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This seems to be a pretty common trend with ad platforms. They start with the "dregs" (ie. diet stuff, teeth whitening, questionable beauty products, guru info

This seems to be a pretty common trend with ad platforms. They start with the "dregs" (ie. diet stuff, teeth whitening, questionable beauty products, guru info products, etc.) and then leverage the revenue and benchmarks from that to ladder up and sell into larger more reputable brands. This is typically the case when there is strong direct response potential from the channel. Once they gain major brand traction, there seems to be a big shift to catering more towards the big brands who care more about impressions and less about direct response, and who are fine paying very frothy CPMs for it. This typically coincides with a purging of the "lower quality" advertisers whom the big brands don't want to see their ads next to. Happened with Google, Facebook, etc., so not really surprised to see it happening here with Pinterest.

CapnCrunchie 9y ago
This is exactly what happened with the platforms you mentioned. Affiliates and other direct response advertisers are willing to take a chance on a new ad platform because the costs are generally low, and the returns can be really good. Then, once the big brands come to play, the platforms change what ads are deemed acceptable and start kicking off those that started out using the platform. You nailed it.
- shostack 9y ago
  Yeah, I mean, it isn't really a secret in the digital media or affiliate space. Since I do this for a living, I tend to keep my eye on where affiliates are gravitating towards with their media and marketing efforts. It can sometimes be an early signal of where to test. But that totally depends on the brand tolerance for it. For example, if you are a big family brand, you're not going to be an early adopter of Outbrain and Taboola type stuff if your adjacent ads are acai berry drinks, colon cleanse kits, etc. that all link to flogs and fake news sites because the network might be turning a blind eye to quality at that stage of things. And the way the purging happens is pretty interesting too. Typically it comes in the form of new policies. I forget what the wording was at the time, but I recall when FB started making the shift, some of their policy wording and examples was so obviously targeting recent things affiliates had been doing on the platform it made me laugh. Even reading through their current policy site's prohibited list is pretty much a checklist of every major affiliate category there is.

CapnCrunchie 9y ago

This is exactly what happened with the platforms you mentioned. Affiliates and other direct response advertisers are willing to take a chance on a new ad platform because the costs are generally low, and the returns can be really good. Then, once the big brands come to play, the platforms change what ads are deemed acceptable and start kicking off those that started out using the platform. You nailed it.

shostack 9y ago
Yeah, I mean, it isn't really a secret in the digital media or affiliate space. Since I do this for a living, I tend to keep my eye on where affiliates are gravitating towards with their media and marketing efforts. It can sometimes be an early signal of where to test. But that totally depends on the brand tolerance for it. For example, if you are a big family brand, you're not going to be an early adopter of Outbrain and Taboola type stuff if your adjacent ads are acai berry drinks, colon cleanse kits, etc. that all link to flogs and fake news sites because the network might be turning a blind eye to quality at that stage of things. And the way the purging happens is pretty interesting too. Typically it comes in the form of new policies. I forget what the wording was at the time, but I recall when FB started making the shift, some of their policy wording and examples was so obviously targeting recent things affiliates had been doing on the platform it made me laugh. Even reading through their current policy site's prohibited list is pretty much a checklist of every major affiliate category there is.