"If you handed me the budget for a $10M brand, I wouldn’t immediately scale or cut any channel." @RSteveData, Director of Data @CommnThreadCo, would test incrementality first. Depending on the brand, the answer could be: - Meta - AppLovin - YouTube - Google - Pinterest - TikTok Shop One brand didn’t believe Meta was delivering 250% incrementality. When they tested it again by pulling back spend, revenue tanked. “I don’t necessarily want to push the throttle or pull the throttle without knowing what that’s actually going to do.” Ecomm Cowboy is live M-F at 12P CT.

Is Amazon actually growing your brand, or cannibalizing your .com revenue? @RSteveData, Director of Data at @CommnThreadCo, studied the impact across four different brands, accounting for pre-launch performance, post-launch performance, and seasonality. The results were mixed: • Two brands saw a net positive • One was clearly cannibalizing its .com sales • One increased total revenue, but came close to cannibalization “One was definitely cannibalizing. You just moved revenue from .com to Amazon, and you paid higher fees and got lower margin.” His takeaway isn’t that Amazon is automatically good or bad. It’s that brands need to determine whether the revenue is truly incremental. @ecommcowboy is live M-F at 12P CT.

CTC tested AppLovin and the results were so strong that the team initially assumed something was wrong. @RSteveData, Director of Data @CommnThreadCo, said "Our AppLovin test came back at 252% for a brand. And we’re like, ‘This can’t be right.’” They tested again and saw a 171% increase. “If you’re going to double the spend, triple the spend in this channel, you’re still getting great returns.” Since then, CTC has put approximately 15–20 brands on AppLovin. “Pretty much 90% of the tests have come back with over 100% incrementality. Some as high as 300% and 400%.” The results were so unusual that they repeatedly checked for technical problems. But that’s exactly why the channel is exciting. @chrislukehall: "The days of Meta arbitrage, they are over.” Brands are searching for another place to find new customers who don’t already know them at an efficient price. @ecommcowboy is live M-F at 12P CT.

TODAY’S SHOW // 9.2.26 @natelagos (Shootin’ Doubles) @RSteveData (CTC) @erikalee (Corgi) Storylines: + Medici: $2.2B Valuation @PeterRahal's Medici Brands raised a $250M Series B co-led by Greenoaks and Valor, reportedly valuing the @david_protein parent at $2.2 billion. David went from one protein bar to 35,000+ retail doors in two years and is on track to pass $300M in revenue in 2026, the fastest food company to ever hit that number. Does anyone else in Consumer compare? + YouTube Creators Can Tag Amazon Products YouTube signed Amazon as its newest affiliate partner, letting creators tag Amazon products directly in videos and livestreams and take a cut of every sale. YouTube Shopping GMV is up 13x since early 2024, with over 1 million creators in the program and 110 million hours of shopping content watched daily. If you haven’t already, it’s high time you invested marketing budget in the YouTubes. + Zuck Is Back: Meta's Muse Voice Transcribe Meta launched Muse Voice Transcribe at $0.18 per hour, roughly 80% below Google Cloud's standard transcription rate. One model handles live transcription, speaker separation for 20+ voices, and end-of-speech detection, and it posted the best word error rate on the streaming benchmark. It’s clear where he want + Trend: Colleges Running Out of Students The population of 18-year-old Americans peaked last year, and undergraduate enrollment is projected to fall 13% over the next 15 years. At least 10 small colleges have closed or announced closures this year, and even Syracuse is running an enrollment shortfall after international students dropped 50%. Does Gen Z / Alpha become the generation of homegrown entrepreneurs? nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1pKkOXorz…