are like mid forms which is the normal like regular form. Ish. Right. That might be like 15, 20 bucks, but I don't see that a lot. And then there's the long form. And the long form is like literally filling out a mortgage randomly at just the moment. Like you're literally sitting there with what feels, feels like 73 Fields because it is literally the entire thing. But if you just took the short form and that's the first four fields, right.

Rob Adler [00:27:05]:
You fill that out, where do you think they're sending the users? Yeah, just to the long form but with it pre popped like it's the same thing. But the difference is, is they know in their metrics that when they send the traffic to both, the EPC on both should net out to roughly the same because if it doesn't they lose traffic. And if it does, then they know that there's not an advantage over one or the other unless the source can be determined by quality and then you would weight it appropriately. But like, other than that, no one ever really looks at that. They don't really consider that. They don't really go into that. And it's such a difference in your quality and it's such a difference in your money.

Jim Banks [00:27:47]:
Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, I had that sort of example with, like, with the credit repair companies. Like you had Experian and Equifax and so on. There was a new one that came out called Teletrack. And, and nobody had heard of Teletrack. I'd never heard of that. I just found it in randomly somewhere. And I had, I was doing payday loans and I had a sort of a landing page that basically I was buying Yahoo traffic 10 cents a click for the term teletrack. And the ad that I wrote basically said something along the lines of having problems with your teletrack rating.

Jim Banks [00:28:17]:
We can help. And then obviously we were, we were pimping out payday loans at that point, right? But we were getting like 400 clicks a day, right? Because loads of people were having that problem. They, they had a problem with, with getting rejected, had no idea why, asked a question why, got told that it was because their teletrack rating was high. People go, what's teletrack? Never heard of it. And they would go to, to Google and Yahoo and type in the word teletrack. And lo and behold, we, we were the only people advertising. And we just cleaned up. I think for 18 months.

Jim Banks [00:28:45]:
I, the only thing I had to do was make sure I paid my credit card bill. That was it. I think it was like 400 bucks a month. Was my credit card bill. Peanuts. Absolute peanuts. Because the traffic was 10 cents a click. I was getting paid $14 a lead.

Jim Banks [00:28:58]:
Like 35% crazy.

Rob Adler [00:29:00]:
You're gonna, you're gonna love this. So that was me with home security on the Beacon score because no one knows what the hell a Beacon score is. They're like, is that my credit rating? And you're like, no. And they're like, what if I have a credit like this? What's my beacon? You're like, I don't know. But also the pubs don't know, so they can't pre qualify traffic. So I would do that. I would wait for the declines. They'd be like, sorry, because the, the lander would actually say, we're sorry, but your Beacon score doesn't allow the Promotions.

Rob Adler [00:29:29]:
And then they'd be like, what Beacon score? And then I'd be right there and I'm like, you know what's really good? Home security systems that don't require a Beacon score. And I sent them all to their competitor. So it's like, it's. That's why I never understood why people don't just look at that and look at what they're doing. Because when every piece that you're presenting to the user is a potential reason, way or methodology that they are going to leave where they are, so they could end up leaving because they're a decline, because they got the thank you, because it worked, because it didn't, or because you just said, hey, your Beacon score is low. And they're like, what's that? And then they go, look at it.

Jim Banks [00:30:04]:
Yeah. So to your point about the, the fourth, the four field form, right, Is you fill that in, right? And usually there's like an inline message that says thank you, right? And that's it. I'm like, what, you're leaving it at that Surely there must be an opportunity for, for that page to be populated with a whole bunch of extra stuff, right?

Rob Adler [00:30:21]:
The amount of people that I wish I could just be like, you understand that if we just took these six offers you already have, you signed up for Boardwalk, you threw them into a freaking offer wall. And then we thr that page, you really think you're not going to make a single cent more? It's like, it's nuts. Because a lot of these thank you pages are sometimes, what, 30% of the revenue? 30, 40, like it's nuts. And then a lot of the people that I run at this point, if I run them as an affiliate, right, And I go through their path, I look at this stuff, I look at the thank you. If I pre qual, I look at what's on the page, if I get DQ'd, I look at what's on the page. I'm cool if you monetize my DQs, because if you are, I didn't do my job and stop them from coming first. Awesome. Do your thing.

Rob Adler [00:31:11]:
But with that, I need to know what you're promoting, because that can change what I'm promoting. Because if I'm promoting something and making that money, but you're also doing it, and that's part of your ROI calculation on me. And now they're duplicates. You might pause me from the other offer that's unrelated completely. So there's a lot of that that can go into it and that's where I think a lot of people don't really look at how it operates or how it really works. They just want a solution which, to be fair, is everyone everywhere for everything. But yeah, but yeah, no, it's, it's nuts and it's a lot of money. Like, same thing with the clients.

Rob Adler [00:31:44]:
Oh, sorry, we can't help you right now. Here's an idea. Show them who can, because those people will pay you for that.

Jim Banks [00:31:51]:
Yes. If you're doing geographical, let's say you're, you're, you're doing H Vac in a particular zip code or something like that, right? And somebody comes in from outside your catchment area, right? And they go, oh, no, sorry, we don't do that area. Like, why, why are you doing that? You should be selling those leads to other people that do the same thing as you do, but in the. Wherever that's come from. Right. Become an affiliate, right? You can be a plumber and an affiliate, right. You can make money from doing that. Right?

Rob Adler [00:32:19]:
Like, it's, it's not hard. Like, I have, I have a buddy that's a plumber. And I was like, listen, how many of your calls do you get? Are you like, you're outside my service area? I'm sorry, I'm busy. Like, blah, blah. He's about a quarter. And I was like, okay, first of all, your ads suck. But second of all, and more importantly, where are you sending them? And he's, I don't send them anywhere. I just tell them I'm busy and I really hope that they have good luck and find xyz.

Rob Adler [00:32:39]:
I'm like, dude, literally Elocal has incoming. Literally pay per call on H Vac vendors per zip code. Yeah, it's like, use them. It's $35 a call or whatever it is, right? But also send them to Thumbtack. Send them to Angie's List. You're going to do it anyway. You're going to send them there anyway. Thumbtack has a publisher program.

Rob Adler [00:33:03]:
Literally get paid for it. Like, that is the entire point. And that's, that's been one of those. That's when one of my pet peeves for a while is like a lot of these guys. And granted, it's my pet peeve because of where I am in the situation. They don't know marketing. They're a plumber.

Jim Banks [00:33:20]:
Exactly. Right.

Rob Adler [00:33:21]:
I don't know about plumbing. Like, it, it doesn't. It. It's not the specialty. But with them, it's also one of those things where low lift for us is heavy lift for them. So to them that's a whole ordeal. They got to sign up for networks, they got to figure out how to find the networks, they got to fig. That's not their, that's not their job, that's not their industry.

Rob Adler [00:33:40]:
But it doesn't change the fact that they're still losing money.

Jim Banks [00:33:44]:
Yeah. And that's why in a lot of cases they've spent money acquiring the traffic. Right. Whether it's Google or Meta or whoever. Right. They've spent money acquiring that traffic. Right. And as much as the, the traffic provider tries to do the best they can to ensure that the people are within your catchment area.

Jim Banks [00:34:03]:
Again, if you think about it, right, so let's say you, you live in a particular geographic area, you've got a certain zip code, but the person is calling you from their office which is in a completely different zip code. So that's where there'll be a disconnect between the ads that you see and what, what they see. And, and that's why sometimes it's, it's you will get those out, out of area mismatches, right?

Rob Adler [00:34:24]:
Oh yeah.

Jim Banks [00:34:25]:
Again, the reality of it is is you could, if you don't talk to them, you can go, they're not in my area so I'm going to decline it. And I'm like, no, you just need to ask where they're from. Right. And also say, look, unfortunately we're not in, in that sort of catchment area. But what I can do is I can put you in touch now, right? Just bear with me one second. I'll transfer you to somebody and you just wisdom through and, and away you go and you can again, they'll make money from that.

Rob Adler [00:34:49]:
And also just to, just to throw this out as well, like we're talking like you have to work with a big company or you have to work with these guys. You already know the other tradesmen in your area. I almost can guarantee it. I have never met a blue collar person that doesn't know other blue collar people that they work with or ran a site or whatever it is, right. Just talk to them and just be like, listen every now and again. I know you do those areas, I know I do these and I know technically we compete on these but like on the ones that I don't do. Are you down that I can just do a text intro for you with some like depending on the industry, right. Like some you need the call but like you can do that.

Rob Adler [00:35:28]:
You don't need to go through a third party if you already have the people, support your local people around you, but also at the same time, make sure it's a two way street.

Jim Banks [00:35:37]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:35:37]:
If they're not going to do it for you, put a monetary value.

Jim Banks [00:35:40]:
Yeah, yeah. And again, I think, I think in a lot of cases you can just do a contra deal. Right. So if you send me a lead, I'll pay you 50 bucks. And if you send me one, I'll pay you 50 bucks. Right. And at the end of the month, we'll work out who owes who money and. And then we're good to go, right?

Rob Adler [00:35:55]:
Yeah. And just keep it easy. Right. You're, you guys are small businesses. Cash flow is important. And a lot of times you don't get that cash flow up front. Right. So what you do is you just keep track.

Rob Adler [00:36:04]:
And then at the end of the month, you do what us affiliates do. It's called netting out. You literally just go, I owe you 100 and you owe me 200, so send me a hundred. We're good. And now none of you need to take leverage in order to grow as much.

Jim Banks [00:36:16]:
Yeah.

Rob Adler [00:36:17]:
As long as you're two way streeting.

Jim Banks [00:36:19]:
Exactly.

Rob Adler [00:36:21]:
So, yeah, there's a lot.

Jim Banks [00:36:22]:
So, Rob, this has been great. I'm gonna wrap it up a little bit early because of this whole time zone thing. It's like super dark here now and it's blowing my mind. But yeah, just thought I'd let you know. Going to be at affiliate summit. Good conversation. Loved it. I was just telling Rob that the episode that we did with Scott show recently is available now on the site.

Jim Banks [00:36:41]:
If you haven't watched it, go ahead and watch it. It's an amazing kind of conversation. I was saying that when I was editing it, I was not really listening to what was being said. I re watched it and I'm like, wow, that is good. That is a good, good episode. So if you haven't watched that one, then, then by all means do, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Meeting Pine podcast.

Rob Adler [00:37:00]:
Have a good one and preferably be ROI positive.

Jim Banks [00:37:03]:
You got it.