Author Archives: Wes Mahler

Now you can see all of the Display Advertising Data!

We’ve made a huge improvement to our display advertising data.

In the past, you could only get a few of the top display banner ads, text ads, placements and ad networks.

Today, you can now get all of the data!

You are no longer limited to just the top results, you can now get all of the data.

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We’ve partnered up with Adbeat to offer you access to all of this display advertising data, without any limits! If an advertiser has over 200 display banner ads, you can see them all! The same goes for text ads, placements, ad networks and we have also added new video ads.

If you want to start or improve your display advertising campaigns, you are going to love our new upgrade!

Imagine how much quicker you will be able to create or scale your existing campaigns when you have access to all of your competitors display data?

Stop wasting money on testing budget.

Spend money on what works.

Our data will help you understand what works, so you can start making more money on your display advertising campaigns today!

Why spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a testing budget, when you can spend a fraction of that by upgrading to Follow and getting the placements and ads that already work? 

Use what works. Follow with Adbeat will show you what works. Here’s what you’ll get access to.

Top Video Ads:

This is a completely new report for you, one we have never had before, Top Video Ads!

See how your competitors are acquiring customers using video ads.

Here’s an example of some of NBA.com’s top video ads.

Top Video Ads

Click on a video ad, and see the whole video!

Play a Video Ad

Top Banner Ads for Desktop:

See every banner ad your competitor uses.

See in the image below. For every display advertising report by Adbeat, we will show you the total number of rows that are available to be downloaded. In the example below, Nb.com has over 1,799+ banner ads. You can now retrieve them all when you upgrade your Follow account!

Top Banner Ads

See the “Retrieve 50 more rows” button? Click that button, and 50 more ads will show. You can load as many as you want to see!

Top Banner Ads for Mobile

Mobile is huge. It’s accounting for more and more traffic every day. Soon, most people won’t be using laptops or desktops. Consumers, who just consume content, enjoy using mobile devices better.  See what ads your competitors use when targeting mobile users.

These days, it’s not surprising if over 70% of your traffic comes from mobile. If you aren’t optimizing for mobile, you are losing money to someone who is — like your competitor. See what they are doing with this new report.

Top Banner Ads for Mobile

Top Text Ads:

See all of the text creatives your competitors are using. Across Google Content Network and many other ad networks.

Top Text Ads

Top Placements:

Probably one of the most important reports. See the exact sites your competitors are advertising on to acquire customers. Why wouldn’t you want to advertise on almost every one of them if they are working well for your competitors?

Top Placements

Top Ad Networks:

See every display advertising network they are using.

Top Ad Networks

So here’s how to get it! We have a special, limited-time offer for you today.

When you upgrade your account to our $97/month plan, you’ll get access to all of this.

But for a limited time only, you can save a lot of money. Save $20/month when you use the coupon code “DISPLAY4ME”. Offer expires Sep 15, 2016!

For a limited time only, you can get access to all of this for $77/month. This deal will end shortly, so get it soon!

Using Follow to get this display advertising data is by-far, the cheapest way to get this data. Compare yourself, our pricing to any other service out there and you will see for yourself, we have the best deal out there if you want this data.

So take advantage of this deal while you can. The price will go back to it’s normal cost of $97/month after September 15th, 2016.  If you are doing any display advertising, or are considering it, now is the best time sign up and get your discount.

Sign up and get this deal by clicking this link, and using the coupon code “DISPLAY4ME” when you sign up.

If you have any questions, reply back to this email. Our team is here to answer any questions you have about this service.

New Top Referral Keywords Feature

Want to know which keywords refer the most visitors to your competitors?

Now you can with our new top referral keywords report, powered by Compete. This new report will show you any website’s top 100 referring keywords. This report will tell you the following information for each keyword:

  • Search Referral Share
  • Paid vs. Organic Share
  • Average Time Index
  • Total Time Index

For definitions on each of these terms, visit our help documentation.

Why is this information helpful?

It’s useful to understand which keywords are referring the most visitors to your competitors. You are likely to find that there are a few keywords delivering most of the traffic to your competitors. If you’re not trying to rank organically for or advertising on those keywords, you might want to start.

Here’s an example report for spokeo.com, a people search website:

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In the example report above, you can see that spokeo.com receives 2.23% of their traffic from the keyword “reverse phone lookup” and another 0.96% from “phone number lookup”. While those percentages may seem small, according to Compete, their website receives over 6 million visitors a month.  So from just these two keywords, they receive around 180,000 unique visitors month from them.  I should mention that these are exact match keywords, this does not include the long tail, typos or other variations of the same keyword.

You can also see that for both keywords, they’re getting traffic from both paid and organic search.  They get 38% of their traffic on the keyword “reverse phone lookup” from paid search and 62% of it from organic search.

If you were competing with them in the people search business, trying to organically rank for and advertising on those keywords them might be a very wise idea.

What keywords are referring the most visitors to your competitors? 

Find out today!  Our top referral keywords data is now available to all of our paid users.  Not a paid user yet? Upgrade to Follow Pro today!

New! Our Reports are now Publicly Accessible and Shareable!

Whether you’re logged in or not, anyone can now publicly view our site overview reports. Previously, you had to be logged in to view these reports and when you wanted to share them, they could only be shared with other registered users. Now, anyone can view any of our overview reports. They’re also super easy to share!

Public Report URLs

You can now link to any of our site overviews by using the following url address structure, http://follow.net/domains/{domain_name}. Replace {domain_name} with your own. Here are a few examples.

You may notice that when use the links above, you’ll actually be forwarded to our app with a slightly different url structure. You may also copy this end destination URL for the report you’re viewing on and share that, however, we highly recommend using the link structure above.  It’s much cleaner and we’ll always support them. When you share a report, we’ll provide you with these cleaner links so you don’t have to ever think about it.

Sharing Reports

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new share button

We’ve made it easy to share our reports.  While you’re on any screen, click on the our new share button, located in the top-right corner of every screen. A share modal will pop up which will allow you to copy the URL address for the public report, share it directly on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or send an email to your friend.  See our animated GIF below.

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Long time Follow users might remember that our old share button simply brought up your referral link and information about our referral program. The new share button brings up a different modal, it allows you to share the actual page you’re viewing.  This is how a share button should work.

If you’re wondering how you now refer friends and still get credit for it, keep reading.

Earn Free Upgrades & Money By Referring Others

If you’re logged into Follow and share a report, your referral tracking code will automatically be added to the report URLs you share. 

While logged in, when you click on the share button you’ll see the query parameter “ref” added to the end of the url.  It’ll look something like this – http://follow.net/domains/airbnb.com?ref={user_id}.  If you do not wish to have your referral code included or shown when you share a report, you can simply remove ?ref={user_id} from the url, like this – http://follow.net/domains/airbnb.com.

We’ve made our referral process as simple as possible. You don’t have to think about it.  When you share a report, if you’re logged in, we’ll automatically append your referral tracking id to it. You’ll automatically get credit if someone signs up after viewing a public report you shared.  For example, if you’re writing about a domain on your blog and want to share a link with all of your readers, any of your viewers who view our public reports and sign up, you’ll get credit for them. 

For those who wish to see our old refer a friend screen, it still exists.  You can access that by going to: User Settings > Refer a Friend.  The Refer a Friend screen will also show you detailed information about your referrals & rewards.

Search Directly from our Homepage

You can now also search for a domain directly from our homepage.  Want to share a report with a friend but don’t have access to your computer? Just tell them to visit our homepage, follow.net and perform a search directly from the website.

Overview Lookup Limit

Users who access our public reports will be limited by the number of lookups they can perform. To perform more lookups, you can sign up for a free account which will allow you to perform more lookups or upgrade to a paid account to get even more.

Use Follow for your Quick, High Level Site Overviews

We want to be your go to source for looking up high level competitive intelligence website data! If you’re writing a blog post about a domain and want to share competitive intelligence data with your readers, give them more information by sharing a link to our public reports!  If you’re creating an online advertising campaign with your team, show your team members what ad creatives are working for your competitors by sharing our reports with them. Thinking about starting a new company with your friends? View reports on other companies in your industry of interest and share them with your future co-founders.

If you want a quick snapshot of how a domain engages and acquires their users online, use Follow! If you want to go deep into any specific vertical like; SEO, SEM, Display Advertising or any other vertical, we recommend signing up with our partners who specialize in those specific datasets.

View & Share our Public Reports now!

Our public reports are now available. See them at follow.net and start sharing them with your friends today!

NEW! See the top referral sources for any website.

Want to know which websites refer the most visitors to your competitors? Now you can find out using our new incoming referral data, powered by Compete. This new report will allow you to see any website’s top 25 referring domains. It will tell you the percentage of traffic and the exact number of monthly visitors it receives from each referring domain.

It’s useful to understand which websites are referring the most visitors to your competitors. You are likely to find that there are a few websites delivering most of the traffic to your competitors. If you’re not advertising on those websites, you might want to start doing so.

Here’s an example report for the website spokeo.com, a people search website. They receive 1.69% of their traffic from visitors who came directly to their website and were not referred by another website. 46.88% of their visitors arrived from google.com, 6.34% from whitepages.com and 4.71% from search.google.com.  If you were competing with them in the people search business, advertising on Google Search, the White Pages site & Yahoo Search would probably be a very wise idea.

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What websites are referring the most visitors to your competitors? 

Find out today!  Our referral data is now available to all of our paid users.  Not a paid user yet? Upgrade to Follow Pro today!

New Demographic Data from Compete.com

Screenshot 2015-07-18 19.02.37We’ve added one of our most requested features to Follow, site demographics. We’ve partner up with Compete to provide you with this data.  For paid users, you can now see the following demographic data for almost any website; genders, ages & income ranges.

Advertisers will find our demographic data particularly useful. Knowing the demographic data about a site you’re interested in advertising on can help you determine whether or not it’s a good ad placement.   For example, if you’re selling expensive yacht vacations, you’ll likely only want to focus your advertising on sites which have higher income visitors.

If you’re selling women’s shoes, you’ll likely only want to advertise on sites with a larger female audience. Wasting your ad impressions on men probably wouldn’t be a good idea. If you’re marketing retirement homes for seniors, you’ll likely want to advertise on sites that have an older audience.  Wasting your ad impressions on young kids is probably not a wise use of your ad dollars. You can also understand what your competitor’s demographics are, which may help you better understand what demographics you might want to be targeting too. These are just a few examples of how you can use demographic data.

Our demographic data is now available to all our of paid users.  Want access to our new demographic data? Upgrade to Follow Pro today!

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Accounts are now limited by the number of overview lookups they can perform

Free and paid account owners are now limited by the number of domain overview lookups they can perform each month.

Free users will be able to look up 50 domains each month.  This limit can be increased by referring more friends (5 extra look ups a month per friend) or by upgrading to a paid account (500 – 5,000 extra lookups a month). Your quota will only be deducted from when you look up unique domains.  If you performed several lookups on the same domain, you’d only be deducted once for it.

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If you have a shared portfolio, whichever member that is currently using your portfolio, when they perform overview lookups, your quota will be deducted from.  If you’re a business, sign up for a paid account to share the upgraded account benefits with everyone on the team. You can invite an unlimited number of co-workers.

Notice to Firefox users: You may be the first to run out of quota because our Firefox sidebar extension stays open while you navigate the web, this will deduct a lot of overview quotas.  If you accidentally run out because you didn’t know we were limiting the overview quota, please contact us, we can reset it, we already know which accounts may have this issue.

Your monthly quota resets on the day of the month you signed up or upgraded to a paid account.  To check your quota, view our usage widget — which can be found at the bottom of the left side bar once you’re logged into our application.  This shows the portfolio owner’s usage.  A user may have several portfolios, the usage is shared among all of them.  If you’re a member of another user’s portfolio, when you view the portfolio’s usage, you’ll be viewing their account usage.

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The Follow.net API is now avaliable

Today we’re releasing the Follow.net API to the public.

Follow.net has been made possible by working with other great companies who’ve provided us with data in addition to gathering our own.  We also want to help contribute to making the advertising world more effective, so today we’re releasing our APIs to allow other developers to utilize our data.

The API documentation can be found at http://follow.net/api/.  Everything we have at Follow will be available through the API except for data provided by our partners.  Our API is currently a paid service & is accessible to anyone on our $99/month plan. Please visit our pricing page for more details.

If you’re interested in working out a deal with us, please reach out to us.  We’re flexible with our pricing and API terms of service depending on your needs.   Our current terms of service is generic, but we’re happy to adjust it based on your needs.  So contact us if you’re interested in our API but concerned about our pricing of terms of use, we’re very open to creating new partnerships with you & we’re happy to come up with a unique deal for you.

-Wes!
wes@follow.net