In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧭 The searches AI runs behind your customer’s question

📢 Meta expands AI-powered ads, updates commercial terms and adds new reels tools

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🧭 The searches AI runs behind your customer’s question

When a shopper asks an AI assistant “what are the best running shoes for flat feet,” the system doesn’t search that sentence alone. It breaks the question into smaller searches, often called fan-out queries: stability shoes, arch support ratings, reviews from runners with overpronation, prices under a budget.

The pages that rank for those smaller searches feed the answer.

How much the ranking position matters is striking. Kevin Indig’s data, shared in a recent AirOps Growth Leader webinar, shows that ranking first for key fan-out queries earns 58% of citations, four times more than ranking tenth.

Being cited is only the start, though, and the series argues the brands that win give AI-referred buyers a reason to choose them. You can read the full takeaways here.

Step 1: List your money prompts

Write the 10 questions a buyer would ask an AI assistant right before choosing a product in your category. Use your sales team’s most common questions and your top category searches as a guide.

Step 2: Break each prompt into sub-queries

For each prompt, list five to eight smaller searches it implies. A practical way to find them: run the prompt in AI assistants that show their sources, note which pages they cite, and work out what each page was ranking for.

Step 3: Map sub-queries to pages

Put every sub-query in a sheet with three columns: the page of yours that should rank for it, its current position and the page currently ranking first.

Many sub-queries won’t have a matching page. Those gaps are your content plan.

Step 4: Prioritize positions two to five

Given how heavily citations concentrate at the top, moving a page from fourth to first is worth more than moving another from 20th to tenth. Start with the pages already close. That priority is my judgment, based on the citation gap Indig’s data shows.

Step 5: Improve what the top result has and you don’t

Compare your page with the current first result for each priority sub-query. Look for missing specifics such as measurements, test results, comparison tables or a direct answer in the opening lines.

Step 6: Recheck monthly

Track your position for each sub-query and whether AI answers to the original prompt cite your page. Position moves usually come first.

Close: Write your 10 prompts today

List the prompts, break the first one into sub-queries and check where you rank. One afternoon shows how close you are to being the page AI relies on.

📢 Meta expands AI-powered ads, updates commercial terms and adds new reels tools

Meta is introducing new product browsing and AI-generated landing page experiences across Facebook and Instagram, while updating its commercial terms and expanding video creation tools for creators.

The Breakdown:

Instagram Adds Reels Creation Tools - Meta’s Edits app now supports clickable audio links, audience trend insights, and reusable style kits. Instagram also introduced reference Reels for iOS creators while removing linked Reels series starting October 28.

Meta Makes In-App Product Browsing Default - Starting October 28, Meta will automatically enable personalized product browsing pages for eligible ads unless advertisers opt out. A test involving 117,000 advertisers showed an average 3% increase in conversions.

AI-Generated Landing Pages Raise Tracking Concerns - Meta is testing AI-generated landing pages on fewer than 5% of ad impressions. Because these pages operate outside advertisers’ websites, standard GA4 and Meta Pixel tracking may miss user activity and create attribution gaps.

Meta’s New Terms Raise AI Training Questions - From October 30, Meta’s updated terms could allow AI training on business-linked website content. Meta says its crawling practices and existing protections remain unchanged.

Meta’s updates are bringing more product discovery and creative activity inside its platforms, potentially giving advertisers new conversion opportunities while complicating independent measurement. Businesses should review browsing settings, verify conversion tracking, and understand the updated commercial terms before the changes take effect.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Lifestyle Makes Protein Cool - The shopping-cart setting reframes protein as part of everyday culture, making the drink feel fashionable and impulse-friendly instead of purely functional or gym-focused.

Color Drives Recall - The dominant red palette ties shoes, cart, bag and product together, creating strong visual cohesion while helping the can stand out through contrast and repetition.

Copy Builds Personality - “We look good in your cart” gives the product a playful, confident voice, strengthening branding recall while subtly nudging shoppers toward an add-to-cart mindset.

Place your product inside a visually desirable shopping moment and make the copy about belonging there. That turns purchase intent into part of the lifestyle itself.

🥳 Events

🔥 How to Make TV Earn Its Place in Your Growth Mix

October 29 | The Glasshouse, NYC | Free In-Person Event

Forward shows how leading brands connect TV reach to measurable business outcomes, decide when to move beyond paid social, and evaluate new discovery channels. Hear directly from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, Cody Plofker, and operators building growth strategies at scale.

✅ Secure Your Spot

Advertise with Us

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Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧺 Two products, two very different baskets: why cart profit should set your Q4 bids

📉 Google Ads seasonality adjustments hurt black friday performance, study finds

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Omnisend

Imagine beating a month’s email revenue with one send

You’d probably double-check the numbers.

Enflow Digital did exactly that for a skincare client ahead of BFCM. One plain-text email sent through Omnisend to 1,676 recipients generated nearly $18,000, beating the previous month’s broad-audience campaigns combined.

Omnisend helped the team find the right customers to send it to. Its segmentation and MCP capabilities let them uncover purchase patterns in minutes.

Co-founder Karolina shares how they pulled it off with Omnisend, from choosing the audience to making the offer worth opening. Worth a read (or a watch) before you hit send on your own BFCM campaigns.

New to Omnisend? It’s an email and SMS marketing platform for ecommerce used by more than 150,000 brands, generating an average of $79 for every $1 spent. Migration is free and takes up to five business days.

Check Omnisend now

🧺 Two products, two very different baskets: why cart profit should set your Q4 bids

This week, Google’s Ads Liaison account pointed advertisers to a point many accounts ignore: basket profitability matters more than basket size, and cart data is how you see it. Search Engine Roundtable flagged the post in its October 19 recap.

Here’s what that looks like with two illustrative products.

The comparison

Product A: a $15 phone case. Its own margin is $6. Shoppers who click its ad often add a charger and a screen protector. Average gross profit per order: $42.

Product B: $120 headphones. Its own margin is $30. Shoppers usually buy the headphones alone. Average gross profit per order: $31.

On revenue-based ROAS, Product B looks like the obvious bid priority. On profit per order, Product A wins by $11, despite costing an eighth as much.

Standard Shopping reports show you Product B’s picture. Cart data shows you Product A’s.

What cart data adds

Conversions with cart data sends the items in each order, with product IDs, quantities and prices, from your purchase tag to Google Ads. Add cost of goods sold in your Merchant Center feed and the reports can show:

• Lead items: the product whose ad was clicked

• Cross-sell items: everything else in the basket

• Gross profit: at item and order level, when costs match by product ID

Setup checklist

1. Make sure your purchase event sends every item with an ID matching your Merchant Center feed.

2. Include discounts, so profit reflects what buyers actually paid.

3. Add the cost_of_goods_sold attribute to your feed. Items without it are skipped, which understates profit.

4. Check coverage first. Before trusting the report, confirm what share of sold items carry a cost value.

Three Q4 decisions to make with it

Protect profitable leads. Products like the phone case deserve budget even with weak standalone ROAS. Group them separately so they aren’t starved by the bidding.

Question expensive heroes. High-price products that sell alone can look strong on revenue and still return less profit per order.

Price your doorbusters honestly. A Black Friday loss leader only works if the baskets behind it make up the loss. Check last November’s cart data for each planned doorbuster before cutting its price.

Compare gross profit per order by lead product every week through Cyber Monday. If a doorbuster’s baskets stop carrying cross-sells, pull its budget before the loss compounds.

Check whether your purchase event sends item IDs that match your feed. Without that match, none of this reporting works.

📉 Google Ads seasonality adjustments hurt black friday performance, study finds

An analysis of 5,886 Google Ads accounts in 2024, supported by findings from 2022 and 2023, found that advertisers using seasonality adjustments during Black Friday and Cyber Monday experienced higher advertising costs and weaker returns.

The Breakdown:

Ad Costs Rose Twice as Fast - Advertisers using seasonality adjustments saw cost per click increase 34%, compared with a 17% rise among those relying on Google’s Smart Bidding without adjustments.

Return on Ad Spend Dropped 15.7% - Accounts using adjustments experienced a 15.7% decline in ROAS, while those without adjustments recorded a 5.7% increase, a difference of 21.4 percentage points.

Black Friday Conversion Gains Are Shrinking - Among accounts without adjustments, conversion rate increases fell from 17.5% in 2022 to 7.5% in 2024, suggesting shoppers are spreading purchases across longer promotional periods.

Budget Controls Offer an Alternative - The analysis recommends monitoring CPC increases, checking conversion tracking, and adjusting ROAS targets instead of overriding Smart Bidding. Seasonality adjustments may still help with unexpected, business-specific promotions.

The findings suggest that manually forecasting conversion spikes during Black Friday can lead to excessive bidding costs, especially when Google’s algorithms already anticipate seasonal demand. Advertisers may benefit more from accurate conversion data, flexible budgets, and performance monitoring.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Gym Context Fits - The locker-room setting instantly anchors the products to fitness routines, strengthening message-market fit while the reaching hand creates movement and guides attention toward the lineup.

Identity Drives Commitment - “First in my bloodline to make protein non-negotiable” turns nutrition into an identity statement, making the behavior feel disciplined, aspirational and emotionally bigger than a product claim.

Range Signals Convenience - Showing shake mix, protein bar and edamame together communicates multiple ways to hit protein goals, reducing routine friction and making the brand feel more useful across the day.

Frame the behavior your product supports as part of who the customer is becoming. Identity-led copy can make functional categories feel more motivating and memorable.

🥳 Events

🔥 What Changes When Creator Programs Scale From 5 to 5,000

Today | Online | Free Festival

Return on Influence Festival ’26 opens up the systems behind large creator programs, including how teams track ROI, improve partnerships, and avoid operational chaos as volume grows. Hear directly from leaders at Adobe, ŌURA, Edelman, Ogilvy, and more.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🔥 Where to Put Your Next Growth Dollar Beyond Meta

October 29 | The Glasshouse, NYC | Free In-Person Event

Hear how Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thinks about discovery, how Cody Plofker helped scale Jones Road Beauty to nine figures, and how brands like Liquid I.V. and MANSCAPED use TV to drive measurable revenue. Bring your hardest acquisition question and leave with a sharper channel plan.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📦 Follow one SKU through Q4 to see if your reorder lands in time

📢 Meta launches new ad formats as Google and OpenAI expand advertiser tools

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Insense

Running creators from spreadsheets and DMs? Get 40+ hours back.

Most creator programs run on one person: a spreadsheet, a full inbox and dozens of DMs that never get a reply.

Insense takes the manual work out:

• Post one brief and vetted creators apply to you, usually within 48 hours

• Automated agreements, approvals, and payments in one place

• Updates from your campaigns in Slack, Claude, or ChatGPT; check all collab statuses in one message and review content deliverables directly in your chat or Slack channel

Save 40+ hours on creator ops and spend that time on strategy and testing.

Book a free strategy call by October 30th and get $200 toward your first campaign.

📦 Follow one SKU through Q4 to see if your reorder lands in time

Your best-selling beanie has a purchase order due November 24. If it lands a week late, what does that cost you?

Shopify’s October 6 update makes that easier to answer. Its new purchase order reports in Shopify Analytics show order costs, track each purchase order through transfers, shipments and receiving, and list open orders that have no linked transfer yet. A dashboard shows acceptance rate and shipments due soon.

Here’s the math on that beanie, using illustrative numbers.

The setup

• On hand today, October 7: 2,200 units

• Normal sales: 40 a day

• Black Friday week, November 23 to 30: 120 a day

• Open purchase order: 3,000 units, due November 24

• Margin per unit: $22

Step 1: Stock at the start of the peak

October 7 to November 22 is 47 days. At 40 a day, that’s 1,880 units sold, leaving 320 on November 23.

At 120 a day, 320 units last under three days. The purchase order due November 24 arrives just in time.

Step 2: The slip test

Now assume the order arrives a week late, on December 1.

Peak week needs 960 units. You have 320. That’s 640 lost sales, or $14,080 in margin, during the week your ads cost the most.

Step 3: Size your buffer from history

Use the transfers report to find how late this supplier usually delivers. If the average is five days, your buffer is five days of peak demand: 5 × 120 = 600 units.

Step 4: Choose a fix

Split and expedite. Ask the supplier to ship 600 units by air ahead of the main order. If air freight costs $3 a unit more, that’s $1,800 to protect $14,080.

Slow the burn. If you can’t speed up supply, cut ad spend on this SKU when it drops below seven days of cover, so stock lasts into the peak. That threshold is my judgment.

Shift demand. Push a similar product with healthy stock in November emails and ads.

Step 5: Check open orders weekly

The purchases-on-order report lists orders with no linked transfer, meaning the goods haven’t started moving. Chase any of those due within 30 days. A supplier who hasn’t shipped by then is unlikely to make your date.

Run it on your top 20

Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for your 20 best-selling SKUs. Sort by margin at risk if each order slips a week.

This week’s call list

Check “shipments due soon” against your Black Friday plan. Every order due after November 20 deserves a call to the supplier this week.

📢 Meta launches new ad formats as Google and OpenAI expand advertiser tools

Meta, Google and OpenAI are introducing new advertising capabilities, while streaming platforms increase ad loads and security researchers uncover a new threat involving online advertisements.

The Breakdown:

Meta Introduces Ads Super Burst - Advertisers can book 3–24-hour windows with guaranteed delivery and optional category exclusivity. Early tests reached a median of 34 million people. Meta also introduced First Impression Ads and Reels Trending Ads.

Google Gives Advertisers More Budget Control - Google Ads is rolling out channel prioritization, allowing campaigns to fund high-priority channels first. Advertisers can cap the daily budget share allocated to lower-priority placements, including Search partners.

ChatGPT Ads Adds Human Support - OpenAI is reportedly assigning account managers to advertisers for strategy calls and biweekly reviews. Meanwhile, premium streaming platforms averaged 18% more ad minutes in August than January.

Hackers Exploit Online Ads to Deliver Spyware - Citizen Lab documented the first known case of government-backed hackers delivering zero-click spyware through online advertisements. Researchers are advising potential targets to block ads or disable ad tracking.

Advertising platforms are offering more control over reach, budgets and campaign support, while growing streaming ad loads increase competition for attention. The spyware discovery also raises security concerns around ad delivery infrastructure, adding another consideration for the broader digital advertising ecosystem.

Together with Galactic Fed

Multitasking makes for sloppy marketing

You don’t need to run paid media, SEO, email, and everything else by yourself. Galactic Fed has a full team ready to take it off your plate, so you can focus on the parts of your business only you can do.

Get a free growth plan and see what having backup actually feels like.

Get your free marketing plan

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Scarcity Hits Hard - “Last chance ever” and “no restock” create aggressive scarcity, giving the ad strong urgency and making the limited flavors feel more collectible than simply discounted.

Claw Creates Disruption - The arcade claw physically grabbing the tub is a strong pattern interrupt, turning urgency into a visual metaphor while keeping the hero product impossible to miss.

Offer Stays Clear - The 20% off message repeats across the frame, reinforcing offer recall while the “72H only” banner adds a concrete deadline that reduces procrastination.

Don’t just say “last chance.” Show the product being taken away, disappearing or pulled out of reach so urgency becomes part of the creative itself.

🥳 Events

🔥 What Changes When Creator Programs Scale From 5 to 5,000

Tomorrow | Online | Free Festival

Return on Influence Festival ’26 opens up the systems behind large creator programs, including how teams track ROI, improve partnerships, and avoid operational chaos as volume grows. Hear directly from leaders at Adobe, ŌURA, Edelman, Ogilvy, and more.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🥳 Events

🔥 Where to Put Your Next Growth Dollar Beyond Meta

October 29 | The Glasshouse, NYC | Free In-Person Event

Hear how Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thinks about discovery, how Cody Plofker helped scale Jones Road Beauty to nine figures, and how brands like Liquid I.V. and MANSCAPED use TV to drive measurable revenue. Bring your hardest acquisition question and leave with a sharper channel plan.

✅ Reserve Your Spot

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🛒 Shop Now sends its own cart reminders. Here’s a four-week test diary

🔍 Google expands AI shopping and search links but keeps click data hidden

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with AirOps

Getting cited by AI is not the finish line. Getting chosen is.

Most teams now track citations like a rankings report. But a citation is a mention, and a mention does not build a pipeline.

Buyers use AI to research, shortlist, and decide, so the brands that win give them a reason to pick them.

Three recent AirOps Growth Leader webinars point to the same shift.

• Kevin Indig’s data shows that ranking #1 for your key fan-out queries earns 58% of citations, four times more than rank #10.

• Ross Simmonds found that Google’s AI surfaces lean on Reddit and YouTube, while the assistants favor off-site product and comparison pages.

• Eli Schwartz’s point is that every asset still needs a conversion path.

Read the full takeaways to see where your content and off-site effort should go next.

🛒 Shop Now sends its own cart reminders. Here’s a four-week test diary

Shopify’s October 5 changelog made a quiet change to cart recovery. Shop can now verify who a shopper is while they browse, before any purchase. Carts sync across devices and between the Shop app and your storefront, and Shop reminds shoppers to finish carts they left behind.

Your abandoned-cart email may now land after a Shop nudge. Some recoveries you credit to your flow could be Shop’s, and the reverse.

Before Black Friday, find out what your flow adds on top. Here’s how the test could run, week by week.

Week 1: Baseline

Pull four weeks of data before the change:

• Recovery rate: recovered orders divided by abandoned checkouts that had an email address

• Revenue per recovery email sent

• Share of orders paid with Shop Pay

Write the numbers down. You’ll compare against them in week four.

Week 2: Holdout

Split abandoned checkouts at random. Send 85% your normal flow and send nothing to the other 15%. That split is my judgment, big enough to read and small enough to protect revenue.

Say the flow group recovers 12% and the holdout recovers 7%. The 7% is what shoppers do on their own, Shop reminders included. Your flow’s real contribution is the 5-point gap.

If the holdout rate is much higher than last year’s recovery rate for people who got no email, Shop’s reminders are doing more of the work than before.

Week 3: Timing

If the gap shrank, your first email may be landing on top of Shop’s reminder. Test a first send at one hour against four hours on two random halves of the flow group.

Judge the winner by its gap over the holdout. Raw recovery rate can mislead here.

Week 4: Discounts

Check which email in the sequence produces the gap. If the lift only appears on the email with a discount, you’re paying for recoveries that might not need it.

Move the discount to the last email, and send it only to people who haven’t come back after the earlier messages.

Before the peak

Lock the winning timing by November 15. End the holdout by November 20, so every abandoned cart gets your flow during the busiest week. Restart a small holdout in January to see if the gap holds.

What to watch

Track Shop Pay’s share of orders weekly. If it climbs, more shoppers are inside Shop’s recognition and recovery loop, and your flow’s job shifts toward shoppers Shop doesn’t reach.

Your first move

Export last month’s abandoned checkouts and recoveries. You need that number before any reminder timing changes.

🔍 Google expands AI shopping and search links but keeps click data hidden

Google is introducing new shopping features, expanding links in AI-generated answers and testing deeper AI Mode integration, while publishers and marketers continue waiting for clearer traffic reporting.

The Breakdown:

Google Introduces Universal Cart - Rolling out across Search and Gemini in the US, Universal Cart lets shoppers save products from multiple retailers, track price drops, receive restock alerts and access promotions. Participating retailers remain sellers of record.

AI Search Gets More Links - Google is adding more prominent inline links to AI Mode and AI Overviews. It is also testing dedicated sections highlighting one or two official websites for certain searches, potentially increasing visibility for authoritative sources.

Google Still Withholds AI Click Data - Despite expanding links, Google has not introduced separate click reporting for AI search experiences. Meanwhile, its News AI pilot now pays 400+ publications, including CNN, Axios and Forbes, for content used in AI summaries and audio briefings.

AI Mode Moves Into Regular Search - Google is testing an AI Mode chat sidebar within traditional search results, allowing users to move directly into conversational search. The experiment could increase searches completed without visiting external websites.

Google’s updates are keeping more of the shopping and search experience within its own ecosystem. While additional links may improve publisher visibility, limited click reporting makes their impact difficult to measure, leaving marketers increasingly dependent on their own referral and conversion data.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Contrarian Hook Wins - “If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t be on bottle 56” turns repeat purchase into the hook, creating strong social proof without needing a traditional testimonial format.

Repetition Signals Trust - “Bottle 56” implies long-term satisfaction and habitual use, giving the serum credibility through customer behavior rather than claims, while making the endorsement feel more believable.

Minimalism Builds Focus - The oversized typography, neutral background and isolated product keep cognitive load low, while the orange accent guides attention from the testimonial directly to the hero SKU.

Turn loyalty into proof by showing the exact number of bottles, orders or refills a customer has used. Specific repetition can feel more persuasive than generic praise.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧯 What to do when your hero SKU sells out, and 12 creator ads are still running

📊 Pinterest and YouTube are leading returns, while TikTok quietly lost its edge

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🧯 What to do when your hero SKU sells out, and 12 creator ads are still running

It’s 11 p.m. on Black Friday. Your bestseller hits zero, and every creator ad featuring it keeps sending paid traffic to a product page with a disabled button.

Pausing hurts too. A Partnership Ad that has been running for weeks carries likes, comments and saves that a fresh ad starts without.

Price the problem first

Say 12 creator ads each spend $600 a day on the hero product. That’s $300 an hour. A sellout at 11 p.m. that nobody catches until 9 a.m. burns $3,000 at peak prices.

Fix 1: Track days of cover

Days of cover = units on hand ÷ average daily units sold over the last three days.

• If restock arrives before your sale ends, act at three days of cover.

• If it doesn’t, act at five days, and shift ad traffic to a backup product while the hero still has stock for email and organic buyers.

Both thresholds are my judgment. Adjust them to your restock lead times.

Fix 2: Shoot two SKUs in one session

Brief every creator filming the hero to record the same script a second time with your closest backup, such as another color or the next size of bundle.

A second take in the same session usually costs a fraction of the fee. A reshoot in late November costs a full fee and a week you don’t have.

Knowing which creators actually drive sales makes the swap order obvious. Insense connects to your Ads Manager so you can see which creators perform best rather than just which ads, and its vetted creators apply within 48 hours if you need a backup shoot fast. You can book a free strategy call

Fix 3: Build the ad-to-SKU map

One sheet, one row per ad:

• Ad ID and creator

• SKU featured

• Backup ad ID, already approved and paused

• Landing page and fallback page

During Black Friday weekend, check the map against your inventory export every hour.

Fix 4: Prepare the fallback page before the sellout

Editing an ad’s link sends it back through review, which is slow on your busiest night. Swap links while there’s still stock, toward a page that leads with the backup product and offers a back-in-stock signup for the hero.

Fix 5: Decide the relaunch rule now

When the hero restocks, turn its original ads back on instead of launching new copies, so the engagement they built keeps working for you.

List every live creator ad and the SKU it features. Any row without a backup ad is your Black Friday risk.

📊 Pinterest and YouTube are leading returns, while TikTok quietly lost its edge

Last week delivered a meaningful rotation in which platforms are worth backing heading deeper into Q4, click costs fell broadly while returns diverged sharply, putting pressure on teams to move budget toward channels that are actually converting rather than those that were working two weeks ago.

The Breakdown:

CPC - Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Pinterest all saw click costs fall while Google held flat, where CPCs dropped alongside improving ROAS; push budget harder before Q4 auction pressure absorbs the efficiency gain.

CAC - YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Microsoft all improved sharply while TikTok and Google worsened; YouTube’s CAC recovery after last week’s deterioration is worth acting on; test a 15–20% budget increase and check mid-week before committing further.

ROAS - Pinterest led at +21.95%, and YouTube posted +16.57% while TikTok and Google flatlined, both are posting double-digit returns at minimal budget share; open meaningful test budgets on both before Q4 auctions reprice the opportunity.

Meta holds 55.94% of spend with +3.98% ROAS and growing share, a third consecutive week of positive signals making it the lowest-risk Q4 scaling case on the board. Pinterest at 0.48% posted +21.95% ROAS and YouTube at 2.76% posted +16.57%, both severely underfunded. Move budget from TikTok, where ROAS turned negative, into Pinterest and YouTube this week before the window closes.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Environment Proves Durability - The frozen cave and frost-covered bottle make cold retention feel visually undeniable, turning a technical product benefit into a strong thumb-stop metaphor.

Product Owns Focus - The centered YETI bottle, bright blue finish and oversized creature hand create a clear visual hierarchy, keeping branding recall high despite the cinematic scene.

Offer Supports Action - The visible 20% off cue and “Shop Now” CTA add conversion clarity, giving the high-concept creative a direct purchase path without disrupting the premium feel.

Instead of stating durability or temperature retention, exaggerate the environment around the product. Showing the benefit physically happening makes functional claims faster to understand and remember.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🚦 A black friday runbook for slowing crawlers without losing rankings

🛒 AI shopping agents can now find products, build carts and complete payments

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🚦 A black friday runbook for slowing crawlers without losing rankings

At 9 a.m. on Black Friday, every server cycle should go to shoppers. Crawlers don’t know that.

On October 6, Search Engine Roundtable reported a notable addition to Google’s crawl rate documentation: when your server returns a 503 or 429 status code, you can include a Retry-After header telling Google’s crawlers when to come back, either as a delay in seconds or an exact UTC date and time.

The mechanism isn’t new. Google already treats 500, 503 and 429 responses as a signal to crawl less. The limits are what matter. Google says to use this for a short period, such as a couple of hours or one to two days, and warns that if Googlebot sees these codes on the same URL for multiple days, the URL may be dropped from the index.

This runbook is for stores that control their own servers or CDN, such as headless or self-hosted builds.

This month: Prepare

1. Measure the bot share. Split 30 days of server logs by user agent, and verify that anything claiming to be Googlebot really is, using Google’s published IP ranges.

2. Pick a trigger. Choose the load level that means trouble, such as response times doubling or CPU above 80%. The 80% figure is my judgment.

3. Build the switch now. Set up an edge or CDN rule that returns 503 with a Retry-After header to verified crawlers only. Shoppers must never see it. Test it on a staging site.

On the day: Two levels

Level 1, load rising. Throttle crawler requests to low-value URLs only: internal search results, sort and filter parameters, pagination.

Level 2, load critical. Return 503 with “Retry-After: 3600” to all crawler requests. One hour is my judgment.

Keep product pages open as long as you can at Level 1. Ad platforms check landing pages, and an unavailable one mid-sale risks your shopping ads, in my judgment.

The hard stop

Turn every rule off within 24 hours of switching it on. Never let one run past 48 hours, the edge of Google’s own one-to-two-day window. Give it a named owner.

Skip robots.txt as an emergency brake. It blocks pages outright instead of slowing visits, and Google’s emergency guidance relies on status codes.

The week after: Check

• Open Crawl stats in Search Console and look for host status problems on the peak days.

• Compare indexed page counts before and after.

• Spot-check your top 20 product pages with URL Inspection.

Your first task

Pull last month’s logs and find what share of requests came from bots. That share decides how urgent this runbook is.

🛒 AI shopping agents can now find products, build carts and complete payments

Shopify, American Express, OpenAI and Google are expanding AI-powered shopping, introducing tools that let assistants complete purchases, verify customer instructions and surface product offers directly in AI search.

The Breakdown:

ChatGPT and Google Refine AI Shopping - ChatGPT is testing a shopping interface where users select product categories and budgets. Google’s AI Mode Shopping ads now display promotional offers, including multi-buy discounts, with expandable details.

Shopify Lets AI Agents Complete Purchases - Shopify’s Shop MCP allows compatible AI agents to search over 1 billion products, build shopping carts and complete Shop Pay checkout. Orders appear in Shopify admin like regular purchases.

Amex Adds Purchase Verification - American Express introduced Proof of Intent Tokens that record customer preferences, budgets, and merchant details. The system can flag purchases that violate instructions, such as buying Adidas when Nike was requested.

Google Tests Prescription Ads in AI Search - Google is testing branded prescription drug advertisements within AI Mode and AI Overviews in the US, extending AI search advertising into a tightly regulated category.

AI shopping is moving beyond product recommendations toward completed transactions. As agents begin selecting products and handling checkout, accurate pricing, inventory, and product descriptions become essential. Merchants increasingly need product data that AI systems can interpret and match against specific customer instructions.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Hook Reframes Category - “Not your grandma’s banana bread” creates a playful pattern interrupt, immediately positioning the product as a modern, higher-protein alternative to a familiar comfort food.

Protein Feels Tangible - Showing the actual banana bread beside the shake and protein mix connects indulgence with function, making the 18g protein proposition feel more appetizing and believable.

Collab Adds Credibility - The Koia x Perdu’s partnership gives the creative added novelty and trust, while the warm banana palette keeps the collaboration cohesive and strengthens branding recall.

Take a nostalgic food people already understand, then reframe it around a modern benefit like protein, convenience or lower sugar to create instant message-market fit.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📊 Which of last year’s black friday emails deserve another run

🔍 Google warns against fake authors and reveals how long SEO changes take

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

📊 Which of last year’s black friday emails deserve another run

Ask which BFCM email performed best and most teams point to the one with the highest revenue. That campaign often gave away the deepest discount and lost the most subscribers doing it.

Score every campaign on what it actually left behind.

The formula

Net value per 1,000 sends = (revenue − discount cost − unsubscribe cost) ÷ sends × 1,000

Unsubscribe cost is unsubscribes multiplied by what one subscriber is worth. Divide last year’s email revenue by your average list size. If you earned $600,000 from a 150,000-person list, each subscriber is worth $4 a year.

Discount cost is the total markdown buyers received on orders from that email, which your order data reports line by line.

A worked comparison

Both campaigns went to 100,000 people.

Campaign A: $42,000 revenue, 9,000indiscounts,600unsubscribes(2,400). Net value: $306 per 1,000.

Campaign B: $51,000 revenue, 18,000indiscounts,1,500unsubscribes(6,000). Net value: $270 per 1,000.

B looked like the winner in the dashboard. A left you with more.

Pulling these numbers by hand takes an afternoon. Omnisend connects with Claude or ChatGPT, so you can ask for last year’s campaign results in the chat and work through the scoring there, and its BFCM AI playbook has ready-made prompts for this audit You can try the BFCM prompts.

Compare like with like

Black Friday morning sells itself. Score each email against others sent in the same slot, such as Friday mornings or Cyber Monday evenings, and not against a Tuesday warm-up.

Attributed revenue also includes buyers who would have purchased anyway. Use the scores to rank campaigns against each other.

The rerun rule

• Top third: rerun with the same offer and timing.

• Middle third: change one thing, usually the offer depth or subject line, and rerun.

• Bottom third: retire it, unless it was the only email in its slot.

• Any campaign with unsubscribes above 0.5% of sends: retire it regardless of score. That cutoff is my judgment.

Make next year’s audit easier

On October 1, Shopify added notes to Shopify Analytics. Teams can now pin context, such as campaign launches and promotions, directly onto time-series reports.

Use it this season. Log each send, any offer change and any site slowdown as it happens. Next October, a revenue spike comes with its explanation attached.

Pull last year’s five biggest BFCM sends, calculate net value per 1,000 and sort. The order will probably differ from the one in your head.

🔍 Google warns against fake authors and reveals how long SEO changes take

Google has updated its helpful content guidance to address deceptive author profiles, while new insights from Search Central Live reveal how long crawling, indexing and SEO recovery can take.

The Breakdown:

Fake Author Profiles Signal Low Quality - Google now warns against AI-generated headshots, invented names, and false credentials used to make content appear written by human experts. Such deception signals low-quality content to Google’s automated systems.

Fake Expertise Can Hurt Content Trust - Google’s quality rater guidelines already instruct reviewers to give deceptive author profiles the Lowest quality rating. The new guidance extends this warning directly to site owners, although author bylines themselves are not a ranking factor.

Crawling and Indexing Take Time - Google typically discovers new URLs in 20 hours, refreshes known pages in around 30 days, and processes sitemaps within 24 hours, according to a conference attendee’s recap. These timelines are estimates, not guarantees.

SEO Recovery Can Take Months - Title updates typically take 1–2 days, canonical changes 1–3 weeks, and site migrations 1–3 months. Recovering from a core update can take 3–6 months, sometimes extending to a year.

Google’s guidance puts greater emphasis on authentic authorship while providing clearer expectations for SEO changes. Publishers should verify author credentials and avoid misleading profiles, while SEO teams need to account for crawling delays and longer recovery periods when evaluating results.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Contrarian Hook Stops - “Don’t buy this serum” creates an immediate pattern interrupt, using reverse psychology to earn attention before flipping into a clear 28-day skin outcome.

Outcome Feels Specific - “Clear, stable skin in 28 days” gives shoppers a concrete timeframe, strengthening message-market fit while making the serum’s promise feel easier to evaluate.

Benefits Scan Fast - The three bottom callouts quickly communicate barrier repair, hydration and under-eye support, reducing cognitive load while reinforcing the serum’s multi-benefit positioning.

Open with a negative command, then immediately reveal the desirable outcome. Contrarian framing can increase thumb-stop ratio while making familiar product benefits feel less predictable.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

“Or perhaps we’ve shown the same three creatives to the entire internet.”

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🚚 Before your shipping moves into shopify markets, read this risk register

🎯 Meta, X, Reddit and Pinterest are making ads easier to launch

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Insense

Save 40+ hrs/month in Q4 on UGC creator & influencer operations

Your team already runs on Slack and AI agents. Your creator marketing should too.

Insense now plugs into the stack you already use, so you brief, approve, and track creator work without living in yet another dashboard.

Route campaigns and updates through Slack, put your AI agents (ChatGPT, Claude) to work on briefs and shortlists, and keep everything connected to your Ads Manager and analytics.

Underneath, the creator layer runs itself:

• Vetted creators apply to you within 48 hours - from a vetted marketplace of 115K+ creators across 57+ countries

• Run diverse campaign types - from UGC to seeding, influencer posting, and Meta Partnership Ads and TikTok Spark Ads

• Get creator performance insights - connect your Ads Manager and view which creators perform best - not only which ads

Over 3,500 brands and agencies use Insense, with first creator applications arriving within 48 hours and teams saving 40+ hours monthly.

Book a free strategy call by Oct 9th and get $200 towards your first campaign.

🚚 Before your shipping moves into shopify markets, read this risk register

Shopify started rolling out market-driven shipping to merchants on October 1. Shipping setup moves out of delivery profiles and into Markets, with a deadline of July 1, 2027. New stores get it automatically, while existing stores can opt in.

Migration guides have flagged behavior changes that can quietly move money. Here they are as a risk register, ranked by how much they can cost.

Rates with the same name merge

What happens: rates sharing a name consolidate into one option, and only the highest is charged instead of the total.

Who it hits: anyone shipping oversized items in mixed carts.

The math: a sofa ships at $150 under a rate called “Freight.” A side table ships at $60, also under “Freight.” Today a mixed cart charges $210. After the merge, it charges $150. At 40 mixed orders a month, that’s $2,400 in shipping you stop collecting.

Fix: give every rate a distinct name before switching, then test the cart combinations that matter.

Product-level rates disappear

What happens: rates targeted at single products move to collection-based targeting.

Fix: build collections such as “Oversize” and “Fragile” first, then check every special-rate SKU lands in one.

Carrier apps stop returning rates

What happens: apps that read or write shipping settings through the old delivery profile API need updates.

Fix: ask each shipping app vendor in writing whether they support market-driven shipping. Get the answer before opting in, because a rate that fails to load at checkout costs you the sale.

Orders arrive in pieces

What happens: one order can now ship in multiple shipments.

Fix: update order confirmation and shipping emails so customers expect more than one box, which heads off “where’s the rest?” tickets.

Staff lose access

What happens: anyone managing shipping needs the Markets permission granted manually.

Fix: grant it before switching, not mid-peak.

Decision rule

If you ship freight, oversized or mixed carts, wait until January. The deadline is July 2027, and nothing is gained by changing shipping logic during Q4.

If you run simple flat-rate shipping with no carrier apps, switch now. Test ten real carts in a development store first.

Download your current rate setup this week and keep it as a baseline. When you do switch, compare test orders against it line by line.

🎯 Meta, X, Reddit and Pinterest are making ads easier to launch

Four major advertising platforms announced updates that simplify campaign creation, improve audience targeting and expand promotional opportunities, with AI taking over more of the manual work.

The Breakdown:

Meta Brings AI Into Ads Manager - Meta is testing conversational campaign creation, targeting and budget changes, alongside scheduled alerts. New tools also support AI video generation, audience discovery and in-chat checkout.

X Builds Campaigns From a URL - X Lift automatically generates ad copy, images and targeting from a website link. Advertisers select creatives and set budgets, while X reports 50% growth in active self-serve advertisers.

Reddit Targets High-Intent B2B Buyers - Reddit is testing in-market audiences for enterprise, business AI and cybersecurity, with early testers seeing nearly 7% better CPA. Max campaigns now support lead generation.

Pinterest Opens Up Creator Promotions - Brands can now boost eligible creator Pins without an existing sponsorship, giving advertisers more content to promote while allowing creators to decline or opt out.

Campaign setup is becoming less manual across major ad platforms. Meta and X are simplifying creation, Reddit is helping advertisers reach buyers already researching products, and Pinterest is expanding access to creator content. Advertisers still control what gets promoted and where budgets go.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Packaging Leads Attention - The mint pack against the deep berry backdrop creates strong visual contrast, making the product instantly legible while the oversized pouch gives the creative clear mobile-first hierarchy.

Benefits Feel Credible - “23g protein,” vegan, gluten-free and no-sugar cues give shoppers fast functional proof, reducing cognitive load while strengthening the product’s better-for-you positioning.

Flavor Looks Tangible - The blueberries, purple powder and finished shake make the flavor experience easy to imagine, turning nutrition into something visually appetizing instead of overly functional or clinical.

Show the pack, core ingredient and finished drink together. That three-part composition explains what it is, what it contains and what shoppers ultimately consume.

🥳 Events

🔥 What to Measure When AI Search Doesn’t Get the Last Click

October 15 | Virtual Event

Matt Hammel, COO of AirOps, joins Zak Prauer, Expert Partner at Bain & Company, to show what citations alone miss, why recommendations matter more when buyers compare options, and how to judge AI search investment without waiting for perfect attribution.

✅ Register for Free

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🗽 New York’s cancel rule is live. here’s one flow, before and after

📊 Google Ads is changing what counts as a view

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🗽 New York’s cancel rule is live. here’s one flow, before and after

Since October 1, subscriptions sold to New York City consumers must be as easy to cancel as they were to start. Cancellation has to work “through the same avenues as enrollment.”

Fines start at $525 and reach $3,500 for repeat violations, and each misleading statement or omission can count separately. Have counsel confirm the details for your business, but the operational changes are clear enough to start now.

Here’s a typical coffee subscription, fixed.

BEFORE: Signup

A shopper texts “BREW” to a short code and subscribes in two taps. Price and renewal terms sit in a linked page.

AFTER: Signup

Before asking for payment, the checkout states the price, how often it charges, the cancellation deadline and every way to cancel, in plain text on the same screen.

BEFORE: Cancellation

Log in, open account settings, find “Manage,” answer a survey, decline two offers, then confirm by email.

AFTER: Cancellation

• Channel parity: customers who joined by text can cancel by text, such as replying “CANCEL BREW.” Keep that keyword separate from your marketing STOP so one doesn’t trigger the other.

• One screen online: the cancel button sits on the subscription page. A pause or skip option can appear alongside it, in my judgment, as long as cancel stays equally visible and works in one click.

• In-person signups: anyone who joined at a pop-up or store gets an online cancel option by web or email.

BEFORE: Renewal

The card is charged quietly every month.

AFTER: Renewal

The rule sets notice windows. Annual or longer terms need notice 15 to 45 days before the cancellation deadline. Price increases need 5 to 30 days’ notice. Charges after a free trial or gift of a month or more need 3 to 21 days’ notice.

Treat those notices as your best retention email. Lead with the date and the amount, then offer skip, swap and pause before the cancel link. Someone who wants a break picks pause because it’s easy, without being trapped.

Edge cases to settle

If you can’t reliably tell who lives in the city, apply one flow to everyone. Running two versions doubles the chance of a mistake.

If you sell gift subscriptions, check who receives the trial-end notice before the first charge.

List every way a customer can subscribe today, including text, quiz, checkout and in person. Then make sure each one has a matching way out.

📊 Google Ads is changing what counts as a view

Google is updating Demand Gen measurement, conversion reporting, lift testing and AI Max controls, giving advertisers more data while changing how some campaign results are counted.

The Breakdown:

Display Views Get Easier to Count - Demand Gen Display will count any rendered impression as a view, replacing Active View’s stricter standard. View-through conversions may rise without actual performance improving.

Conversion Paths Get More Detail - Google Ads Overview will include video impressions in eligible web conversion paths and group metrics by awareness, consideration and action. GA4-imported conversions are excluded.

Lift Testing Goes Self-Serve - Search and Performance Max advertisers can now run Conversion Lift tests without a Google representative, provided they have at least 1,000 observed conversions and a $5,000 campaign budget.

AI Max Gets More Transparent - New columns reveal targeting settings, while text customization previews up to 10 sample headlines and descriptions. Retailers can also share audiences with brands under domain restrictions.

These updates give advertisers more visibility into campaigns, but the new Demand Gen counting method could inflate reported view-through results. Comparing performance across periods will require extra care, and Conversion Lift offers a way to check whether ads actually generate additional conversions.

Together with Notion

The Hidden ROI of a Clean Workspace

Founders usually look for ROI in obvious places: ad spend, hiring, software costs, or sales performance. But one of the highest-leverage investments is often harder to see on a balance sheet: operational clarity.

When a company’s internal workspace is messy, the cost shows up through duplicate work, slower decisions, missed handoffs, lost context, and founder time spent chasing information. Even small improvements can create meaningful returns.

If a 10-person team saves just 20 minutes per person each day by reducing searching, re-asking, and rebuilding work, that adds up to more than 30 hours recovered every week.

For an early-stage company, that is nearly the equivalent of adding another full workweek of capacity without increasing headcount.

A clean workspace also reduces risk. Decisions are easier to audit, customer and contract details are easier to preserve, onboarding becomes more consistent, and AI becomes more useful because it has better structured knowledge to work with.

AI does not replace good systems. It compounds them. The more organized the workspace, the more value founders can unlock from automation, search, summaries, and knowledge management. Turn operational clarity into a competitive advantage.

Try Notion today and get up to 3 months free of Notion Business with Notion AI.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Search Intent Hooks - The search-bar format mirrors real consumer questions, creating strong message-market fit while making the ad feel native to how people actively research healthier hydration habits.

Benefits Scan Instantly - “Zero Sugar” and “B+C Vitamins” sit in high-contrast blocks, reducing cognitive load and giving mobile viewers two fast, concrete reasons to choose the product.

Product Feels Refreshing - The bright raspberry drink, ice block and fruit cues make hydration feel cold, flavorful and desirable, while the pack remains clearly visible for strong branding recall.

Turn high-intent customer searches into the creative hook, then show the product as the visual answer. It connects existing demand directly to a clear solution.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧱 Google just wrote down what “original” means. Score your pages against it

📊 Q4 is open, and the platforms worth scaling into it are clear

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🧱 Google just wrote down what “original” means. Score your pages against it

Google’s guidance on helpful content picked up two new sections on October 1. Raters now judge a page’s main content on four attributes: effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy.

The page also names a specific practice to avoid. It warns against “fabricating creator profiles, such as by using AI-generated headshots, made-up names or false credentials.”

For brands publishing guides and comparisons at scale, that’s a checklist you can score against today.

First-hand detail may also decide whether AI answers recommend you or merely cite you. That distinction is the focus of a free session on October 15, when AirOps COO Matt Hammel and Bain & Company’s Zak Prauer cover what evidence to demand from AI search spend. Recordings arrive within 24 hours. You can secure your free spot.

Run a four-column page audit

Pull your 25 highest-traffic guide and comparison pages into a sheet and score each from 0 to 2:

• Effort: did a human test, measure, translate or build something for this page?

• Originality: does it contain one fact, photo or data point no competitor has?

• Skill: would an expert in the category sign off on it?

• Accuracy: is every claim current and sourced?

Anything scoring 4 or below out of 8 goes on the rework list first. That cutoff is my judgment, so adjust it to your volume.

Add one thing only you could publish

In my judgment, originality is often the weakest column, and the easiest to fix with assets you already own:

• Return reasons: “Our top return reason for this jacket is sleeve length, so size up if you’re between sizes.”

• Support tickets: turn the five most common pre-purchase questions into an answered section.

• In-house tests: time it, weigh it or wash it 30 times, then photograph the result.

A cookware brand comparing pan materials could add its own heat-distribution photos from a thermal camera. No competitor can copy that by summarizing other pages.

Clean up the bylines

Check every author profile on your site against three conditions.

If the person is real and works with you, add their actual role, a real photo and one line on what they tested or reviewed.

If the name was invented or the headshot was generated, replace it with a real reviewer, or switch to a plain brand byline that says who checked the facts.

If an outside expert reviewed the page, name them and state what they checked, such as “dosage figures reviewed by…”

Start the audit with your five biggest traffic pages this week.

📊 Q4 is open, and the platforms worth scaling into it are clear

The first full week of Q4 delivered one of the more actionable setups in months; costs shifted, CAC improved on key platforms, and return signals aligned on both Meta and TikTok, making budget positioning decisions significantly easier than the prior two weeks allowed.

The Breakdown:

CPC - Google, YouTube, and Snapchat saw click costs fall while TikTok and Pinterest pushed higher., where CPCs rose alongside strong CvR gains like TikTok; the auction is repricing real performance. Hold spend and push proven creatives rather than pulling back on cost alone.

CAC - Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, and Microsoft all improved while Snapchat (+16.83%) and Pinterest (+10.86%) worsened sharply; Snapchat’s CAC spike after last week’s positive signal is a two-week reversal pattern; pull budget immediately and don’t mistake prior performance for current reliability.

ROAS - Google led at +5.46%, and TikTok posted +2.30% while Snapchat (-10.01%), YouTube (-2.63%), and Microsoft (-5.23%) declined, consolidate Q4 opening budgets into Meta, Google, and TikTok where CAC and ROAS are both moving in the right direction simultaneously.

Meta holds 55.30% of spend with +1.75% ROAS and +4.85% CvR, the strongest aligned signal it has shown in several weeks, and the clearest case to scale heading into the Q4 demand window. TikTok at 5.28% posted +16.57% CvR and +2.30% ROAS simultaneously.

Increase budgets on both this week, redirect Snapchat and Pinterest spend into Google, where ROAS hit +5.46%, and set CAC ceilings before any larger Q4 increases go live.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Routine Feels Essential - “Some things always make the bag” positions the cream as a non-negotiable daily carry, turning routine behavior into a strong lifestyle-driven reason to buy.

Context Builds Aspiration - The premium handbag setting makes the product feel elevated and portable, helping shoppers imagine ownership while reinforcing a polished, everyday beauty ritual

Trust Signals Support - Sensitive-skin positioning, COSMOS Organic certification and visible brand details add credibility, while repeated pack shots strengthen branding recall without distracting from the core concept.

Place the product inside a familiar everyday bag or routine, then frame it as something customers never leave behind. That makes repeat usage feel natural and desirable.

🥳 Events

🔥 What to Measure When AI Search Doesn’t Get the Last Click

October 15 | Virtual Event

Matt Hammel, COO of AirOps, joins Zak Prauer, Expert Partner at Bain & Company, to show what citations alone miss, why recommendations matter more when buyers compare options, and how to judge AI search investment without waiting for perfect attribution.

✅ Register for Free

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🚫 The black friday exclusion list that protects your margin

🧠 AI output is getting easier to understand and easier to advertise around

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🚫 The black friday exclusion list that protects your margin

Black Friday sends usually go to everyone who’s engaged. A few groups inside that list will see your 30% off and respond by costing you money.

Each one needs a different email instead of the sale blast.

Group 1: Bought at full price in the last 14 days

Someone who paid $80 last week and now sees $56 has every reason to ask for the $24 back.

Run the math. If 5,000 customers bought at full price in that window and 8% ask, that’s 400 requests and $9,600 in refunds, plus support time. The 8% is an illustrative figure, so use your own history from past sales.

Send instead: a thank-you with early access to a gift with purchase, or a store credit valid in January. It rewards them and pulls their next order into a slow month.

Omnisend’s BFCM AI playbook includes prompts for building suppression segments like this one. Because Omnisend connects with Claude or ChatGPT, you can ask for the list in plain language and skip the filter-building. You can try the BFCM prompts.

Group 2: Open support tickets

A customer waiting on a late or damaged order who gets a sale email is a likely spam complaint. Every complaint counts against your sender reputation during your highest-volume week.

Send instead: nothing until the ticket closes. Then add them back.

Group 3: Active subscribers

If a subscription costs $34 a month and the one-time price drops from $40 to $28 at 30% off, subscribers can cancel and buy one-time for less.

Send instead: a subscriber-only perk, such as a free add-on in the next box. They keep the subscription and still feel included in the event.

Group 4: Frequent returners

Customers who returned most of their last three orders tend to buy several sizes and send most back. A deep discount gives them more reason to do it. The “most of three” cutoff is my judgment.

Send instead: a fit-focused email with your size guide and best-reviewed fits, at standard holiday pricing.

How to run it

1. Build all four segments now and check their sizes.

2. Refresh Group 1 and Group 2 daily from November 20, since both change fast.

3. Set the sale campaigns to exclude every segment, and schedule the alternative emails for the same morning.

4. After Cyber Monday, count price-adjustment requests and cancellations against last year.

Pull your full-price buyers from the last 14 days and multiply by your sale discount. That number tells you what this list is worth protecting.

🧠 AI output is getting easier to understand and easier to advertise around

Andrej Karpathy is experimenting with better ways to consume AI answers, while OpenAI is building richer ads and the measurement infrastructure marketers expect from established channels.

The Breakdown:

Karpathy Wants AI to Write Like Aircraft Manuals - Karpathy says prompting LLMs to follow ASD-STE100, a controlled English standard used for aircraft maintenance manuals, can produce cleaner, easier-to-read explanations.

Text Might Not Be the Best Answer - Karpathy suggests moving from writing to diagrams, interactive HTML pages, and custom explainer videos. He expects more human work to shift toward checking and understanding what AI produces.

ChatGPT Ads Get Visual - OpenAI will begin testing visual ads during image generation with select U.S. advertisers later this month. Ads will be labeled and separated from generated images.

OpenAI Builds the Measurement Stack - ChatGPT Ads is adding more attribution partners, incrementality testing, Negative Phrases, and brand-suitability pilots with DoubleVerify and IAS. Early data showed WeightWatchers’ CPA 15.3% below paid search.

Both changes point toward AI interfaces becoming more mature. Users may increasingly consume answers as diagrams, pages, or videos instead of blocks of text, while advertisers get more familiar tools to measure whether ChatGPT actually creates incremental customers rather than simply receiving attribution.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Lifestyle Signals Function - The activewear setting instantly frames the drink around movement and wellness, giving the product a clear use case while strengthening message-market fit for health-conscious shoppers.

Copy Stays Scannable - “Electrolytes. Botanicals. Light sparkle.” compresses the value proposition into three fast proof points, reducing cognitive load and making the functional benefits easy to absorb on mobile.

Product Feels Aspirational - The overhead angle, sunlight and natural palette make the drink feel fresh and premium, while the visible can-in-use reinforces both consumption context and branding recall.

Show the product inside the exact lifestyle moment it belongs in, then support it with three concise benefits. That keeps the creative aspirational without losing conversion clarity.

🥳 Events

🔥 What to Measure When AI Search Doesn’t Get the Last Click

October 15 | Virtual Event

Matt Hammel, COO of AirOps, joins Zak Prauer, Expert Partner at Bain & Company, to show what citations alone miss, why recommendations matter more when buyers compare options, and how to judge AI search investment without waiting for perfect attribution.

✅ Register for Free

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🔥 What Makes a Creator Program Worth More Budget

October 21 | Online | Free Festival

See how experienced teams prove creator impact before asking for more spend. Leaders from Adobe, ŌURA, Edelman, Ogilvy, and more will break down the metrics, campaign decisions, and operating systems that help creator programs earn trust, budget, and room to scale.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

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Find our Partner Kit here🤝

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At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🏟️ Live TV sends shoppers all at once. Make sure your site can take it

🔎 Google is getting clearer about what it trusts and how long seo takes

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🏟️ Live TV sends shoppers all at once. Make sure your site can take it

On October 2, the co-CEO of a leading streaming service said growth is slower than he’d like, with viewing up just 2% in the first half of 2026. His plan to speed it up leans on live programming and NFL games.

More live events on streaming means more TV that behaves like old-fashioned linear: big audiences watching the same break at the same minute. For advertisers, every spot becomes a traffic surge, and your site decides whether it turns into orders.

Get the landing side ready before Q4 flights start.

Build a TV-only landing path

Viewers who reach your site from a TV spot arrive with one idea in their head: the product they just saw. Don’t send them to a homepage.

1. Create one landing page per TV spot, showing the exact product and offer from the ad.

2. Give it a short, easy-to-type address, such as yourbrand.com/tv, and put it on screen for at least five seconds.

3. Make the page load fast on a phone, since I judge many viewers will reach for one.

4. Remove pop-ups and email gates for this traffic.

A mattress brand airing a spot about cooling fabric would land viewers on that mattress, with the same headline and price as the ad.

Which spots deserve their own page depends on which ones actually move visits and orders. Tatari plans, buys, and measures streaming, linear, and online video on one platform through direct supply, tying results to actual conversions instead of each vendor’s own report. Vuori, Fiverr and Nutrafol run their TV that way, self-serve or full-service at nine-figure spend. You can book the demo here.

Run a surge rehearsal

A few days before your first live break, ask your developer or platform to run a load test at several times your normal peak traffic.

Then check the boring parts:

• Do discount codes from the ad apply at checkout?

• Does inventory for the featured product cover a spike?

• Are support chat and email staffed during the broadcast?

Catch the visitors who don’t buy

Many surge visitors leave without ordering, so plan the follow-up before the spot airs.

If they browsed the featured product, retarget them within 24 hours with the same creative they saw on TV.

If they bounced in under ten seconds, check what they saw first, since the page may not have matched the ad.

If they left an email, send one plain message the next morning that repeats the offer. Set up the TV landing page this week, then book the load test.

🔎 Google is getting clearer about what it trusts and how long seo takes

Two Google Search updates give publishers clearer guidance on fake authorship and realistic timelines for crawling, indexing, and recovering after major SEO changes.

The Breakdown:

Fake Authors Are Deception - Google now explicitly warns against AI-generated headshots, made-up names, and false credentials used to make content appear written by real experts. Its guidance calls this a signal of a low-quality page.

Bylines Aren’t a Ranking Hack - Google still says simply adding an author byline doesn’t improve rankings. The issue is whether author information is genuine, not whether every page has an expert-looking profile.

Some SEO Changes Move Fast - A new URL typically takes around 20 hours to discover, while title and snippet changes can appear within 1–2 days. Canonical changes usually take 1–3 weeks.

Big Changes Need Months - Site moves typically take 1–3 months, while recovery following a core update can take 3–6 months. Slow cases can stretch from six months to over a year.

Google’s message is straightforward: don’t manufacture expertise, and don’t expect every SEO fix to show results immediately. Small changes may appear within days, while site migrations and core update recoveries can legitimately take months.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Conversation Stops Scroll - The text-message format feels instantly native and familiar, creating a strong pattern interrupt while turning the energy benefit into a playful exchange instead of a standard claim.

Benefit Feels Personal - “Was I full of energy?” makes the product promise feel identity-driven, helping shoppers associate the supplement with how they want to feel throughout the day.

Placement Builds Habit - Keeping the creatine sticks visibly tucked into a jeans pocket signals portability and routine, making the product feel easy to carry, remember and use consistently.

Rewrite a functional benefit as a text exchange or social interaction. It lowers cognitive load, feels more native in the feed, and makes the product promise easier to remember.

🥳 Events

🔥 Why Google May Be Getting Credit for Customers AI Helped Win

October 15 | Virtual Event

A buyer can discover your brand in AI, convert through Google, and leave your attribution report telling the wrong story. Matt Hammel and Bain’s Zak Prauer show how to evaluate recommendation influence, spot what paid-channel metrics miss, and make a stronger case for AI search investment.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🔥 How Top Brands Measure, Fund, and Scale Creator Marketing

October 21 | Online | Free Festival

Return on Influence Festival ’26 brings together teams from Adobe, Edelman, ŌURA, Ogilvy, and more to unpack how creator programs actually run. Learn how they measure ROI, justify budget, structure partnerships, and scale from 5 to 5,000 creators without adding chaos.

✅ Secure Your Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📦 The Return Math That Tells You How Far to Tone Down an Ad

🎯 Google Ads is automating more, while rethinking an old rule

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Omnisend

Your BFCM Plan Is Still Waiting on Better Prompts

How much time goes into pulling last year’s reports and explaining them to AI? If every useful answer takes another round of clarification, your BFCM prep barely moves forward.

Omnisend’s BFCM AI playbook gives you detailed prompts for the work you need to get done, so you can spend less time figuring out what to ask.

Use last year’s results to decide which campaigns deserve another run and check deliverability before increasing send volume.

Then turn those findings into a campaign calendar your team can work from.

Better yet, Omnisend connects with Claude or ChatGPT, so you can analyze performance and create editable email templates without leaving the chat.

New to Omnisend? Its email and SMS platform serves 150,000+ ecommerce brands, reporting an average $79 for every $1 spent. Migration is free and takes up to five business days.

Start now, with time to put the answers to work.

Try the BFCM prompts

📦 The Return Math That Tells You How Far to Tone Down an Ad

Every team that tries to fix returns through copy hits the same wall. Softer claims reduce returns, and they also reduce sales. Without numbers, the loudest voice in the room wins.

Here’s how to put both sides on one ledger.

Step 1: Price a single return

Add up what one return really costs:

• Outbound shipping you never recover

• The return label

• Handling and inspection

• The share of returned units you can’t resell, times product cost

Example: $8 outbound, $9 label, $4 handling, and 20% unsellable on a 30productcost(6). One return costs $27.

Step 2: Size the problem

Take a product selling 1,000 units a month, where 12% come back for one reason, such as “not as warm as expected.” That’s 120 returns, or $3,240 a month.

Step 3: Measure the expectation gap

Ask two groups the same question on the same five-point scale, with each point tied to a real situation, from “fine for a cool evening” to “enough for an unheated bedroom.”

• Prospects see your current ad, then rate how warm they expect the product to be.

• Recent buyers rate how warm it actually is through a post-purchase email survey.

Keep the question neutral. Ask “how warm,” never “how cozy and warm,” so the wording doesn’t push answers up.

Subtract the buyers’ average from the prospects’ average. A gap above half a point is worth fixing, in my judgment.

The prospect side is where SurveyMonkey earns its place: it recruits a paid audience that matches your buyers and analyzes the answers automatically, so the gap shows up within. You can get started for free here.

Step 4: Find your break-even conversion loss

Say honest copy halves those returns. That’s 60 fewer returns, or $1,620 saved a month.

If each kept order earns $35 in contribution margin, you can lose up to 46 orders (1,620 ÷ 35) before the change costs more than it saves. That’s a 4.6% conversion drop.

This figure is conservative, since the buyers you lose were the likeliest to return anyway.

Step 5: Test rewrites against that line

Write two or three honest claims and test each with fresh prospects, one version per person, so nobody compares wording side by side.

Keep the rewrite that shrinks the gap below half a point while purchase intent falls by less than your break-even figure. Survey intent is directional, so confirm with a live split test on 20% of traffic.

Fill in Steps 1 and 2 for your most-returned product today. The monthly cost becomes your budget for the test.

🎯 Google Ads is automating more, while rethinking an old rule

Google is rolling out changes across promotions, international campaigns, PMax testing, and Smart Bidding, with more campaign work happening automatically.

The Breakdown:

PMax Gets Cleaner Creative Tests - Advertisers can now A/B test headlines, descriptions, images, and videos inside PMax asset groups. Once a test starts, however, that asset group is frozen until the experiment finishes.

Google Finds Your Sales - From October 12, Google can pull deals directly from advertisers’ websites and turn them into promotion assets for eligible Search and PMax campaigns. Advertisers are automatically opted in but can switch it off.

AI Can Clone Campaigns Abroad - Google’s localization beta creates a separate campaign in another language, translating headlines, descriptions, keywords, sitelinks, callouts, and landing pages. One catch: budgets and bids are copied without currency conversion.

Forget the “50 Conversions” Rule - Google’s learning-period guidance no longer points advertisers toward a fixed 50-conversion threshold. Instead, it references roughly 1-2 conversion cycles, with learning continuing even after the visible “Learning” status disappears.

Google Ads is becoming less about manually configuring every campaign element and more about setting the right inputs, testing the results, and checking what Google does automatically. Even familiar rules like waiting for 50 conversions are giving way to more campaign-specific signals.

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Education Builds Trust - The simple dos-and-don’ts format turns retinol education into fast, scannable guidance, reducing uncertainty around use while positioning the brand as helpful rather than purely promotional.

Contrast Guides Reading - The side-by-side cards create an intuitive visual hierarchy, helping mobile viewers process correct versus incorrect usage quickly without adding unnecessary cognitive load.

Product Anchors Learning - The retinol tube sits across the educational content, keeping the SKU visually tied to the advice and strengthening product recall while the lesson does the persuasion.

For products with usage friction, turn the ad into a mini guide. Practical education can build trust, reduce hesitation and make the product feel easier to adopt.

🥳 Events

🔥 What Meta’s Partnership Ads Data Means for Your Next Test

Tomorrow | 11 AM ET | 60-Minute Virtual Event

Get Meta’s view on where Partnership Ads fit, why creator-handle delivery is changing performance, and how experienced advertisers are testing it in real accounts. Reyna Baker from Meta and Curtis Howland, who has managed $100M+ in spend, break down what deserves budget now.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🔥 How Top Brands Measure, Fund, and Scale Creator Marketing

October 21 | Online | Free Festival

Return on Influence Festival ’26 brings together teams from Adobe, Edelman, ŌURA, Ogilvy, and more to unpack how creator programs actually run. Learn how they measure ROI, justify budget, structure partnerships, and scale from 5 to 5,000 creators without adding chaos.

✅ Secure Your Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🔴 The creator livestream is now an ad slot. here’s the run sheet

📊 Microsoft, Google and LinkedIn are giving marketers better signals to work with

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🔴 The creator livestream is now an ad slot. here’s the run sheet

Since September 29, brands can take a creator’s Instagram Live and run it as a Partnership Ad, something Facebook already offered.

The catch is easy to miss: paid viewers rarely arrive at minute one. They drop in from Feed, Stories or Reels halfway through, with no idea who’s talking or why. A stream built for loyal followers will lose them in seconds.

So treat the live like a campaign with a clock.

⏱ T-minus 7 days: lock the paperwork

Get the creator’s partnership ad permission confirmed in writing for the live and for clips cut from the replay afterward.

Pick one hero product. Create a code that only exists on this stream, so every redemption traces straight back to the broadcast instead of blending into your other ads.

⏱ T-minus 2 days: build the ad

Use a Sales objective and point it at the hero product. Set the budget for the stream’s length only, so spend can’t spill into the replay.

Instagram tells creators to schedule boosted lives at least two hours ahead to avoid delivery delays. Give your partnership ad the same buffer.

⏱ Minute 0 onward: run the drop-in loop

Every eight to ten minutes, the creator resets for newcomers with a 60-second loop:

1. Who this is for, in one sentence

2. The product in hand, used on camera

3. The price and the stream-only code

4. A question for chat, so new arrivals have a reason to stay

On a protein powder stream, that loop is a scoop, a shake, a sip and the code. Then it repeats.

A teammate should sit in the comments, pinning the code and answering price and shipping questions, while the creator stays on camera.

Planning a live is also a good moment to rethink where creator-handle ads fit in your account overall. On October 7 at 11 AM ET, Meta Partner Manager Reyna Baker joins Billo CEO Donatas Smailys and Curtis Howland, who has managed over $100M in Meta spend, to walk through Partnership Ads data. Registrants who miss it get the recording within 24 hours. You can secure your free spot here.

⏱ T-plus 24 hours: judge it fairly

Divide stream ad spend by code redemptions, then compare that number with your usual Partnership Ads cost per purchase.

If the live wins, book a monthly slot with the same creator.

If it lands within 20% and comments surfaced fresh objections, keep testing, because that’s creative research you’d normally pay for. The 20% band is my judgment.

If it loses on both counts, move that budget back to your standard Partnership Ads.

Book your first stream this week, before Q4 auctions get crowded.

📊 Microsoft, Google and LinkedIn are giving marketers better signals to work with

Three new updates are making it easier for marketers to connect ads to revenue, measure traffic coming from AI, and find B2B creators for campaigns.

The Breakdown:

Microsoft Ads Meets HubSpot - Microsoft Advertising now connects with HubSpot, linking campaigns to leads, deals, pipeline and revenue while automating actions like sales assignments and nurture emails.

B2B Targeting Gets Bigger - Microsoft is expanding LinkedIn company lists from 1,000 to 10,000 businesses and adding broader campaign experiments for testing bidding, targeting and creative changes.

Gemini Traffic Gets Trackable - Google Gemini has started adding UTM parameters to outgoing links, helping sites separate Gemini referrals from Direct traffic. Google has not yet documented exactly when UTMs appear.

LinkedIn Makes Creators Searchable - Creator Discovery will let marketers filter creators by industry, job function, content type, audience demographics and Top Voices, with general availability expected in early 2027.

Together, these updates give marketers better visibility into what happens before a conversion. Microsoft connects ads more directly to revenue, Gemini makes AI referrals easier to measure, and LinkedIn is making it easier to identify creators who reach the right B2B audience.

Together with Wellput

You already paid for that traffic. Twice, if you’re retargeting it.

Ad costs climb every quarter, and the same visitors keep slipping away unnamed. Meanwhile, the cheapest leads you’ll get all month are already on your site. You just can’t see them.

LeadPost turns anonymous sessions into contact records you own: name, email, postal address, company, job title.

It runs on the traffic you’re already buying and pushes leads into your CRM automatically, so email, ads, and direct mail can pick up from there.

One customer traced $270,000 in sales back to a $4,000 spend.

Free for 14 days for Scaleup Newsletter readers with no credit card. You’ll see real leads out of your own traffic before you decide anything

Start your 14-day free trial

*14-day free trial, up to 200 leads. No credit card required. U.S. website visitors only. Works best on sites with at least 1,000 unique monthly visitors.

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Hook Reframes Coffee - “The VIP pass for your brain” turns a functional coffee benefit into an aspirational shortcut, creating curiosity while making mushroom coffee feel more desirable than clinical.

Offer Feels Premium - The 25% off badge adds urgency without cheapening the brand, while the brown and blush palette keeps the creative warm, elevated and consistent with premium coffee positioning.

Usage Looks Familiar - Showing both hot and iced preparations reduces adoption friction, helping shoppers understand that mushroom coffee fits existing routines rather than requiring a completely new habit.

Translate a technical benefit into a more desirable cultural phrase, then pair it with familiar consumption moments. That makes wellness products easier to understand and more emotionally appealing.

🥳 Events

🔥 Why Creator-Handle Ads Are Outperforming Brand Creative on Meta

October 7 | 11 AM ET | 60-Minute Virtual Event

Meta Partner Manager Reyna Baker joins Billo CEO Donatas Smailys to unpack Meta’s own Partnership Ads data, while Curtis Howland brings lessons from $100M+ in managed Meta spend. See what to change in your testing and where creator-handle ads fit before your next budget goes live.

✅ Secure Your Free Spot

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📱 Thanksgiving is the biggest impulse day of your year

📊 TikTok is the only major platform where costs and returns aligned this week

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

📱 Thanksgiving is the biggest impulse day of your year

Adobe expects Thanksgiving to bring $6.9 billion in U.S. online sales this year, with a record 63% of it on mobile. That’s well above the 57.4% mobile share forecast for the season, and Adobe puts the gap down to impulse shopping.

These are people on a couch between courses, phone in one hand. Every extra tap gives them time to change their mind.

The one-hand checkout audit

Run this on your own phone, using only your thumb, this week:

1. Tap your best-performing ad and time how long it takes to reach a completed order.

2. Count every tap and every field typed.

3. Check that Apple Pay, Google Pay or Shop Pay buttons appear above the fold on both the product page and the cart.

4. Make sure guest checkout is the default and that account creation comes after purchase.

5. Fix the three slowest steps first.

My working target is under 60 seconds and under 10 taps from ad to order. Anything slower is losing impulse buyers.

Show pay-later next to the price

Adobe forecasts $21.3 billion in buy-now-pay-later spending this season, with 82% of it on mobile. If your store only reveals that option at the payment step, the impulse has already cooled.

Match the message to your price band:

• Under $50: skip installments and lead with free shipping or a gift.

• $50 to $200: show the installment price right under the main price, such as “or 4 payments of $22.”

• Over $200: lead your ad creative with the installment figure and keep the full price close by.

Test the $50 to $200 band first. In my judgment, that’s where a small monthly number most often turns “maybe later” into a purchase.

Build a Thanksgiving-only lane

Treat the day as its own event:

• Creative: use vertical video built for the evening scroll, with the offer on screen in the first second.

• Timing: schedule SMS and push for the evening, after the meal, instead of the morning.

• Landing page: send traffic to a short page of 6 to 12 bestsellers with prices and quick-add buttons, instead of a full collection page.

If a product needs explaining, save it for Cyber Week, when shoppers research more.

Grab your phone and do the thumb test. A checkout fixed in October pays back on Thanksgiving night.

📊 TikTok is the only major platform where costs and returns aligned this week

Last week’s environment heading into October turned hostile across most channels, click costs fell broadly but returns collapsed even faster, creating one of the more lopsided efficiency setups of the quarter with Q4 spend decisions now on the table.

The Breakdown:

CPC - Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Pinterest all saw click costs fall while Microsoft held flat, where CPCs dropped but ROAS deteriorated sharply like Meta and Pinterest, don’t treat cheaper clicks as a scaling signal; hold budgets flat until returns confirm the efficiency is real.

CAC - Meta, Google, and TikTok improved while Microsoft, Snapchat, Pinterest, and YouTube all worsened, on platforms where CAC improved alongside positive ROAS like TikTok, run a controlled budget increase and track whether gains hold before committing to a full Q4 shift.

ROAS - TikTok led at +6.49% while Pinterest (-14.00%), Microsoft (-9.59%), Meta (-8.44%), and YouTube (-4.56%) all declined, consolidate active spend into TikTok now, and treat Pinterest and Microsoft’s back-to-back ROAS deterioration as a signal to cut, not hold.

Meta holds 54.10% of spend with -8.44% ROAS and improving CAC, the split between these two metrics is widening, not resolving, which makes scaling it heading into Q4 a risk rather than a conviction.

TikTok at 4.90% is the only platform posting positive ROAS with improving CAC simultaneously. Redirect freed budget from Pinterest and Microsoft into TikTok this week, set CAC ceilings before any Q4 increases go live, and don’t let budget inertia drive the next cycle’s allocation.

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Hook Creates Curiosity - “You’ve never hydrated like this before” opens a curiosity gap, giving the creative strong thumb-stop potential while positioning the product as a new hydration behavior.

Benefits Scan - The stacked callouts turn multiple product benefits into fast mobile-friendly proof points, reducing cognitive load while showing versatility, wellness outcomes and zero-sugar positioning in seconds.

Demo Makes Tangible - Pouring the product directly into iced coffee shows exactly how it fits into an existing routine, improving product comprehension and lowering perceived adoption friction.

Don’t just explain benefits. Show the product entering a familiar daily ritual, then surround that moment with concise proof points so adoption feels easy and immediately useful.

Advertise with Us

Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?

Find our Partner Kit here🤝

We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🧺 This Cyber Week, your bestseller is the boring stuff

💬 ChatGPT Ads are growing up fast, but the rules are still being written

🏆 Ad of the day

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Your competitor already knows their category’s Q4 benchmark. Do you?

Every “Black Friday guide” treats Q4 like one big shopping event. It isn’t - each category peaks on its own calendar.

• Apparel treats Black Friday as a volume play, trading ROAS for total revenue as it scales into December.

• A 30% hook rate looks strong - for Health & Beauty, that’s just above average during Q4.

• Business & Industrial’s best month last year was December, proving even B2B brands catch a Q4 lift.

Missed your category above? Wondering where your own numbers actually land?

Billo built a free calculator on 80,069 sales-objective Meta video ads across 14 categories from Q4 2025 - see your own category’s peak month, benchmark, and fix in under a minute.

Check your Q4 benchmark

🧺 This Cyber Week, your bestseller is the boring stuff

Adobe’s 2026 holiday forecast has a twist hiding under the $275.1 billion headline. During Cyber Week, it expects online sales of personal hygiene products to run 150% above average September levels. Clothing basics are forecast at 210% above, baby products 113% and pet products 93%.

Shoppers are using deal week to fill cupboards, and a sitewide percentage off a single unit is the weakest way to meet them.

Price the pack, protect the margin

Run this math on any replenishable SKU. Picture an $18 shampoo with a $5 unit cost and $7 to ship:

• Single unit at 20% off: $14.40 minus $12 leaves $2.40

• Three-pack at $46.50, about 14% off: minus $15 in product and $8 to ship leaves $23.50

The shopper sees a smaller discount but gets a better deal, and you earn nearly ten times more per order. Build one 3-pack and one 6-pack for your top five replenishable SKUs, then make the pack the hero of every Cyber Week ad.

Set the run-out clock

Every stock-up order tells you when that customer will run dry. Use it:

1. Tag each order with pack size at checkout.

2. Multiply units by days of use per unit. A 3-pack at 30 days each runs out in about 90 days.

3. Trigger a reminder flow 10 days before that date.

4. Offer the subscription in that reminder, when the customer is nearly empty, instead of at checkout.

A Black Friday 3-pack buyer then hears from you in mid-February, long after competitors have gone quiet.

Match the play to your catalog

If you sell essentials, start early. Adobe expects Prime Big Deal Days in October to drive almost $10 billion online and pull shopping interest forward across retailers, not just on Amazon. Run your first pack offer then, and treat Cyber Week as the second wave.

If you sell gifts, attach an essential. A candle brand can offer a wick-trimmer and refill bundle at checkout, so the gift comes with the stock-up item the buyer was planning anyway.

If you sell both, split creative. Gift ads should lead with recipients, and essentials ads should lead with how long the pack lasts.

List your five most replenishable SKUs with unit cost and shipping cost. Price the 3-pack, check the margin, and brief the creative around it this week.

💬 ChatGPT Ads are growing up fast, but the rules are still being written

Six months in, ChatGPT Ads are reaching more users and attracting tens of thousands of advertisers. New research shows what is beginning to work, while OpenAI is already building the tools needed to take campaigns beyond small experiments.

The Breakdown:

ChatGPT Needs Its Own Playbook - CTRs have roughly doubled since launch, but leading advertisers aren’t recycling Google or Meta campaigns. They create 98% new copy specifically for ChatGPT, built around conversational intent.

Early Conversations Win Clicks - Ads shown within the first few turns of a conversation generate the strongest CTR and impression share. Simple product, pricing and feature pages are also the most common destinations.

CTR Changes by Country - Brazil leads at 1.91%, followed by Mexico at 1.55% and Japan at 1.53%, while the U.S. sits at 0.73%. Only Jotform and Resume.io stayed top-10 advertisers across all 20 tracked weeks.

Ecommerce Gets More Firepower - OpenAI now lets advertisers bulk-create product campaigns through spreadsheets, see why products were rejected and analyze additional attributed conversions beyond the campaign’s primary optimization goal.

ChatGPT Ads are developing their own advertising behavior rather than simply becoming another version of search or social ads. Conversational creative, when an ad appears in the chat, and market-specific behavior are already affecting performance, while OpenAI is quickly adding the infrastructure advertisers need to scale.

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Scale Creates Wonder - The oversized skincare jar turned into a boat creates a surreal pattern interrupt, giving the ad strong thumb-stop power while keeping the product unmistakably central.

Setting Adds Aspiration - Paris, the river and breakfast details give the product a luxurious lifestyle context, making the moisturizer feel more elevated and emotionally desirable than a standard pack shot.

Benefit Stays Visible - Despite the surreal concept, the front label still communicates niacinamide, ceramide and hydration benefits, preserving product education while the giant pack strengthens branding recall.

Turn the hero SKU into part of the environment itself, then surround it with aspirational lifestyle cues. That creates spectacle without sacrificing product communication.

🥳 Events

🔥 Where to Put Your Next Growth Dollar Beyond Meta

October 29 | The Glasshouse, NYC | Free In-Person Event

Hear how Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thinks about discovery, how Cody Plofker helped scale Jones Road Beauty to nine figures, and how brands like Liquid I.V. and MANSCAPED use TV to drive measurable revenue. Bring your hardest acquisition question and leave with a sharper channel plan.

✅ Reserve Your Spot

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In this newsletter, you’ll find:

⚖️ The FTC isn’t coming. Somebody else might be.

📈 Instagram and LinkedIn just dropped some useful clues for marketers

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

⚖️ The FTC isn’t coming. Somebody else might be.

A widely cited 2024 study found 96% of sponsored posts on a major platform lack proper disclosure, and the FTC has never actually collected a monetary penalty from an individual influencer over it.

That gap looks like good news for a brand relying on it. Current reporting is clear that it isn’t: the enforcement pressure hasn’t disappeared; it’s moved to civil litigation instead, and civil litigation doesn’t need to win every case to reshape how contracts get written. It just needs one expensive example.

Regulatory enforcement failing to materialize was never the same thing as the underlying risk going away. It just changed who’s likely to bring the claim and what it costs when they do.

Check whether your creator agreements specify disclosure at all

Most standard creator agreements say something vague about complying with applicable law, which sounds like coverage and functions as nothing, since it specifies no actual format, placement, or wording for the creator to follow.

Pull your current template and look for a specific requirement: where the disclosure has to appear in a caption or video, what language satisfies it, and by when relative to posting. If the answer is a general compliance clause and nothing more specific, that’s the gap a civil claim would target first.

Audit live content against the standard you’d actually want enforced

A compliance clause in a contract means nothing if nobody checks whether the content that shipped actually followed it.

Sample your currently running creator content across formats, since disclosure failures cluster in short-form video and livestreams where it has to fit inside an unscripted moment, more than in written posts where there’s room to get it right. Fixing what’s already live is cheaper than discovering the gap after a dispute.

Build disclosure specificity into onboarding, not just the contract

Most disclosure failures trace back to a creator genuinely not knowing the specific standard, not to deliberate evasion, which makes this a training problem as much as a legal one.

That gets harder every time the roster grows, and Q4 is when it grows fastest. A brand onboarding twenty seasonal creators in six weeks is the same brand least likely to be checking each one’s first post against a disclosure standard nobody explained.

The fix is upstream. If onboarding, briefs, and usage terms all live in one place, the disclosure standard travels with every new creator automatically instead of depending on someone remembering to send it during the busiest six weeks of the year.

That’s how Insense runs creator operations for Il Makiage, Quince, Huda Beauty, and Monster Energy.

Book a free strategy call to map creator availability in your niche, plus $200 toward your first campaign.

A gap in enforcement isn’t a gap in risk. It’s just a risk that hasn’t sent its bill yet.

📈 Instagram and LinkedIn just dropped some useful clues for marketers

Instagram is explaining what helps content travel, while LinkedIn’s analysis of 50,000 deals across 850 B2B organizations suggests marketers may be entering the buying journey too late.

The Breakdown:

Instagram Rewards Fresh Originals - Originality and recency remain major ranking signals. Instagram also tests posts from smaller public creators with non-followers, expanding distribution when those early viewers respond well.

Engagement Beats Big Numbers - Mosseri recommends watching engagement rates rather than raw views or likes. He also suggests Trial Reels for experimenting with formats without relying entirely on existing followers.

B2B Buyers Start 124 Days Early - Buying groups begin researching solutions roughly 124 days before speaking with a seller, suggesting marketing needs to influence buyers well before a deal reaches the CRM.

One Decision Has Many People - Reaching 6+ contacts before a deal enters the CRM was associated with a 17-point higher win rate. Yet 76% of LinkedIn ad spend still targets director-level roles.

Instagram’s message is to keep producing fresh, original content and judge it by meaningful engagement. LinkedIn’s data points to a different shift: B2B opportunities can start months before the sales conversation and involve far more people than the person with “Director” in their title.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Depletion Creates Urgency - The squeezed tube instantly signals product depletion, making the restock message feel behaviorally relevant while creating a natural purchase trigger without relying on discount-led urgency.

Minimalism Builds Focus - The monochrome palette, negative space and single hero product keep cognitive load extremely low, creating clean visual hierarchy and stronger branding recall in-feed.

Copy Mirrors Behavior - “It’s probably the end of the tube?” sounds like an internal shopper thought, making the creative feel relatable while smoothly nudging the viewer toward replenishment.

Build creatives around visible depletion cues like crushed tubes, empty jars or low bottles. These signals activate replenishment intent and shorten the path to purchase.

🥳 Events

🔥 Why Creator-Handle Ads Are Outperforming Brand Creative on Meta

October 7 | 11 AM ET | 60-Minute Virtual Event

Meta Partner Manager Reyna Baker joins Billo CEO Donatas Smailys to unpack Meta’s own Partnership Ads data, while Curtis Howland brings lessons from $100M+ in managed Meta spend. See what to change in your testing and where creator-handle ads fit before your next budget goes live.

✅ Secure Your Free Spot

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

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Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📐 Your shopping numbers just changed definition, not just value

🎯 Google and Microsoft are slowly taking their hands off the CPC dial

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Galactic Fed

Multitasking makes for sloppy marketing

You don’t need to run paid media, SEO, email, and everything else by yourself.

Galactic Fed has a full team ready to take it off your plate, so you can focus on the parts of your business only you can do.

Get a free growth plan and see what having backup actually feels like.

Get your free marketing plan

📐 Your shopping numbers just changed definition, not just value

Google started updating Merchant Center performance reports on August 24, and the change isn’t cosmetic. The update separates YouTube affiliate results from other product performance and aligns reporting definitions across Merchant Center, Google Ads, and

YouTube so the same metric name means the same thing everywhere in the ecosystem. That consistency is genuinely useful. It also means a number that moved this week might not reflect a real change in performance at all.

A “popular products” or impressions figure that drops after August 24 could be a real decline, or it could be the same underlying activity now getting counted, categorized, or attributed differently than it was a month ago.

Those are two completely different problems, and reacting to the wrong one wastes the exact week teams can least afford to waste heading into peak season.

Pull a before-and-after snapshot before drawing any conclusion

Before adjusting budget, creative, or feed strategy based on a shift in Merchant Center reporting, export the same performance view from just before August 24 and just after.

Compare structure, not just the headline numbers: did a metric that used to include YouTube affiliate activity now report it separately, did a category boundary move, did anything get reclassified in a way that would explain a shift without any actual change in how products performed.

This ten-minute check, done in a view that tracks feed and AI shopping visibility together rather than as separate systems, is what *Semrush One is built to make fast.

Isolate YouTube affiliate performance as its own line now that it’s separated

If your popular products report used to blend YouTube affiliate activity in with everything else, the newly separated view is actually a capability upgrade, not just a definitional headache, since it’s the first time that channel gets its own visibility.

Once you’ve confirmed what changed structurally, use the new separation deliberately: track YouTube affiliate performance against its own baseline going forward rather than folding it back into a blended number that hides how that specific channel is actually doing.

Reconcile shopping metrics against your AI visibility data on the same cadence

A metric definition changing in Merchant Center is exactly the kind of shift that’s easy to miss if shopping performance and AI-driven visibility are tracked in separate tools on separate schedules. You can see how it works here.

The number changed. Whether your performance did is a different question, and it’s worth answering before anyone reacts to the wrong one.

🎯 Google and Microsoft are slowly taking their hands off the CPC dial

Advertisers are getting a fresh batch of changes across Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, and there’s a pattern underneath them: less micromanaging every click, more automated bidding and more signals feeding the platforms.

The Breakdown:

Max CPC Gets Squeezed - Microsoft is pushing Max CPC into portfolio strategies for new campaigns from October 1, before restricting API access further in January 2027. The old per-click ceiling is getting harder to hold onto.

Google Locks the ROAS Dial - Turn on Promotion Mode and Target ROAS gets locked, leaving only tolerance adjustable. Demand Gen display images have also moved from CPC to CPM, so advertisers are paying for impressions rather than individual clicks.

Customer Match Gets Sharper - Google can now match audiences using IP addresses and interaction timestamps, alongside existing customer identifiers. There’s a privacy catch: both are uploaded unhashed and excluded for EEA, UK and Swiss users.

Local Ads Get Supersized - Google is testing much larger Local Services Ads with bigger images and more prominent details, potentially giving plumbers, roofers and other local businesses even more Search real estate.

The click is losing some of its old control-panel status. Microsoft is narrowing where advertisers can cap CPCs, Google is putting more decisions behind automation, and richer customer data is becoming the fuel. Advertisers may get smarter optimization in return, but increasingly, they’re steering the outcome rather than setting every lever themselves

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Faces Drive Attention - The close-up smiling faces create immediate human emotion and strong thumb-stop potential, while their eye lines naturally pull attention toward the product in the center.

Color Signals Indulgence - The saturated red, orange and yellow palette makes the ad feel energetic and candy-like, reinforcing sweetness and helping the vegan positioning feel fun rather than restrictive.

Product Feels Social - The shared eating moment turns the candy into a social experience, strengthening emotional relevance while the visible gummies communicate texture, variety and product enjoyment instantly.

For snacks, show people actively enjoying the product together. Shared consumption adds energy, social proof and emotional context that a standalone pack shot cannot create.

*When you purchase through links in this article, we may earn an affiliate commission from Semrush.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🎯 The target you should have pushed back on three months ago

📊 Google is giving advertisers more data, more ad placements and cleaner analytics

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

Together with Insense

DTC marketers: Your FREE Sept→Jan creator playbook for BFCM + Q5

By October, CPMs can already be 20–60% higher. Waiting until November leaves your team buying expensive attention while still chasing creators, approvals, and usable content.

Insense’s free BFCM + Q5 Creator Marketing Playbook gives DTC marketers a week-by-week plan from September through January, so every creator campaign starts with a clear deadline and purpose.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

• Adapt to four shifts that have changed how Q4 is won this year

• How to source the right creators within 48 hours

• Time organic and paid social campaigns across BFCM and the overlooked mid-December-to-January Q5 window.

Get the free playbook and turn the busiest selling season into a campaign your team can execute without last-minute scrambling.

Insense is the creator engine for consumer brands scaling past $2M, looking to save 40+ hours on creator operations per month - especially in Q4.

Book a free strategy call by October 9th and get $200 towards your first campaign.

🎯 The target you should have pushed back on three months ago

Absorbing an unrealistic target quietly feels like the safer move in the moment.

Pushing back risks an uncomfortable conversation.

Absorbing it just means working harder against a number that was never actually achievable with the resources attached to it. The second option feels safer and is usually more expensive, since it postpones the same hard conversation to a point where less time is left to fix anything.

The skill worth building isn’t pushing back on every target. It’s knowing which targets are worth absorbing and which ones need a conversation before the quarter starts, not after it’s already gone sideways.

Run the math before accepting the number

A target arrives from leadership already framed as a decision, not a proposal, which makes it easy to skip the step of actually checking whether it’s achievable before agreeing to it.

Before accepting, model what the target requires against current capacity: pipeline per rep, content output per cycle, whatever the underlying unit is for the goal.

If the math doesn’t close even under generous assumptions, that’s information worth surfacing before the quarter starts, not a problem to discover in week ten.

Push back with a specific trade, not a general objection

“This isn’t realistic” is easy to dismiss because it offers nothing to negotiate against. A specific trade is harder to wave off, because it forces a real decision instead of a mood.

Bring one of three things to the conversation:

• The resource gap that needs closing to hit the number as stated

• The lower number that’s achievable with current resources

• The specific lower-priority work you’d need to stop doing to free up capacity for the new target

Each of those is a decision leadership can actually make. A general objection isn’t.

Protect the work that’s already moving pipeline while you negotiate

The riskiest failure mode isn’t losing the pushback conversation. It’s letting the work that’s currently producing results get deprioritized while the target conversation is still unresolved.

Keep whatever is demonstrably driving pipeline running at full resourcing through the negotiation, even if that means visibly under-resourcing something else in the interim.

A stalled pushback conversation shouldn’t be allowed to quietly starve the one thing that’s actually working. Knowing which channel is actually earning that pipeline matters more than ever now that a meaningful share of buyer research happens inside AI tools instead of a search results page.

Foundation CEO Ross Simmonds and AirOps’ Josh Spilker are unpacking exactly that on September 29, using research across nearly 380,000 AI answers and 3 million citations to show which sources are actually shaping which brands make a buyer’s shortlist. You can secure your free spot here.

Every target you absorb without checking the math first is a decision, even when it doesn’t feel like one.

📊 Google is giving advertisers more data, more ad placements and cleaner analytics

Google is rolling out updates across Customer Match, Demand Gen, and Google Analytics, changing how advertisers build audiences, reach shoppers, and filter the data behind campaign decisions.

The Breakdown:

Demand Gen Expands - YouTube viewers can ask questions about products without leaving videos, while single-tap image ads are coming to Shorts and Gmail. Google says Gmail delivered 40% more conversions at the same ROI on average.

Customer Match Gets More Signals - Advertisers can now upload IP addresses and interaction timestamps alongside existing identifiers to improve matching. The new signals are unavailable for users in the EEA, UK and Switzerland.

Ads Come to Maps - New affiliate location extensions can promote business locations directly inside Google Maps, giving Demand Gen campaigns another way to reach consumers around physical stores.

Analytics Gets an Allowlist - Google Analytics can now accept traffic only from approved hostnames, automatically filtering other domains. Measurement Protocol events remain exempt from these Include filters.

Google is strengthening more parts of the advertising workflow at once. Customer Match gets additional first-party signals, Demand Gen gains new shopping and local placements, and Analytics gets a simpler way to keep spam out of reporting, giving marketers more control from audience building through measurement.

🏆 Ad of the day

What Works:

Bundle Logic Lands - “Better Together” instantly explains why the two products belong in one purchase, while “smooth, seal and nourish” gives each bundle a clear outcome-led reason to buy.

Offer Feels Obvious - The oversized 20% off treatment creates strong offer framing, and repeating the discount code near the CTA reduces conversion friction by making redemption feel straightforward.

Routine Feels Premium - The robe, soft lighting and close-up hands place the products inside a self-care ritual, adding lifestyle aspiration while keeping both SKUs visually central and recognizable.

Bundle two complementary products around one shared outcome, then make the savings impossible to miss. That combination strengthens perceived value without making the offer feel random.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳

In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🚪 Optimizing the page doesn’t matter if your domain never made the list

📊 Costs spiked on YouTube and Pinterest, and returns didn’t come close to justifying it

🏆 Ad of the day

If you’re new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. You’ve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Let’s get into it, shall we? Oh! Before you forget, if someone forwarded this newsletter to you, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss out!

🚪 Optimizing the page doesn’t matter if your domain never made the list

AI search retrieval is shifting in a specific direction worth naming: instead of ranking every page on the open web for a query and citing whichever ones score highest, retrieval increasingly starts from a shortlist of domains the system already trusts for a category, then answers from within that list.

A page can be perfectly optimized and still never get evaluated if the domain hosting it was never on the shortlist to begin with.

That’s a different failure mode than a ranking problem, and it needs a different fix. Content-level optimization, better structure, clearer answers, stronger schema, does real work once a domain is inside the trusted set for its category.

It does close to nothing if the domain isn’t in that set, since the content never gets far enough into retrieval to be judged on its merits.

Test whether your domain is being pulled from at all before optimizing pages

Before spending another cycle on page-level AI optimization, run a direct test: ask the AI systems your customers use the core comparison questions in your category, and check not just whether your brand is mentioned, but whether your domain specifically shows up anywhere in the sourcing, even indirectly through a citation of a page on your site.

A domain that never appears, even for well-optimized pages, is signaling a category-eligibility problem, not a content-quality one, and that distinction changes where the next quarter of effort should go. Confirming which read applies is exactly what *Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit is built to test across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Mode.

Build category authority before betting further on page optimization

Getting added to a trusted category shortlist isn’t primarily a content exercise. It’s an authority exercise, built through independent corroboration and consistent presence across review platforms, press, and community discussion, signaling to a retrieval system that your domain belongs in the category’s trusted set.

Prioritize that groundwork over further page-level polish if the eligibility test above comes back negative. A perfectly optimized page on a domain outside the trusted shortlist is optimization spent on a step that never gets reached.

Monitor category eligibility as its own metric, not folded into general visibility tracking

Whether a domain is inside a category’s trusted shortlist can change over time as new competitors build authority and as retrieval systems update how they define trust for a given category, which means this isn’t a one-time check.

A page can be excellent and still invisible. The question worth answering first is whether the domain underneath it ever got a seat at the table. You can try it free for 7 days.

📊 Costs spiked on YouTube and Pinterest, and returns didn’t come close to justifying it

Last week brought one of the sharper cost divergences of the quarter, impressions and click costs climbed steeply on several platforms heading into the final stretch of September, while returns fragmented in ways that make Q4 budget positioning more consequential than usual right now.

The Breakdown:

CPC - TikTok and Snapchat saw click costs fall while YouTube, Pinterest, and Meta pushed higher, where CPCs spiked alongside deteriorating ROAS, reducing spend now rather than holding through pre-Q4 auction inflation.

CAC - TikTok, Microsoft, and Snapchat improved while YouTube, Pinterest, and Meta worsened; YouTube’s CAC spike alongside -14.72% ROAS makes it the week’s clearest pause candidate; freeze budget there until both metrics stabilize.

ROAS - Snapchat led at +8.12%, and Microsoft posted +1.58% while YouTube (-14.72%) and Pinterest (-7.51%) collapsed; rotate active spend into Snapchat and Microsoft now, and treat both laggards as a two-week trend, not a one-week blip.

Meta holds 54.35% of spend with -3.52% ROAS despite improving CAC, the gains aren’t reaching the return line, so hold Meta flat rather than scaling into an unconfirmed signal. YouTube at 3.20% posted -14.72% ROAS and +24.50% CAC in the same week.

Cut YouTube and Pinterest exposure now, redirect into Snapchat where ROAS and share are both moving up, and set hard CAC ceilings before any Q4 budget increases go live.

🏆 Ad of the Day

What Works:

Future Frames Desire - “The future of skin starts here” gives the product an aspirational, forward-looking hook, making everyday moisturizer feel more transformative while keeping the promise emotionally premium.

Texture Builds Sensation - The visible cream on the jar and hand adds tactile product communication, helping shoppers imagine richness and hydration while making the formula feel more tangible.

Minimalism Signals Premium - The warm neutral palette, soft lighting, and generous negative space create a refined visual hierarchy, lowering cognitive load while strengthening perceived quality and branding recall.

For skincare, show the formula outside the packaging on skin, fingers, or surfaces. That turns an invisible product benefit into a sensory cue shoppers can immediately understand.

🥳 Events

🔥 What 380,000 AI Answers Reveal About Getting Into the Buyer’s Shortlist

September 29 | 1 PM ET | Virtual Event

Ross Simmonds and Josh Spilker unpack 3 million citation events across 81 software topics to show where AI gets its recommendations. Learn which prompts matter, which external sources shape consideration, and where your brand needs stronger coverage before the buyer ever reaches your site.

✅ Secure Your Free Spot

Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

🔥 What Changes When Creator Programs Scale From 5 to 5,000

October 21 | Online | Free Festival

Return on Influence Festival ’26 opens up the systems behind large creator programs, including how teams track ROI, improve partnerships, and avoid operational chaos as volume grows. Hear directly from leaders at Adobe, ŌURA, Edelman, Ogilvy, and more.

✅ Reserve Your Free Spot

Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.

*When you purchase through links in this article, we may earn an affiliate commission from Semrush.

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We are concerned about everything DTC and its winning strategies. If you liked what you read, why not join the 50k+ marketers from 13k+ DTC brands who have already subscribed? Just follow this.

At ScaleUP, we care about our readers and want to provide the best possible experience. That's why we always look for ways to improve our content and connect with our audience. If you'd like to stay in touch, be sure to follow us EVERYWHERE🥰

Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content 🥳