DTC Podcast

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  Under $50M: Half the Trade Budget Goes to Retail Media | Harness the Halo 3/6 17.09.2026 26λ

  To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing under $50 million a year is putting roughly half of its combined retail media, trade, and shopper marketing budget into retail media. At larger companies that share drops toward 30, 20, then 15 percent. Mike Chiasson works on Keen's models, which cover $45 billion in marketing investment, and his read on where that money comes from is the part worth sitting with. It is mostly net new, sourced out of trade rather than pulled from Meta and Google, which is why so much of it sits with sales teams and never gets measured the way media does.If you run growth at a brand moving into retail: this is the episode about what the retail media line in your budget is actually buying, and which part of it is buying customers you already had.If you own the media budget: Chiasson makes the case that the untapped return in retail media is upper funnel, inside retailers where almost everyone is still only buying search.What he gets into:Where the money comes from, and why trade budgets rather than media budgets explain retail media's growthThe benchmark: about half the retail media, trade, and shopper marketing bucket at brands under $50M, versus 15 to 30 percent at large onesWhy small brands with a narrow distribution footprint default to bottom-funnel search, and what that costs themThe Amazon question: whether retail media spend compounds on a retailer's algorithm the way it does on a listing, and why brick and mortar has no real equivalentRetail media ads that carry no visible association with the retailer at all, and why targeting is the actual productWalmart, Vizio, and streaming video as the moment upper-funnel retail media became buyableRetail media social, which he calls very small and rapidly growing, with returns he thinks reflect how early the curve isThe two flaws in ROAS, and why the return on your next dollar is the only version of the number that helps you planBayesian priors, and how Keen gives a brand a response curve for a retailer it has never advertised withPatience as a budgeting problem rather than a virtue, and why cash-strapped brands structurally cannot buy upper funnelWho this is for: operators whose product is landing on shelves in more places every quarter, and whose retail media invoices are growing faster than their ability to explain them.What to steal: find out which budget your retail media is actually coming from. If it is trade, the people approving it are measuring a retailer relationship and the people spending it are measuring sales. Those are different jobs and almost nobody has reconciled them.Harness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. Episode 1 was the market read. Episode 2 was the first brand. This one maps the fastest-growing line in the budget.Timestamps:00:00 Why retail media is becoming a major growth channel04:00 Where retail media investment is growing08:00 Why retail media ROI is outperforming other tactics13:00 The upper-funnel opportunity in retail media17:00 Why marginal ROI matters more than ROASSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Bonus: Send Less, Earn More: What Brevo's Data Says About Email Volume and Conversion 16.09.2026 35λ

  To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMost ecommerce brands are paying for every contact in the database, including the tens of thousands they have not mailed in a year. Then they mail them anyway, because they are paying for them. Channing Ferrer argues both halves of that are costing you money, and he has his own company's data to back the second half.Brevo studied its customer base and found the brands sending the least email posted the highest conversion and click-through rates. The heaviest senders were worse on conversion, worse on click-through and worse on opens. Brevo bills by the message sent, so telling customers to send less costs them revenue. They say it anyway.For a retention lead, a lifecycle marketer, or a founder still building the sends themselves, this is a conversation about where the money actually goes in a retention program. Channing spent six years at HubSpot running sales strategy through the run from $200 million to $1.5 billion in revenue, then ran sales at Semrush and led Brandwatch back to growth.Discover More: https://www.brevo.com/solutions/enterprise/?utm_medium=partnership&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast&utm_term=enterprise&utm_content=dtc-podcast-0926 What you get in 38 minutes:What changes when you stop paying for stored contacts and start paying for messages sentThe mobile wallet as a retention channel, including how a loyalty card gets pushed a new offer and changes appearance on the lock screenSalomon's use of a wallet pass, and how the same mechanic works for a brand with no physical storesWhat Channing puts on a dashboard for a $20M ecommerce brand, and why send volume belongs near the bottom of itHow Brevo customers run campaigns through Claude and ChatGPT over an MCP connection without opening Brevo at allThe three ways a customer outgrows a pricing tier, and how Brevo handles each oneWhy loyalty points should reward a social post and not only a repeat purchaseWho this is for: retention leads, ecommerce founders, lifecycle marketers, and anyone weighing a move off Klaviyo or Mailchimp.What to steal: pull volume off your primary dashboard and replace it with open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate and revenue per send. Then look at what your platform charges you for and ask whether it is charging for the list or for the work.Timestamps:00:00 Why personalized messaging converts better05:00 How Brevo is using AI agents07:00 Turning mobile wallets into a loyalty channel14:00 Why sending fewer emails can drive better results25:00 Building loyalty through customer advocacySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 646: Neil Patel: Why Your Leads Are Down 40% and Your Revenue Is Up 14.09.2026 38λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-646&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupnpdigital.comEric told Neil Patel that Pilothouse is now getting about 30% of its inbound from ChatGPT, with higher close rates and bigger deals. Neil's response: "I guarantee your leads are down overall. Would you confirm or disagree with me?"Down about 40%. Revenue up.Neil explains why that pattern is showing up everywhere. Someone used to run a Google search, click six blue links, fill out four forms, sit through screening calls, then pick. Now they ask an LLM, filter down inside the conversation with follow-ups, and go to one website with their mind already made up. Same intent, same buyer, one visit instead of seven.The rest of the episode is what to do about it.What's inside:The real search market: Google at 5 trillion searches a year and 27% share, Instagram at 6.5 billion a day, Amazon and YouTube at 3 billion each. Neil's point is that 73% of search is not Google.Whether Google's ad revenue is actually getting hit by AI Overviews (his answer is more specific than the headlines)GEO and SEO are two different scores. Domain authority carries SEO and means nothing to GEO. GEO looks at the last 30 to 60 days.The single highest-leverage GEO tactic he's seeing for ecom, and it isn't RedditWhy he'd skip Reddit if he ran an ecom brand, and what he'd do insteadHis five-step visibility audit: where you rank now, technical SEO and content freshness, the questions people actually type, review recency, and monthly mention volumeThe trust study across 100 eight-figure businesses, and the gap between what those operators thought built trust and what buyers actually weighedDiscounts versus bundles, and what discounting does to LTVWhy he reversed his position on personal brand after building one of the biggest in marketingThe Zappos story about a guy named Jason, a first date, and a shoe pun that got him two-day shippingHis most expensive mistake, on air, with numbersWho this is for: DTC founders and operators watching organic traffic fall while close rates climb, and anyone trying to work out where GEO actually fits next to their SEO budget.What to steal: audit your review recency this week. If your best reviews are five years old, the LLMs are reading a version of your brand that no longer exists, and a smaller competitor with fresh coverage will get recommended over you.Timestamps:00:00 How AI is changing product discovery04:00 Why ChatGPT leads convert better07:00 Search has multiplied beyond Google15:00 How brands can rank in AI recommendations25:00 SEO vs. GEO for AI visibilitySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 645: DTC Rundown: "Don't Run Ads Until $10M?," Evergreen vs Campaigns, and Sites Built for the Wrong Customer 11.09.2026 45λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-645&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.co"There is absolutely no reason you should touch paid ads until you're doing five to ten million in revenue."That was Codie Sanchez, and the post went wide enough that DTC marketers spent a week arguing about whether they should be doing their jobs at all. Eric came back from vacation, saw it, and used it to launch a format he has wanted to make since the beginning of this show.The Rundown is Pardon the Interruption for DTC. A few topics off the week, three people, everyone gives a take. First panel is Jordan Gordon, who runs post-click and retention at Pilothouse and hosts TWBERP, and Rafael Gi, who works partnerships and client strategy.What you get:Both sides of the Codie Sanchez take. Jordan defends the free traffic position: if twenty percent of your traffic is organic and your total margin is twenty percent, that organic traffic is your profit. Rafael's counter is that paid media is a muscle, and a brand that waits until $10M to build it has to relearn its culture, team, and workflows at exactly the wrong moment.What paid media does: accelerate. Good product grows faster. Bad product fails quicker.The wastage Rafael sees most across ten to fifteen audits a week. Brands paying to reach customers who were buying regardless, the platform taking view-through credit for purchases with no click, and that false signal then deciding which creative gets scaled.Marketing is downstream from business, and business is downstream from markets. Jordan on why your marketing mix is often not your decision to make.Why "evergreen versus campaigns" is the wrong framing past seven figures, and what demand creation looks like next to demand capture."Shift our thinking from tests to bets." Rafael on what changes once you have proof, and why the change is philosophical before it is tactical.Audience hygiene as the precondition for everything. Until existing, engaged, and net new are defined across every channel, none of your tests are valid.Advertising is vertical, email is horizontal. Jordan on campaigns for launches, flows for evergreen, and why someone who re-enters your world nine months later still needs to be sold your core product.Acute versus routine entry points in supplements and beauty, and the cross-sell each one opens.How to spot a brand that has the ratio wrong: growth decelerating quarter over quarter while the new-to-returning revenue ratio inverts. On the email side, campaign-heavy, flow-light, with Klaviyo revenue low against Shopify.Unique opens are brand impressions. The argument for email as an advertising layer sitting just below reach.The IKEA tote bag, and campaigns that exist to buy eyeballs rather than revenue.The car category rule that applies everywhere. If you are not one of the three brands already in someone's consideration set, your revenue and your fame do not matter.Who this is for: founders and operators between seven and nine figures, media buyers, and anyone who owns both the acquisition and retention number.What to steal: the audience definition audit, the growth-versus-new-customer-ratio chart, and the absolutes-not-rates rule for judging new customer work.Timestamps:00:00 Should brands wait until $5M to run paid media?05:00 Building organic traffic alongside paid growth10:00 The hidden problem with scaling paid acquisition13:00 Evergreen marketing vs. campaign moments22:00 Audience targeting and wasted media spendSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF645Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 644: 77% of AI Shoppers Want a Recommendation: Phillip Jackson on the New Bottom of the Funnel 07.09.2026 50λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-644&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupPhillip Jackson has spent 22 years in ecommerce, first building the software, then running agency strategy, and now running Future Commerce (futurecommerce.com), where the operating thesis is that commerce is culture.If you are a founder, brand lead, or growth operator trying to figure out what AI traffic is actually doing to your store, this one is worth the 50 minutes.What's inside:The Future Commerce study: 77% of shoppers want AI to recommend and nothing more. No booking, no buying, no agent acting on their behalfWhat that shopper does when they land: converts about 3x more often, spends about half as much, does zero browsingWhy the fix is counterintuitive. You now have to add friction back into the buying process and tell more brand story on a product pageNike's decline read from someone with a partnership inside the turnaround: streetwear over sport, owned channels over retail partners, and the running category handed to On and Hoka"Ma," the Japanese cinema concept, applied to brand. Nobody wants to hear from you constantly, and the brands that never rest never get a cultural high point eitherProof of work: Dr. Martens selling pre-broken-in secondhand boots at Brewer Street, Levi's repair, $1,200 Pope tees, and why patina is now the productThe agentic reader. Future Commerce stopped treating a human as its primary audience for discoveryCannes Lions and the collision of retail media with the traditional ad ecosystem, plus what that means for creator strategy in 2026Who this is for: DTC founders and operators watching LLM referral traffic show up in their analytics and not knowing what to do about it, plus brand people who want a sharper vocabulary for what is happening to culture.What to steal: rebuild your PDP for answer engine traffic. That visitor arrived pre-sold on one SKU and will not browse unless you give them a reason.Follow Phillip: futurecommerce.comTimestamps:03:00 Why Commerce Is Culture06:00 How Brands Participate in Culture24:00 Why Consumers Can Spot AI Content32:00 How AI Is Changing the Marketing Funnel44:00 The Rise of Consumer SovereigntySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 643: Amazon Fees Hit 40%: How to Claw Back Margin and Stop Wasting Ad Spend (Pilothouse) 04.09.2026 30λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-643&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coIn 2020, Amazon's fees ran about 26% of your product cost. Today they run 34 to 40%, and once you add advertising most brands are at 50 to 60% before they reinvest a dollar. For the first time in years, the number of sellers on Amazon is shrinking.Tyler, head of Amazon at Pilothouse, is back to explain what he calls the Amazon paradox: you can't afford to be on Amazon, and you can't afford not to be.If you sell on Amazon, buy Amazon ads, or keep putting off the decision to launch there, this is the operator's version of the math.What you get:Where the 40% actually goes, and which parts of it you can still fightThe hidden fee stack (long-term storage, inbound, freight, returns, chargebacks) that quietly takes another 5 to 8% of margin, one fraction of a percent at a timeReimbursements: Amazon loses and damages inventory and wrongly charges you for it, and will pay it back if you dispute it. Most brands never doAGL / AWD, shipping straight from your manufacturer into Amazon's fulfillment network, and the 2 to 5% freight savings that comes with itWhy the April 15 change (Amazon pulling ad spend out of your disbursement instead of your credit card) is a cash flow problem, not an ad problemThe death of the middle: half of Amazon's GMV now sits with roughly 8,000 sellers, down from 15,000, and what changed in the algorithm to cause itCosmo and what comes after A9: why external traffic into your listing now reads to Amazon as brand authorityNike showed up. What happens to the small sellers who used to feast on big brands' unconverted branded searchTACoS as a vanity metric, and the three-report method (SQP, Helium 10 rank, ad spend) that shows whether your ads are driving incremental sales or paying for organic ones you already hadRufus is now Alexa for Shopping, most people use it on the product page rather than in search, and what that means for your listing copyWhat Tyler expects out of Amazon Accelerate 2026Who this is for: Amazon sellers, DTC founders weighing the channel, and anyone managing Amazon ad spend.What to steal: the reimbursement audit, the AGL freight move, and the zero-sale keyword sweep on your last quarter of ad spend.Timestamps:00:00 The Amazon Paradox04:00 Why Amazon Is Getting More Expensive10:00 Hidden Amazon Fees Hurting Margins15:00 Why Brands Still Need Amazon21:00 How to Make Amazon Ad Spend More ProfitableSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF643Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  How Once Upon a Farm's DTC Ads Grew Its Retail Business | Harness the Halo 2/6 03.09.2026 44λ

  To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupOnce Upon a Farm did $85.4 million in Q2, up 42% year over year, and reached 6.2% of US households against 5.0% a year earlier. Some of that growth traces back to a campaign that was never supposed to produce it. They were running lower-funnel media to their own site, a clean shop-now call to action, the kind of campaign you judge by tomorrow's site revenue. What moved was the retail business. Instacart got more efficient. Programs with accounts picked up momentum. Jennifer Berglund has spent the years since trying to see that effect properly instead of guessing at it, and now she is watching paid search at one retailer lift sales at another, and that's where Keen is worth its weight in premium baby food. If you run growth at a brand moving into retail: this is the episode about what happens to your job when the sale stops closing anywhere you can see it, and what you measure instead.If you own the media budget: Jennifer walks through how a one month TV test in 2021 turned into always-on upper funnel, including the matched-market holdout testing she used to defend it before she had a model.What they get into:The early signal: lower-funnel DTC media running, and the retail business taking off insteadThe finding out of Keen that surprised her most, paid search at Kroger or Target showing an effect on a different account entirelyWhy she treats ROAS as an education problem inside the company rather than a KPIThe trap in "new to brand" at a retailer, and why she takes it with a grain of saltHow she built the case for TV: 2021 test, then TV plus social plus out of home, then geo tests against comparable holdout markets, then always-onStreaming TV and YouTube, and Brad on buying top of funnel through retail media DSPs so the money still funnels to the retailerWhy every retail media network's conversion methodology is different, and what she uses those platform numbers for insteadThe moment a brand should stop putting every dollar into working media and start paying for measurementBrad on awareness as the leading indicator of household penetration, and household penetration as the leading indicator of revenueAmoeba marketing, which Brad coined live on the recording and Jennifer immediately claimed for her LinkedInWho this is for: operators whose business has outgrown the channel their reporting was built for. DTC brands going into retail, retail brands building ecommerce, anyone whose media now shows up in someone else's numbers.What to steal: the biweekly omnichannel meeting. Jennifer runs one across her media team and sales leadership. Sales says "I see this happening here," she says "we were running media during that time." That meeting found the halo before any model did.Harness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. Episode 1 was the market read. This is the first brand.Timestamps:00:00 The Halo Effect of Digital Marketing07:00 Measuring Growth Across DTC and Retail15:00 How Marketing Channels Influence Each Other21:00 Streaming TV and YouTube Opportunities37:00 Why ROAS Can Be MisleadingSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 642: Kick or Keep These Trends with DÔEN's Ashley Kick: AI Creative, TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Branded Resale 31.08.2026 30λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-642&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAshley Kick runs ecommerce at DÔEN (shopdoen.com), the Los Angeles apparel brand founded by sisters Margaret and Katherine Kleveland. Eric met her at the Whalies giving hot takes on stage, so this episode is a new format built for exactly that: World Cup themed, 15 ecommerce topics, kick it or keep it.If you run a premium brand and you are tired of advice written for a $30 AOV, Ashley draws lines most operators are still arguing about internally.What's inside:AI generated ad creative, kicked as hard as anything gets kicked on this show: "they didn't fall in love with the clanker generated things"Her pendulum argument: everything used to be human made, the swing to AI has been fast, and the vacuum it left is the differentiation opportunity for brands willing to keep humans on the work. DÔEN has hired novelists to write copyWhy she will not trade a discount or free shipping for an email address, with the list math behind it: a million names sending at 20%, or 300,000 sending at 60 to 70%Hand Me DÔEN, the resale program that runs on Treet: trade in for store credit, quarterly resale events, and an answer to the dupe sellers, because buying from the program is how a customer knows the piece is realThe AOV line where she thinks TikTok Shop stops making sense, and why discovery on TikTok still matters for the brand through user generated contentLosing money on the first order to win it back on LTV, kicked. Her hero products are chosen as the best first experience of the brand, and they are not loss leadersWhere she is happy to let algorithms work: media buying, placements, and Klaviyo send-time optimizationAI for customer service, kicked. If someone wants to talk about the fit of a dress, that is a personRetail as an experience play, including a roughly 20% brand awareness lift in a market when a store opens, plus wholesale through boutiques with an aligned aestheticAmazon, extended sizing, and buy now pay later, each with a verdictWho this is for: operators at premium and considered-purchase brands, retention and email leads, and anyone building the argument for keeping humans on creative.What to steal: the email capture stance. Stop buying addresses with 15% off and measure your list on deliverability and send rate rather than raw size.Timestamps:00:03:00 AI Shopping Agents00:05:00 TikTok Shop for Premium Brands00:10:00 Branded Resale and the Circular Economy00:14:00 AI-Generated Creative and Brand Identity00:24:00 Wholesale, Amazon and Discount StrategySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 641: Creator-Handle Ads Ran 70% More Efficient: Aves on Creative Coverage and Hyper Relevant Ads 28.08.2026 34λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-641&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coDTC Twitter has spent the last few months arguing about volume versus strategy. Aves from Pilothouse thinks both camps are answering the wrong question. Eric brings her back for an all killer no filler on creative coverage: what it means now, how she decides what to make next, and the system she spent her summer building.For anyone who briefs creative, buys media, or signs off on either.What you get:Why a thousand Grok ads in a month spikes CPMs and stops finding your audience, and why one precious video every two weeks fails for the opposite reason.The three layers of coverage that matter now: right people, right product, right angles. Sizes and placements should be second nature by now.Persona coverage past your bread and butter. If the answer is always "a woman in her twenties," you are not covering the audience you need in order to grow.Product coverage, the layer most teams skip. Cross-referencing which SKUs bring people in cheapest against which ones are most efficient to ship, then testing returning-customer-only products at top of funnel to find margin nobody was looking for.Diagnosing by problem rather than format. Heavy cart abandonment usually means a trust gap, which points to whitelisting first and conversion-friction statics behind it. Creator-handle delivery ran 70% more efficient than the same creative from the brand.Selling the cloud when the economy tightens. Aspirational is outperforming pure problem agitation right now.Hyper relevancy. The echo chambers have gotten small enough that a meme Aves sees every third video is one you've never heard of, so the ad has to match the exact font, the audio they've been hearing, even the camera angle. She ran "kinda chic" in ads without ever learning what it means.Nobody is watching. Most people are lurking, and most of them are half-watching from the toilet or a waiting room. Aves watched a woman scroll Instagram through the entire Odyssey.Creative is the new targeting, five years of everyone saying it, and the spaghetti metaphor that finally explains it.Landing pages as the insurance policy on all of it. Spend two thousand dollars on a t-shirt and it still looks bad wrinkled.Ad copy. Aves writes hers first, before any visual, and uses no AI for it. One emoji-only ad carried by copy alone did over six figures in a weekend.Who this is for: creative strategists, media buyers, and founders heading into Q4 wondering why more ads stopped working.What to steal: the product coverage audit, the cart-abandonment-means-trust diagnosis, and starting your brief with copy instead of a visual idea.Timestamps:00:03:00 Creative Volume vs. Strategy00:05:00 Building Better Creative Coverage00:10:00 Creative for Full-Funnel Performance00:20:00 Why Creative Is the New Targeting00:28:00 Why Ad Copy Matters More Than EverSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF641Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Bonus: $65M Exit, Zero Employees: How Olauto Automates Everything Except Customer Service 26.08.2026 39λ

  To Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupTyler Handley sold Inkbox to BIC for $65 million. His new company, Olauto, sells a $33 car air freshener, launched last September, is already profitable, and has zero employees. Four people, some contractors, and AI running the back office. The one thing they refuse to automate: when a customer emails, a human answers. Every time.The guy who built the software behind that is Mike Maleszyk, Tyler's friend since high school, who started HumanTouchCX after a support chatbot swore it was human but couldn't say what it had for lunch.If you run CX for a Shopify brand, or you're deciding right now which parts of your business AI should touch, this episode is the two of them drawing the line in public.Want the setup Olauto uses? HumanTouch is taking on its first 100 Founding Merchants, with white-glove onboarding and 24 months of locked pricing.What's inside:Why Braden reviews every automated reply "from hi to buy," and the one automation he had to be convinced to allow (off-hours only)Deflection rate, and what the merchants bragging about theirs are actually countingProduct questions as the worst place to put a bot: those customers are low funnel with a cart openThe Inkbox moderation story: 13 to 20 CX agents, custom tattoo uploads in a gray area no AI could judge, and the customer emails that started "why do you want this?"Article 50 of the EU AI Act, live since August 2nd: transparency, record keeping, and audit logs for every AI touchpoint if you sell into the EUTyler's vibe-coded ERP: why it hooks into Shopify and nothing else"Friend founding," and how four people split brand, supply chain, CX, and adsHewie, the AI that helps train your first CX hire off your own past tickets instead of your calendarWho this is for: DTC founders and CX leads between launch and $100M who are being pitched full automation from every direction.What to steal: Braden's rule. Automations answer the 65% (shipping status) during off hours only, and a human still has eyes on every single reply before the relationship is on the line.Timestamps:00:00 Building an AI-powered brand without losing the human touch05:00 Why AI customer service needs transparency12:00 The problem with optimizing customer support for deflection21:00 What the EU AI Act means for ecommerce brands28:00 How a four-person team uses AI to scale an ecommerce brandSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 640: 2x LTV From Loyalty Without Discounting: Carve Designs on Retention, Direct Mail, and CTV 24.08.2026 29λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-640&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupHannah Fleming runs performance marketing at Carve Designs (carvedesigns.com), the Northern California swim and apparel brand founded in 2003 and acquired by Komar Brands in December 2025. Before Carve she spent years at Amer Sports on the digital team behind Salomon, Atomic, Suunto, Arc'teryx and Wilson.If you run retention or growth at a brand with a seasonal core product and a loyal base you have not fully mined, this one is for you.What's inside:The retention rebuild: what was already working at Carve after 20 years, and the one thing they were not doing with their customer dataMapping the full customer journey in Figma, then finding the gaps where nobody was talking to the customer and the places where they were talking too muchRFM segmentation as the floor, then layering category purchase behavior on top to move a swim buyer into denimThe cohort analysis that changed the media mix: dresses and accessories produced the highest-LTV customers, so those categories now lead the creative and seed the look-alikesDirect mail as a performance channel: 5 to 6 catalogs a year to prospects and past buyers, plus programmatic postcards that only drop if the email win-back does not convertEmployee-generated content, and how one test turned into a full content pipeline with the organic social team shooting UGC-style video on the catalog shootsConnected TV without a commercial budget: an agency turns UGC and EGC into the spot, the founder does the voiceover, and success is measured on cost per site visit with MMM picking up the Amazon haloLoyalty built on early access and product feedback instead of percent-off, with roughly 2x the LTV of a non-memberQ4 without heavy discounting: point multipliers and added value inside the tentpole momentsWhat she is using AI for right now, from LTV dashboards in Moby 2 to Orita surfacing customers when they are most likely to buyWho this is for: retention and lifecycle leads, growth marketers at seasonal brands, and operators who moved from a big portfolio company to an SMB.What to steal: run LTV by first-purchase category before you plan next season's creative mix. And give partnership content 6 to 12 months before you call it. Hannah says that is how long it took at Carve before influencer content started working.Follow Hannah: LinkedIn, Hannah Fleming | carvedesigns.comTimestamps:00:00 Building Loyalty Beyond Discounts05:00 Using Customer Segmentation for Retention10:00 Direct Mail as a Performance Channel16:00 Building a High-Value Loyalty Program24:00 Testing Direct Mail and Connected TVSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 639: "The Creative Is the Brief": Pilothouse on AI Storefronts and a 20-21% Conversion Rate Lift 21.08.2026 24λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-639&utm_medium=podcastTo Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMedia owns the traffic. Brand owns the site. The page in between belongs to nobody, and it's been sitting in a Notion doc called landing page priorities Q3 since 2022.Eric brings Daniel from Pilothouse back for an all killer no filler on the post-click experience: why it stayed generic for a decade, what changed in the last twelve months, and what the team is seeing in its pilots with Black Crow AI.For media buyers, creative strategists, and founders whose ads are working and whose conversion rate isn't.What you get:The middle child problem. Media assumes brand is loving the page, brand assumes media is, and nobody has touched it since 2022.Why this was never a priority question. Personalizing creative is cheap. Personalizing destinations used to mean five pages through design, dev, QA, and deploy, which took literal months. So teams built one page, pointed everything at it, and updated it once a year.The 65-inch OLED analogy. You walk into a store, tell the salesperson exactly what you want, and they hand you the catalog. That's what a generic PDP does to someone who just clicked a very specific ad.The creative is the brief. The ad unit becomes the input for the storefront: the copy, the image, the targeting, the interests, all of it read and matched.What the pilots are showing: roughly 20 to 21% lift in conversion rates, on storefronts now taking about half the budget rather than one test ad set off in the corner.Where Black Crow adds something a general purpose model doesn't. Persistent ID across sessions means the page knows you're back and can serve a different experience.The technical prerequisites that actually gate this: Shopify, and enough Meta budget to test a difference. Brand and creative prerequisites matter less.Brand safety. These aren't fully dynamic pages. You can lock images and titles and adjust on the fly.Which brands it suits so far: a few concentrated top SKUs rather than a long tail catalog.The third party cookie, revisited. Daniel's verdict on the biggest talking point of 2022: what a nothing burger.Why the strategist now owns this. No IT ticket, no web team queue. That's the difference between now and twelve months ago.Who this is for: performance marketers and DTC founders who have solved pre-click and never touched what happens after.What to steal: treating your best ad as the brief for its own landing page, and the Shopify plus testable budget prerequisite check before you invest in any of this.Timestamps:00:03:00 Why the post-click experience matters00:07:00 Personalized landing pages lift conversion rates00:10:00 AI-powered landing page personalization00:15:00 Matching landing pages to ad creative00:21:00 Using ad creative as the landing page briefSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF639Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  What Brands Really Spend on Marketing: 15% at $10M, 2% at $1B | Harness the Halo 1/6 20.08.2026 36λ

  Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupA brand doing $10 to $15 million a year puts 15 to 20 percent of revenue back into marketing. At $100 to $500 million it drops to roughly 8 to 10 percent. Past a billion it is 2 to 3 percent. Justin Jefferson has a view across 450 brands and $45 billion in media investment, and those numbers are the opening for a harder conversation about where the money should go.If you run growth: this is the episode about defending a slow-payback bet to a finance team that closes books quarterly.If you sit closer to the P&L: Justin explains discounting future marketing revenue back to present value, so marketing and finance can argue about the same number.What Justin gets into:Spend-to-revenue benchmarks at $10 to 15M, $100 to 500M, $500M to $1B, and past $1BMarginal ROI against blended ROI, and why a 1.4 return can hide a next dollar worth 60 centsThe brand that went zero to a hundred on top of funnel, lost sales volume in year one, cut budget in response, and then had nothing left to capture the demand it had createdThe golf apparel brand that moved deliberately into CTV, linear, and audio: roughly flat in year one, about 23 percent growth in year twoWhy Amazon search is often the most overspent line in a budget, and where he sees real incrementality on Amazon insteadThe gap he sees between top and bottom of funnel returns: roughly 180 against 120 to 140Why brands growing 5 percent or more changed their channel mix significantly more year over year than flat onesWho this is for: operators between $10M and $500M who have squeezed Meta and Google as far as they go and need a defensible case for spending where the attribution is fuzzy.What to steal: report return on the next dollar by channel alongside blended ROI. Most teams have only ever seen the second number.Harness the Halo is a six-part series from DTC and Keen about the spend that doesn't pay you back the same day, and the measurement that gives you room to make it. Episode 1 sets the state of the market. The next five are the bets themselves, told by the operators who made them and the people who signed off.Timestamps:00:00 Why Marketing Mix Modeling Is Changing03:00 Why Meta and Google Are Getting Harder to Scale07:00 When Brands Should Invest in Top-of-Funnel13:00 How to Measure and Predict Marketing Performance19:00 How the Marketing Halo Drives GrowthSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 638: Life After the $260M Exit: Hiya's Adam Gillman on USANA, Target, and Going Global 17.08.2026 40λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-638&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdam Gillman co-founded Hiya Health (hiyahealth.com), the kids' vitamin brand that launched in March 2020, stayed bootstrapped, and sold to USANA at the end of 2024 at a reported $260M valuation. He and his co-founder Darren still run it, and 2026 is the year Hiya finally hit retail shelves at Target.If you're a founder or operator building a subscription DTC brand, this episode is a start-to-exit walkthrough from someone who did it without a single VC check.What's inside:The "single SKU phase": why Hiya sold one multivitamin for 2.5 years before launching anything else, and what had to be true before product twoAttacking gummies head-on: porous form factors that kill vitamin content, and sugar as "candy in disguise"How new SKUs stayed accretive instead of cannibalistic as the catalog grewWhy influencer was the backbone of a channel mix that hit 25% month-over-month growth in stretches from 2023 to 2025, including creators Hiya has worked with for 3 to 4 years"We want this to sit on your counter, not inside of your cabinet": the packaging and sticker-pack decision that quietly built enterprise valueDisney, Barbie, and Marvel collabs done properly: rebuilding the entire customer experience per license, to the point that existing subscribers repurchased product they already hadThe exit itself: open bidding process, why he can't imagine doing it without an investment bank, and the leverage of not needing to sellLightning round: the metric founders obsess over too much (revenue growth), the one they ignore (gross margin to CAC), and the e-commerce trend he thinks has peaked (creative velocity for its own sake)Who this is for: subscription DTC founders, operators fighting rising CACs, and anyone who wants to see what a bootstrapped nine-figure exit actually looks like from the inside.What to steal: Adam's channel discipline. Under $20M in revenue, put the majority of your effort into making one channel work before touching the next one.Follow Adam: @AdamGillman on X | hiyahealth.comTimestamps:00:00 Building Hiya From a Single SKU08:00 Expanding Products Through Customer Trust18:00 Why Brand Building Creates Enterprise Value23:00 Scaling Growth With Influencer Marketing35:00 Creative Velocity, CAC and Sustainable GrowthSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 637: "Find Them Now, Sell Them in November": Pilothouse's 8-Week Black Friday Prep Playbook 14.08.2026 32λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-637&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coEvery year around this time, Eric and Jacob record some version of this episode. This is their seventh Black Friday together, and the through-line hasn't changed: brands sprint through summer, look up at the end of October, and realize the Halloween sale and Black Friday are on top of them with none of the groundwork done.If you run meaningful spend on Meta, this is the checklist to work through before the CPM doubling kicks in.What you get:Stocking the pond. Low-cost lead gen and engagement campaigns at 5% of budget (or less), optimized to engagement instead of purchase, so Meta buys you cheap eyeballs now that become warm retargeting audiences in November.The giveaway playbook, start to finish: partner bundle (the beer brand and the beef jerky brand), a $750 prize, a squeeze page, leads firing on signup, and an October 15 end date. The FOMO purchases from non-winners are typically what push the giveaway spend into the green before the dripping even starts.The audience-window answer: engagement audiences hold up to 180 days, purchaser lists now build to roughly 720. Engage someone in August and you can still recall them for Black Friday.Warming the algorithm: start ramping spend two months out, 10 to 15% a week, instead of a 500% budget jump on November 1.Value-based lookalikes in the Andromeda era. Export your top 500 purchasers by lifetime spend, upload, build the 1% lookalike. Less central than it used to be, still working.The CAPI audit: if your events manager shows a 5 or 6 out of 10, you're not sending enough parameters back. Click IDs, event IDs, name, email, phone. Target an 8 or 9.The invoicing trap. Meta has moved brands to monthly invoicing, and an unpaid invoice can pause your account until it's resolved. Check your payment settings and your spend limit now, and set the limit way above what you plan to spend.Offer architecture: why tariff-squeezed brands can finally offer again, sitewide vs. tiered thresholds, which catalog shapes suit which structure, and why you test at 5 or 10% off in an end-of-summer sale instead of guessing at 40 in November.Creative as the gift guide: "perfect gift for your wife" hooks, unboxing reels, catalog frames with Christmas theming, and countdown urgency tied to real shipping cutoffs. No smoke and mirrors.ASC structure: one broad Advantage Plus campaign with the full catalog, plus manual bottom-funnel catalog campaigns per collection so you have levers to pull during peak windows.And Lennying a campaign. Eric's Of Mice and Men metaphor for over-managing an account to death, plus Jacob on why human interventions during volatile weeks add to the volatility.Who this is for: media buyers, retention leads, and founders who want their November spend converting instead of prospecting.What to steal: the 5% engagement budget, the giveaway structure with a pre-BFCM end date, the CAPI parameter audit, and the payment-settings check you should do today.Timestamps:00:00 Pre-Warming Your Q4 Audience05:00 Building Leads Before Black Friday11:00 How to Warm Up Meta’s Algorithm18:00 Testing Your Q4 Offers Early28:00 Managing Meta Performance VolatilitySubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF637Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 636: Inside Kiyoko Beauty's Organic Content Machine: 15 Videos a Day, Sub-$1 CPMs, 8 Figures in Sales 10.08.2026 32λ

  https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-636&utm_medium=podcastSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupFifteen videos in a shoot day. A writer's room where creators cross-edit each other's scripts. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe walkthroughs before anyone hits record. This is what organic content looks like at Kiyoko Beauty (kiyoko.ca), the curated Asian beauty retailer that hit 8 figures in 5 years, bootstrapped, while all three co-founders kept their full-time jobs.Gillian Liu walks through the whole machine, from a part-time student's 3M-view TikTok to a production calendar planned a month out.If you run content, growth, or a retail business on thin margins, this episode is worth a notebook.What's inside:The full production process: concepts and formats planned a month ahead, scripting against a reference hook library, a writer's room because "sometimes you're in it too much by yourself," script read-throughs with talent, then batch shoot days. "It's not vibes at all."Her comparison for why the pros post consistently: comedians who have joke-writing down to a science.The hiring filter for content roles: "What's your screen time? Show me." Her most recent hire clocks 8 hours a day. Gillian's reaction: "That's it?"Where it started: a student with 1,000 followers, found via Instagram DM, told to post three times a week with no direction. Three months in, one video hit 3M views on a niche product only Kiyoko carried, and site sessions 10x'd overnight.Platform roles: TikTok reaches strangers, Instagram converts them through stories and community, YouTube Shorts reposts overperform, and Red Note gets Gillian recognized on the street by the Chinese Canadian community.The math forcing all of this: retailer margins. A Meta top-of-funnel ad runs ~$10 CPM; organic works out to under a dollar. Paid has been bottom-of-funnel Google only for five years.The curation model itself: pay brand premium on COGS, then harvest demand created by other people's marketing budgets.Merchandising by data: Amazon US/Canada volume, Korea's top sellers, brand heads-ups on strategic SKUs, and Shopify's "search queries with no results" report.Brands as partners: one runs a 50/50 ad split with Kiyoko, others commission content monthly and pay in inventory value.The early jank: a $2,000 first order, a free Shopify theme, shipping from a co-founder's basement, and buying out-of-stock items from the Asian grocery store down the street.Why three co-founders kept their 9 to 5s (cash flow first, risk second), plus two warehouse moves in five months and the new California fulfillment center.Who this is for: content leads and founders doing organic at scale, and any operator whose margins can't support paid top of funnel.What to steal: her writer's room. Have creators cross-edit each other's scripts before anything gets shot.Visit the brand: kiyoko.caTimestamps:00:00 Building an Eight-Figure Brand While Working Full-Time06:10 The Organic Content Strategy That Changed Everything10:02 How Kiyoko Produces Viral Content at Scale17:07 Merchandising and Choosing Winning Products28:03 Why Organic Beats Paid for Customer AcquisitionSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 635: "Sit With the Panic": Meta Volatility, Pausing Ads, and AI Cognitive Debt with Pilothouse (After Hours) 07.08.2026 46λ

  Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signuppilothouse.coMeta has been up and down since the outage a few weeks back, and the timeline is full of advertisers feeling it. So Eric pulled three of Pilothouse's most senior people onto the after-hours couch: Abby and Aves from the creative and strategy side, and Taylor from the Meta side, for a live conversation about what to do when the platform wobbles.If you buy media on Meta, or you're a founder whose revenue leans on it, this is the difference between a bad two weeks and a bad quarter.What you get:The tactical spin cycle. Performance dips, panic sets in, and buyers ship 15 more ads built off the ones already dying. That amplifies poor delivery and raises CPMs. "Amplification of what's not working is never the route forward."The full list of panic moves to skip: un-strategic ad volume, rushed channel expansion, rescue promos that train customers (and Meta) to expect discounts, account rebuilds, the "fresh pixel" request, and firing your agency.The diagnosis question: Meta crumbled, so what part of the business fell through? No new customers points one direction. No conversions points at email and retention first. The gap picks the channel.Stocking the pond. Why every brand should already know its next channel, and how to tell a reach problem (Pinterest) from a conversion problem (TikTok Shop) before you spend a dollar.The iOS 14.5 precedent: partial blindness, no drastic changes, better measurement on the other side.Pausing ads without tanking the account. Fractional touchpoints, checking median customer-journey length in your MTA before making the swing, and why Meta usually has a reason for pushing spend where it does.Creative is the targeting. Millennial moms who look identical on paper but speak completely different visual languages by region. Butter yellow instead of white. A luxury brand that sells milestone moments instead of USPs."This is an ad and it's so stupid." Why absurdist, self-aware ads are out-earning earnest millennial branding with marketing-aware customers.Where AI belongs (reporting, automation, surfacing phrases from your own data) and where it doesn't (creative direction, insights, your next steps). Plus the term for what happens when you outsource the thinking: cognitive debt.Who this is for: media buyers, creative strategists, and founders running meaningful spend on Meta right now.What to steal: the diagnosis question, the pause-decision checklist, and the competitor-review mining tactic for finding customer language.Timestamps:00:00 Meta Volatility and Common Mistakes08:56 Building a More Resilient Growth Strategy17:45 Should You Pause Underperforming Ads?21:53 How to Research Customers Better with AI35:40 AI, Creative Strategy & Content VolumeSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF635Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 634: 10,000 Orders in 6 Months Selling Protein Couscous: Bar Bruhis on Launching Boostcous 03.08.2026 34λ

  Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupBar Bruhis spent ten years building SaaS for Shopify brands. He helped start one of the first email capture tools in 2015, then co-founded KnoCommerce, the post-purchase survey tool 6,500 brands use. In December he finally took his own leap: Boostcous (boostcous.com), the first protein couscous. Six months later he's about to cross 10,000 orders, bootstrapped, with a team of two.Try it: boostcous.com. The tagline says it all: "Finally a carb that pulls its weight." (An AI copywriting agent wrote that. More on this below.)If you're sitting on a product idea you haven't launched, or you're a CPG founder trying to turn DTC numbers into retail meetings, this episode is the working playbook.What's inside:Why couscous: protein pasta has Banza, Brami, and Goodles. Couscous had nobody. Chickpea, lentil, and pea flour, gluten free, protein and fiber naturally derived from the legumes themselves.The launch: a front-page story in the local Carbondale paper and free pickup from his garage. The first 400 to 500 orders were handed over face to face, and he asked every customer why they bought.First-order profitable on Meta with a product almost nobody has ever bought online. "That doesn't really happen" in CPG.The KnoCommerce lessons applied to his own brand: "what almost prevented you from buying today" for CRO, and "which retail stores would you like to see Boostcous in" as ammo for buyer meetings. The pitch: in the last 30 days, this many of our customers asked for your store by name.The first one-star review, after 155 five-stars. He emailed her, got on a call, learned she was cooking it wrong, and updated the packaging. She rewrote the review herself as a five-star essay.Where AI actually helps a two-person brand (product seeding draft orders, static ads, most of the website photos, sell sheets built from survey and review data) and his warning: "we swung the pendulum a little too far at first." Calling customers stays human.Expo West on a $0 badge. He got the ticket by pitching his podcast, and the Gelson's deal came from walking the floor.His read on the protein trend: protein soda and protein sprinkles exist now. Naturally derived protein in foods you already eat is the part that lasts.Who this is for: founders sitting on a long-gestating idea, CPG operators heading into retail, and SaaS people wondering what their skills are worth on the brand side.What to steal: add two questions to your post-purchase survey today. "What almost prevented you from buying?" fixes your site. "Which retail stores would you like to see us in?" fills your retail pipeline with proof buyers can't ignore.Try Boostcous: boostcous.comTimestamps:00:00 Building a First-Order Profitable CPG Brand07:24 Launch Strategy That Validated Product-Market Fit11:50 Using Post-Purchase Surveys to Drive Growth18:08 Turning DTC Success Into Retail Expansion31:12 Advice for Launching Your First Ecommerce BrandSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 633: Why Your Winning Meta Ad Dies in 8 Days, and What to Test Instead 31.07.2026 31λ

  Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupLiam Robinson and Nate Vankoughnet were two of Pilothouse's first employees and spent years scaling some of its biggest accounts on Meta. Now they've spun out Marlbank Digital (website coming soon), a Meta-only agency built for the brands Pilothouse moved past as it went upmarket: pre-launch up to $100K/month.Want them in your ad account? Email [email protected] or [email protected]. No website yet. They've been busy in client accounts.If you're a founder running your own Meta ads, or the one marketer at a brand doing under $100K a month, this episode is a working session on why your account structure is probably answering the wrong question.What's inside:The Meta hierarchy of needs: unit economics at the base ("you'd be surprised how many people need a 3.5 ROAS to barely break even"), marketing strategy in the middle, creative at the top. Most brands skip the middle.Circumstance testing, their replacement for jumping straight to creative: articulate your product's real distinction, find the cultural currents it's relevant to, then map the specific moments it fits into someone's life. Each moment becomes a campaign.A full anonymized case study: the ceramic to-go cup brand that couldn't scale on pretty product shots or the eco angle, and unlocked the account with one question: "Would you use a metal mug at home?" Selling an upgrade to existing to-go cup users beat converting the single-use crowd, and the commute became the winning niche.What this looks like in the account: open audiences, existing customers excluded, CBO single ad set, 4 to 6 ads per set, creative held constant so circumstance is the variable.Why one ad usually takes 80% of an ad set's spend, and how to structure launches around that.The four foundations they ask for before a brand spends a dollar: a decent website, email flows, some social presence, and Meta.Plus the origin story: the agency is named after the small Ontario town where they spent a summer hand-building tree stands for a bow-hunting brand.Who this is for: ecom founders and marketers between pre-launch and $100K/month, and anyone whose Meta account is a graveyard of creative tests that never compounded.What to steal: before your next creative batch, write down your product's distinctions, then list every circumstance where it slots into a customer's day. Test those against each other first.Work with Liam and Nate: [email protected] / [email protected] | marlbank.coTimestamps:00:00 Why Meta Marketing Has Changed02:01 The Story Behind Marlbank Digital08:14 Why Foundational Marketing Beats Meta Tactics13:15 The Ceramic Cup Case Study20:10 How to Structure Circumstance Testing on MetaSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF633Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video
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  Ep 632: SheFit on TikTok Shop's Hidden Costs and Why Your New Customer Numbers Are Wrong 27.07.2026 41λ

  Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupMelissa Dusendang ran a summer contract at SheFit to "manage the chaos" for one marketing director. She never left. Years later she runs ecommerce and operations, and her actual job is stopping the company from lying to itself with its own data.If you own the P&L, the dashboard, or the customer experience, this one is for you. Melissa sits in the finance meeting thinking about how a tax decision hits checkout, and in the marketing meeting thinking about which numbers are secretly inflated. She calls it being a puzzle person. Eric calls her a silo obliterator.Why TikTok Shop can quietly wreck your new-versus-returning customer math. Masked and missing emails on marketplace orders mean Shopify can count repeat buyers as new, so "we 2x'd new customers" can really mean you gave existing customers a discount.The attribution question to ask before anyone reports a ROAS or MER number, so two teams aren't arguing about goals while measuring different things.How SheFit found its best-selling ad hooks inside customer reviews and comments, and why phrases like "my boobs don't move" outperform copy the team writes.The Emerge Sports Bra story: how customer comments drove a custom-strap design (skinny straps on smaller sizes, wider straps on larger sizes) that sold out on launch.Why real women feeling the "aha moment" when they lift the straps is SheFit's top new-customer acquisition move, run through micro-influencers and ambassadors instead of a gym-only ad.Her honest read on TikTok Shop: better customer control than Amazon, but a margin eroder that can turn a premium brand into a "always on sale" brand.Who this is for: Ecommerce and ops leaders, founders wearing five hats, CX and community managers, and anyone trying to get finance, marketing, and product to agree on what the numbers mean.What to steal: Pull your own review and comment language and use it as ad copy verbatim. Before your next growth review, write down which attribution model each number is using. And check whether your marketplace orders are inflating your new-customer count.Timestamps:0:00 Why TikTok Shop metrics can be misleading5:18 Breaking down silos across ecommerce teams10:01 Why customer language beats marketing copy15:09 Building products from customer feedback23:21 Using AI and social listening for better decisionsSubscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signupAdvertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertiseWork with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouseFollow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletterWatch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video