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Acquisition Channel Opportunities: 81% YouTube, Facebook Custom Audiences, Q&A Sites

If you want more paying users, you should know:

  • Where they hang out. Pew Research conducted a recent study on which social media platforms are most popular right now.

  • How to target your ad to reach the right people. A recent Facebook leak will provide you with some information about this concept.

  • How a shutdown can be used to your advanatage. Yahoo Answers has announced that it will be shutting down on May 4th (less than a month away). Discover what this could mean for you.

To find these opportunities, I analyzed over 700 news articles from the previous week and used my knowledge of user acquistion channels to spot areas of the growth that others might have missed. Let's get started.

1. YouTube Is Now More Popular Then Facebook, Instagram, & TikTok.

Pew Research recently published a study of the most popular social media platforms in the United States in 2021.

Here are the percentage results:

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As you can see, YouTube is number one, with an (estimated) 81% of the US population using it. Facebook is number two, with 69%. Surpringsingly, with the exception of YouTube and Reddit, most platforms show little growth since 2019.

There are, of course, age differences that the study takes into account (younger people use Instagram more than seniors, and seniors use Facebook more than YouTube), and the full article delves deeper into the demographics behind each site's popularity.

What does this mean for you: If you're targeting a specific group of users and know their demographic information (age, approximate income, education), this is an excellent report that can help you decide which social media platforms to prioritize first.

Get 3 insights like these every week:

2. How Marketers Took Advantage Of a Facebook Data Leak

533 million users. 106 countries. The data includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.

Have I Been Pwned, a website that allows Internet users to check whether their personal data has been comprised by data breaches, has added this leak to their database, so you can now enter your phone number and see if you're in it.

How are some marketers use this data: Remember when you could create a Facebook custom audience using publically available profile IDs? T-shirt companies used this to create custom audiences of people with the same name and then create ads selling t-shirts showing the persons' name on it.

Using profile IDs to create custom audiences is no longer possible, but with leaks like these, I have a feeling some marketers will find creative ways to use some of these tactics.

This is a gray hat tactic, which means people disagree as to whether or not it breaks Facebook's published guidelines, but I've seen it used a lot. For example, when businesses do cold outreach, they may enter the emails as a custom audience, run ads to familiarize their prospects with the company, and then do the outreach.

If a marketer gains access to such a database, they could potentially find people with the same name and create an ad that only shows the first letter of their name (since Facebook no longer allows you to target by a specific name), for example. The more people identify with the ad, the more likely they are to click on it.

BGR recently reported a new leak with even more data, and Telegram groups popping up where you can enter the Facebook page ID, and it would give you a list (emails/phones/etc.) of who like that page. Pretty crazy.

Get 3 insights like these every week:

3. Yahoo Answers Is Shutting Down Soon. People are Backing Up Its Data.

Yahoo Answers will shut down on May 4, 2021. In case you've been living under a rock, Yahoo Answers is one of the world's largest Q&A sites, with approximately 20 million indexed pages.

What this means to you: People are rushing to back up the data before it vanishes (despite Yahoo's promise that the site will remain in read-only mode). How many of those 20 million questions do you think are relevant to your industry?

If you're looking for content ideas, go to Yahoo Answers and do a keyword search. See the most popular questions and answers. This could be a one-time opportunity to gain customer insights that will not be available in two years.

Get 3 insights like these every week:

  1. 1

    Hey Dark - great post - as usual. Meta question: I was wondering if there was a way to see the previous editions of User Acquisition Channels here on IH and how?

    1. 1

      Go to my profile, click on 'History' and uncheck 'Comments'. That way you'll only see the posts. I think @channingallen is also working on having a post history under the main newsletter landing page.

      1. 1

        Thanks - @channingallen it would be BIG to see a list of all post tagged in a certain way written by dark under the prompt to sign-up for the newsletter!

  2. 1

    That's the ultimate purpose of leaks like these IMO. Give marketers a jump start, so they don't have to start with cold audiences, but can start with an already established audience, then create lookalikes etc.

    1. 1

      Well, it certainly helps...although a big ques is the legality of this. I know of people who, before they reach out to people on FB, will try to enter their emails into a custom audience, and that def works.

  3. 1

    YouTube grew a lot, wow. YouTube ads is definitely an under-utilized channel. So many formats not many people know about.

    1. 1

      Surprised me as well :O If you have another study on this, feel free to share.

  4. 1

    That's huge if 400 million pages disappear from the web overnight. Wouldn't be surprised though, as Yahoo Answers becomes a liability for Yahoo.

    1. 1

      Yep that's why people are rushing to back it up.

  5. 0

    i gotta get back into youtube...

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