The “best” creator on paper can be a terrible TikTok Shop bet. Audience size, production quality, and category fit can help you narrow the field. But sales performance tells you who deserves more attention. That’s why creator programs need enough volume to let the data surface the winners.

If a “best practice” hasn’t changed in three years, there’s a good chance the market changed before it did. We’ve seen the strongest brands keep changing how they operate as channels, customer behavior, and economics shift. So when a brand keeps using the same playbook through all of that, the gap starts to show.

Last BFCM, @AppLovin became the 3rd highest spending media channel in the stack. @tonychoPPC, who runs over $1B in spend at @CommnThreadCo, explains why he calls it idiot proof: "AppLovin's media spend on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year bucked the curve. It just went up all throughout the weekend." "They built it kind of like idiot proof." Me: "Which some of us need. Like me." @tonychoPPC: "The default out of the box for AppLovin is 0-day click attribution. Compare this to the Google Ads platform's attribution out of the box: 30-day click, 3-day engaged view, 1-day view." "They basically gave media people no options to screw anything up."

@CommerceRound in San Diego this week was the 1st time @alexrudolphh and I spoke at an event It was a ton of fun and we got to meet so many cool brands in the process Excited for more opportunities like this to teach brands about what’s working on TikTok shop and how to scale your affiliate program with best in class affiliate management Also we got to announce that TBAR Partners got acquired by @CommnThreadCo which was super fun and awesome to see all the support from everyone

Starting your Black Friday offer early doesn’t automatically mean you’re stealing sales from Black Friday. If customers are already shopping and your competitors are already giving them a reason to buy, waiting until Friday doesn’t preserve that demand for you. Some of it just goes somewhere else.

Your best-selling product doesn’t automatically deserve your best BFCM discount. One product might have the margin for a deeper discount. Another might have excess inventory you want to move. “30% off sitewide” is easy, but it also assumes every product has the same economics.

“We’ll make it back on Black Friday” might be one of the most expensive assumptions in ecommerce. If you’re missing plan in September and October because new customer acquisition is behind, adding that revenue to your November target doesn’t fix the problem. The customers you needed for November are part of what you’re missing now.

Garrett Hord has spent 8 years at CTC through the Facebook boom, COVID surge, post-iOS correction, and every BFCM cycle since. In today's episode, he shares four Q4 patterns he uses to back-check plans before BFCM. Watch the episode → commonthreadco.com/blogs/eco…

Creative volume is forecastable. Your media budget and historical creative performance can tell you roughly how many ads you’ll need to support the spend you’re planning. That means creative production can be planned as a capacity requirement instead of an open-ended request for “more creative.”

100 creators posting about your TikTok Shop launch at the same time hits differently than 100 posting whenever they get around to it. We call it a blitz launch: Seed affiliates early, get them ready, then concentrate the content around one launch moment.

Wait, is this a hot take? Your best TikTok Shop affiliate is probably worth more attention than your next 100 average affiliates. You need volume to find the people who can really move the needle. Once you find them, that’s where we'd spend the energy: helping them make better content, building a stronger relationship, and keeping your brand high on their list. Great affiliates have options. So give them a reason to keep choosing you.

The support we’ve been getting since our announcement that TBAR Partners got acquired by @CommnThreadCo has been so incredible Alex and I hated the admin work of running an agency the invoicing, contracts, payroll, etc… It got to a point where it was too much and Alex and I wanted to focus on what we do best which is provide a great service scaling brands on TikTok Shop. Joining forces allowed us to not only do that but also have access to proprietary software, resourcing for finding top talent, and the best part is getting to learn from some of the best leaders like @TaylorHoliday If you’re deep in tiktok shop and looking to join one of the fastest growing TikTok agencies working with some of the biggest brands on the platform, let’s chat I guarantee we will pay more than your current position! Also if you’re a brand looking to scale on TikTok shop let’s chat

How much is TikTok Shop actually worth to your business? That number probably isn’t sitting inside TikTok Shop. Demand can show up on your site, Amazon, or retail, while creator content drives Meta. Measuring that halo is the hard part. Otherwise, you’re only seeing part of the economics.

Proof that @TaylorHoliday, @alexrudolphh, and @TylerBrechbiel made it out of the group chat And onto the stage at Commerce Roundtable 🎤 Where we got to share more about what CTC can now do in TikTok Shop P.S., Any Commerce Roundtable photos hiding in your camera roll? Asking for our marketing team...

The top 10 affiliates can drive 90% of TikTok Shop revenue. The work is finding them early, keeping them engaged, and getting their strongest content into GMV Max. @itslukeaustin, @TylerBrechbiel, and @alexrudolphh unpack it in the latest episode of The Ecommerce Playbook. Watch the episode 👇 commonthreadco.com/blogs/eco…

An acquisition announcement from the @CommerceRound stage is a pretty good way to spend a Monday. @TaylorHoliday shared the TBAR news with @alexrudolphh and @TylerBrechbiel in the room. TikTok Shop has to connect to creative, media, and financial planning. That’s why we did it. 😎

Today is the most exciting day of my life I get to finally announce to everyone that TBAR Partners has been acquired by @CommnThreadCo @alexrudolphh and I started TBAR partners thinking it would just be a side hustle to make some extra money while in college playing baseball but oh has it been so much more than that. Very quickly we realized we had something when I made a LinkedIn post the day of starting the agency about how we would scale David protein on TikTok shop and it instantly blew up and booked our calendars out for weeks. We landed our 1st clients and got great case studies with those brands and from there we never looked back. We could have never imagined this happening when we started 15 months ago but we have grown and learned so much in this time. I’m so grateful for what has been entrusted to us from our 25 person team to our 40+ clients we get to serve daily, and I’m just in awe of what TBAR has become as it’s much bigger than just Alex and I. That is why this partnership with @common thread collective was so clear for us because it not only allowed our entire team to be apart of something so much than what Alex and I could do alone but it also allows Alex and I to focus on TikTok shop which is what we love doing and are best at! We have made a name for ourselves as one of the Top TikTok shop agencies in the space and it’s only going to be more clear to everyone TBAR is the best at TikTok shop as we now have - Better resourcing to hire the best talent and operationalize - TikTok shop live management services - Proprietary software for halo effect and TikTok content to Meta ad campaigns in a single click I’m fired up for this next chapter of TBAR Partners and excited to build with CTC who’s known to be one of the biggest most respected agencies in the entire space and get to learn from some of the best leaders like @TaylorHoliday , @itslukeaustin and the rest of their team. I can’t express enough my gratitude for this opportunity and still in awe of what this has become because TBAR was not built by my own hands but by Gods hand over everything since the beginning “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:33

I’m too old for Tik Tok. But old enough to recognize when our industry is experience a permanent change in how brands are built. That’s why I am excited to announce CTCs first acquisition since our partnership with Acacia. TBAR partners is now an official part of the collective. The agency that built the Tik Tok shops playbook for brands like: Gruns, Ridge, HexClad, David Protein, Vitacoco, Create and more. @TylerBrechbiel and @alexrudolphh are everything you could want in a team leading this channel. All the way down to the broccoli hair. Together we are going to be able to reimagine how brands approach building their digital enterprise around one cohesive plan and measurement system to drive predictable profitable growth everywhere they sell. And while the 21 year old version of me they created for the announcement graphic doesn’t exist, our powers compliment each other in ways that will benefit brands tremendously. The new world is built around a single strategy tying together your entire Digital Enterprise. No silos. No competing internal teams. One unified plan for profit.