Howdy Readers đ„°Â
In this newsletter, youâll find:
â ïž Your product feed might already be failing, quietly
đŁ Meta is expanding its paid business and creator tools
đ Ad of the day
If youâre new to ScaleUP then a hearty welcome to you. Youâve reached the right place along with 50k+ CEOs, CMOS, and marketers. Letâs 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!
â ïž Your product feed might already be failing, quietly
Googleâs Content API for Shopping stopped taking new requests reliably on September 1, three weeks after the underlying access was formally cut off on August 18.
Requests through that legacy integration now return progressive errors, and Googleâs own documentation is explicit that anything still relying on it will see product updates stop delivering, with listings eventually pulled from Merchant Center entirely for data staleness once they go stale enough.
The dangerous part isnât the deadline itself. Itâs that a feed integration failing this way doesnât announce itself. Campaigns donât pause with a warning banner. Products simply stop updating, then stop serving, over a period of weeks that looks from the outside like normal listing churn rather than a structural integration failure.
Check whether youâre actually on the deprecated integration
Most teams managing feeds through a third-party platform, an agency, or a plugin assume that layer already handled the migration. That assumption is often true and sometimes isnât, and the two look identical until listings start disappearing.
Open Merchant Centerâs data source settings and check the Source column for any entry still reading Content API rather than Merchant API. If your feed runs through scheduled fetch, manual file upload, or Google Sheets, this deadline doesnât touch you.
If it runs through a programmatic connection nobody has verified recently, itâs worth five minutes to confirm.
Trace the failure forward if you find a stale integration
An unmigrated Content API connection doesnât fail all at once. It degrades, with error rates climbing over the following weeks as Google progressively tightens what the legacy endpoint accepts.
If you find a stale connection, check your Merchant Center diagnostics for a rising error rate on product uploads specifically, not just overall account health, since a partial failure can sit inside an otherwise green-looking dashboard for a while before itâs large enough to trip a broader alert.
Treat this as the first of several feed-infrastructure changes, not the last
Google has been consolidating and restructuring how product data flows into Search, AI Mode, and Shopping all year, and a migration deadline like this one is unlikely to be the last time an underlying data pipeline changes shape without most teams noticing until visibility already dropped.
Watching feed health and shopping visibility together in one place, rather than treating Merchant Center diagnostics as a separate system from AI and search visibility tracking, is what Semrush One is built to surface. You can see how it works here.
A deadline that already passed doesnât feel urgent. The listings quietly disappearing because of it will, in about three weeks.
đŁ Meta is expanding its paid business and creator tools
Meta is rolling out Meta One for Business subscriptions alongside its new Creator Marketing Hub, adding paid analytics, Instagram links, AI customer support, and a more centralized system for running creator partnerships.
The Breakdown:
Meta One packages range from $14.99 to $499 per month - Paid tiers unlock competitor tracking for up to 10 brands, extended audience history, non-follower insights, and advanced scheduling across Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram is finally putting links inside posts and Reels - Meta One Advanced users get links in 4 posts and 4 Reels monthly, increasing to 8 on Expert and 12 on the $499 Max plan.
Creator partnerships now live inside one dedicated hub - Brands can discover creators, get objective-based recommendations, message them directly and turn creator content into ads with one click, alongside new permissions and editing controls.
Instagram Live is becoming another creator ad format - Starting September 29, brands can sponsor creator livestreams, while expanded APIs will bring Metaâs creator discovery, insights and outreach capabilities into third-party marketing tools.
Meta is packaging more of its business infrastructure around paid subscriptions and creator marketing. Brands can now get deeper audience intelligence, direct Instagram traffic tools and AI support while moving from creator discovery to outreach and paid amplification with fewer separate workflows.
đ Ad of the day
What Works:
Perspective Drives Attention - The oversized bottle in the foreground creates immediate depth and thumb-stop power, while keeping the product label readable enough to communicate the core beauty benefit quickly.
Lifestyle Sells Aspiration - The model, styling and warm monochrome set make the supplement feel like part of a desirable beauty routine, strengthening emotional appeal beyond functional product claims.
Benefit Feels Clear - âRadiant skin, hair & nailsâ gives the product a simple multi-benefit promise, while the large pack shot reinforces branding recall and keeps product communication front and center.
Use forced perspective to make the hero SKU dominate the frame, then pair it with aspirational lifestyle imagery so the product feels both functional and desirable.
đEvents
đ„ How High-Growth Teams Win Budget, Headcount, and Leadership Buy-In
Today | Virtual Event
75.4% of marketing teams face higher growth targets, but only 43% received more budget. Krithika Shankarraman, first marketing hire at Stripe and OpenAI, joins AirOps CMO Christy Roach to show how top teams tie investment to business growth, push back on unrealistic expectations, and earn resources faster.
Canât attend the session live? Register anyway, and youâll get the recording in 24 hours.
Advertise with Us
Wanna put out your message in front of over 50,000 best marketers and decision makers?
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 EVERYWHEREđ„°
Thanks for your support :) We'll be back again with more such content đ„ł



