2024: Second Half of the Year Upon Us!

Time flies. The first half of the year has officially come to a close.

Is it just me - or does it seem like the business world is super quiet these days? I’m not a fan of quiet. Seems like everyone’s on vacation in St. Tropez.

Today’s edition will recap 1H 2024 and provide a look ahead to the rest of the year.

Also, check out the new Avenue Z podcast that we just published.

Rabah Rahil and I sat down with Feifan Wang. He's CEO of SourceMedium & one of the smartest, most technical in the game.

He was behind the data infrastructure that scaled DTC darling, Resident, from 7-figures in revenue to a 10-figure exit earlier this year. That doesn't happen by accident.

Watch the FULL Episode here ⤵️

1. State of the Industry: 1H 2024 vs 1H 2023

2024 feels a lot like 2023: FLAT.

For those who need the “1H” definition, it’s January 1 - June 30.

Here’s the % Change Data from our book at Avenue Z (1H ‘24 vs 1H ‘23):

Meta has still been the best platform by far for us and makes up ~75% of our overall media mix. There is no platform even close.

The massive spike in Meta performance for us can really be attributed to two of our top accounts that we took over in 2H of 2023 and totally revamped the media buying to cut wasted spend and archaic account structure with tons of overlap, while maintaining revenue levels at a lower level of spend.

Google has been Google, nothing really exciting or new. Overall portfolio spend up significantly thanks to unlocking new potential with non-brand keywords for new accounts we took over.

TikTok spend is down for us. We’d rather brands allocate their TikTok dollars to scaling organically on TikTok Shop through affiliates before cranking ads. I expect this spend to rise as we start experiencing more organic Shop success, which takes time to ramp.

I predict 2H 2024 to mirror broadly flat paid media budgets and performance relative to 1H 2024 (of course adjusted for seasonality). 2024 is shaping up to be 2023’s clone.

2. Stock Market: 1H 2024

The stock market has been on a heater this year. The S&P 500 is up 14.9% in 2024 and not exactly indicative of actual business and consumer health or sentiment. It’s been bolstered by AI and the potential it’s bringing the future of the economy. Chip stocks like NVDA, MU, QCOM, TSM, SMCI have carried the S&P 500.

Better indicator of the broad business sector would be the small cap index like Russell 2000, which tracks performance of the 2000 smallest companies in the Russell 3000. Small-cap stocks are those with market caps between $300M - $2B. The Russell 2000 in 2024 is FLAT.

Good thing mostly everyone’s investment is S&P 500 heavy and benefited from this AI/chip stock run-up. If you’re invested in the S&P 500, you’ve seen ~15% gains this year, and have potentially even better news awaiting you for the rest of 2024.

In the 23 yrs where the S&P 500 was up 10%+ at mid-year: 

• no year ended DOWN

• 2H ended higher 83% of the time

• 2H ended up +7.7% on avg

• Full year ended up +25% on 61% of the yrs

Add in that the election takes place in the back half of the year, 2024 should close nicely. Especially since policymakers tend to be more investor-friendly and dovish near political elections. Given that inflation & interest rates have held the market back from even higher performance, if we get some policy easing, 2024 could shape up to be a banner year.

3. The DTC Converge Dashboard

I've been getting a lot of inquiries on the Avenue Z DTC dashboard.
For the past 12mo, I worked on building the ideal dashboard I always dreamed of having as a marketer.

I’m obviously biased, but I believe it’s the best dashboard in ecommerce.

Excited to give everyone a look under the hood NOW 💥

This is available to all DTC brands, whether or not you're a client of Avenue Z.

I recorded walkthroughs of my 9 favorite views, you can view them HERE.

If you’re interested in getting your very own version of the DTC Converge Dashboard, the very one we use on our accounts, reach out to me.

What’s the BIGGEST digital marketing advancement in 2024 YTD?

For me, this is an easy one. It’s just scratching the surface, it hasn’t even been fully released yet… but it will likely be rolling out broadly by EOY:

💥 INFLUENCER AI AVATARS 💥

Both TikTok AND Meta announced the launch of this recently.

TikTok launched Stock and Custom Avatars of content creators:

Meta teased the same:

This advancement does not come without controversy.

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: Francis Mercier Live in Luanda (Angola)| House is Life

This is Francis Mercier’s debut on my newsletter. He’s been a fast riser in the afro house scene. Here’s a great new live set he posted recently. Light and vibey. Great background music.

Cheers to a STELLAR 2H 2024! 🚀

I welcome all feedback. Good, bad, everything in between.

Hit reply, and let’s hear it! 👂

📧 Share your thoughts or what you want me to cover next!