
I don't know what "full-funnel ads" are, but I imagine a goose on its way to foie gras.
Peer-to-peer payments, AI integration, additional exposure to stuff you hate, and more: That's what's apparently coming to the site formerly known as Twitter in 2024. According to Elon Musk's personal social media site, "2023 was foundational for X, and 2024 will be transformational." As part of its transformational year, X …
I'd never heard of that either, but Amazon has a description:
From: https://advertising.amazon.com/en-gb/blog/what-is-full-funnel-marketing:
"Full-funnel marketing encompasses all levels of the funnel. When we say “funnel”, we’re referring to the marketing funnel, which outlines the most straightforward journey a customer might take in the path to purchase. Full-funnel marketing starts at the top of the funnel and continues to consider the needs of customers throughout all its levels."
Does that help you? No? Me neither!
My best guess is that you try to identify customers who don't know about the product, then some who do know but aren't convinced, then those who like it but need to be pushed to buy, then those who already bought who need to be encouraged to buy more of it (even if it's something you buy every decade or two). You write four different ads for the types of customer, then spam them out at random because the targeting system has no good way of determining which of them any given user might be. Eventually, somebody tries to save some money by not bothering to write four ads and spamming the one version out to everyone, and we have the internet ads we know and block today.
It means that the adverts support all levels of the marketing funnel from the broad "raise awareness" starting point, through interest, desire, action, loyalty and finally advocacy.
The idea being that a fully integrated advertising platform would let you get a message out to millions, identify the hundreds of thousands who show an interest, identify the tens of thousands who have a desire, track them to your store to find the thousands who make an action to purchase, track the hundreds who are loyal to the brand, and finally identify the tens of people who are advocating for your product or brand.
The idea being that a fully integrated advertising platform would let you etc but under no circumstances would it let you identify those potential customers who are so fed up with advertis that they'll actively avoid any product which has its ads shoved in their face because that would ruin our business of selling adverts to advertisers
Historically, that hasn't stopped Musk from bleating on about nonsense like "free speech" when faced with legal repercussions for the decisions and actions he takes on behalf of the businesses he is involved in.
On a vaguely related note, this morning I learned that Tesla has a huge manufacturing plant in China. "Mr. Free Speech America" sold out to CHINA.
"I would even question whether it is legal for X to provide a payment service in Australia without an Australian Financial Services licence."
Many/most countries have banking laws that would cover P2P money transfers. Since they'll all be different with nuances to each, it will require a department full of qualified and experienced staff much like all of the content compliance staff that Elon axed only the fines for getting things wrong will be much higher.
Some of the people that worked with Elon early on when he wanted to do pretty much the same thing were concerned about his complete lack of knowledge about the banking industry in general and banking law in particular. I don't see an indication that he's gained the sort of knowledge he'd need to stay clear of prison in numerous countries.
"I don't see an indication that he's gained the sort of knowledge he'd need to stay clear of prison in numerous countries."
And this is a problem... how?
Jesting aside, not sure he'd necessarily go to jail, but having another government agency in a different part of the world putting on the elbow length exam gloves as part of a very invasive thorough body cavity search investigation of Xitter's operations is a very distinct possibility. If he thinks he's in the shit now with the SEC and NLRB in the US, he likely hasn't seen anything yet.
"Jesting aside, not sure he'd necessarily go to jail, but having another government agency in a different part of the world putting on the elbow length exam gloves as part of a very invasive thorough body cavity search investigation of Xitter's operations is a very distinct possibility. If he thinks he's in the shit now with the SEC and NLRB in the US, he likely hasn't seen anything yet."
X is a privately held company with Elon at the helm. He's much more exposed than with his part-time job at Tesla since that's a publicly traded company with more executives/directors.
Put quite simply, fuck anything that looks like a bank, acts like a bank, but isn't regulated like a bank. Not to mention after his display at Xitter, there's no way I'd trust Xitler anywhere near my money. Chunks of it would probably get siphoned away to pay off the Saudi's so Xitler doesn't end up on the business end of a bone saw.
"When 90% of the adverts are scams, that hardly inspires confidence."
Most of the ads that get shoved down my throat on YouTube are scams too. This just tells me the ad rates are so low that it's attractive to the scammers that don't want to spend too much money pushing something that is nothing more than land fill with energy wasted to create it.
Yeah, the same sort of ads as the ones on youtube. Seems the ASA are asleep at the wheel.
From: https://www.asa.org.uk/news/how-we-regulate-online-ads.html
"Online advertising in the UK is diverse, but whether its paid ads on platforms and the internet, claims on company websites and social media channels or influencer ads, we are the UK’s one-stop shop for regulating online ads."
Only those who worry about the crazy MAGA idiots who believe any bollocks they read.
No-one is more scared of the truth then the right wing establishment. They like the poorly educated gullible right wing voters. They ironically laugh at the demographic that votes for them, as they are the ones most adversely affected by their policies.. MAGA turkeys for Christmas!
Because it has had epic flop written all over it from day one, and Musk's tantrums trying to blame the left, mainstream media, short sellers, wokeness, Biden, or whatever for that epic failure when he is forced to concede that's what it is will be hilarious!
You clearly have not been paying attention. Narcissistic crybaby snowflakes like Xitler always manage to find someone or something else to blame. Like, he wasn't shitfaced on drugs and/or alcohol when he was an hour late and slurring his words to the point of being literally incomprehensible at a SpaceX all-hands meeting, he was just really tired... from all the drugs keeping him awake days on end.
Musk transforming Twitter into an "Everything App" seems to me like an all-or-nothing attempt. If he fails, Twitter (or X) goes bankrupt and he'll lose the entire $45 billion he spent on it.
I'm starting to believe this guy is becoming more and more of a liability for the U.S., especially since I read he's using LSD, XTC and Ketamine in addition to cannabis and cocaine. He's becoming more erratic every year and his purchase of Twitter is just one example. Tesla's Full Self Driving is another.
Why would Musk be under the impression people even WANT an "everything app"? Why would anyone even begin to think "X" (still waiting for the lawsuits to start over the overly generic name) could be this "everything" app? Why would anyone trust "X" for payment processing? What USP would X offer over all the other P2P payment apps? Does Musk have even an inkling of a hint of an idea of just how much crap he's shoveling over his head going into banking?
His idea for X as an "everything" app failed and exploded in his face when he was at Paypal (that survived his attempts at implementing his idiocy and didn't get big until well after they kicked him out). Paypal became big despite Musk, not because of him. And it made him rich simply from having been an early investor and getting more shares as a golden parachute on his way out.
Everything apps are quite successful in other parts of the world (In Asia Grab and Wechat are ubiquitous in their respective markets, and Line is trying the same thing) - and I've long thought Whatsapp would have undergone the same journey from chat to everything app if Facebook hadn't bought and smothered it in it's cradle to stop it competing with it's core product (which remains focused on making money through harvesting your data instead).
But "X" as an everything app does seems a fail from the get-go - there just isn't enough of a widespread user base who use and trust the app to support it, and the user count doesn't appear to be going in the right direction either.
There’s one fundamental difference that makes Twitter a bad candidate for this. All the “everything apps” you cited started as Instant Messenger systems, and in an IM app, you choose the accounts you see, and they tend to be heavily weighted toward people you have a real-world relationship with: friends, family, co-workers, team members, customers, suppliers, whatever.
Twitter/X, by contrast, has much more of a “random strangers” model for communications: even if you ignore the shit-cannon that is “For You”, most people’s Twitter roll contains people that they have no other interactions with except that they follow them on Twitter.
That lack of real-life contact puts Twitter on a far lower level of trust than an IM app. Even if I still maintained an account there, I wouldn’t have any need to send money to anyone I interacted with on Twitter - either I know the person already and can do it via a more secure channel, or they’re person I’d have no reason to ever give money to.
One use-case does come to mind, though, especially in a year evenly divisible by four: political donations. Luckily, Elon Errolovich has completely eradicated all bots and automated accounts, so it should now be perfectly fine to allow, say, the Trump campaign to collect campaign finance via X, safe in the knowledge that the money can only be small amounts given by individual donors, rather than the kind of very large donations from rich backers that would otherwise attract (entirely warranted) scrutiny...
Cultural differences alone make it VERY hard to compare the markets Grab and WeChat operate in to the market X would have to establish itself in. As mentioned by the other commenter, X is also in a very different position in trying to position itself as an everything app to begin with. I've also seen plenty of things about those platforms that seem to indicate that they mostly became "everything" apps simply because all the alternatives were worse and they solved existing problems in a way the CCCP allowed (because it gave them oversight, insight and control). X on the other hand would have to become an everything app by... solving what problem exactly? There's a lot of choice in P2P payment apps and most of them are... fine. Not ideal, could be better, but X would have to provide significantly better service, terms or ease of use to supplant them.
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"His idea for X as an "everything" app failed and exploded in his face when he was at Paypal "
Technically, he got bought out by Cofinity and demanded the CEO chair there which he was removed from as soon as he left the US on a flight to Oz for a honeymoon (first wife, I think). Cofinity developed a service they called "Paypal" and Elon was gone before the company rebranded to "Paypal" although he still had a large amount of stock and made out when PP sold to eBay. What is known as Paypal doesn't have much to do with Elon. He couldn't code, knew nothing about banking and just pissed everybody off in the office so they sacked him as soon as his back was turned.
"2023 was foundational for X, and 2024 will be transformational."
He excavated to the foundations of Twitter in 2023 and 2024 should see Twitter completely razed to X in the transformation formerly known as demolition.
One has to wonder if he intends to half inch the payments platform software that I believe India intends to donate to developing nations? Par for the course.
The pong of a money laundering is already wafting from X's direction.
"Would you like a company which does not even pay the rent for its HQ to take care of your finances?"
I thought the best story was that the King (royal family holdings) is one of X's landlords for a property where they have an office. Modern times are different from a couple of hundred years ago so Elon isn't likely to be beheaded (not in England, anyway), but you don't do yourself any favors by dissing the King.
increasingly power the X user
I believe it. I suspect many ex-users are feeling empowered by no longer wasting time on Twitter.
(And, really, people who are still on the damned thing are now watching half-hour videos there? I think we have a new entrant in the competition for Saddest Corner of the Human Experience.)