Today we cover the 2 Things on Everyone’s Minds: Black Friday and AppLovin

This week is WILD for everyone. Will keep today’s edition direct and to the point.

Let’s get into it!

11 Final Thoughts to help you CRUSH BFCM this year ⤵️

1️⃣ THE "HALF SECOND" RULE

Your BFCM creative must clearly discern the offer within half a second of someone seeing your ad.

If the offer is not clear to a user within 0.5s, consider that creative a failure.

2️⃣ OFFER CLEAR & COHESIVE THROUGHOUT FUNNEL

Your offer starts w/ creative & ends in checkout. It must hit the user at EACH STEP of the journey.

CREATIVE -> PDP/LP -> CART -> CHECKOUT

Do NOT screw this up.

PS: if discount is auto-applied in cart, make that clear.

3️⃣ CREATE URGENCY/FOMO

Urgency drives action.

Without a clear end time for the sale, customers may assume they have more time than they do and end up getting distracted by other offers. Use sticky countdown timers on your website.

If inventory is limited, convey urgency throughout your comms... like "Stock Limited" or "while supplies last!"

4️⃣ BLACK FRIDAY DEAL PAGES

Consumers care about DEALS this week.

Try running ads from a "Black Friday Deals" page.

These have proven to work for us in the past and don't foresee that playing out any differently this year.

5️⃣ REFER TO LAST YEAR'S PERFORMANCE!

Know your data.

Consumers are predictable.

YoY hourly revenue trends are spitting images of each other for each brand. Understanding historical trends will enable you to make proper decisions or pivots in real-time.

6️⃣ TARGET 100% EXISTING CUSTOMER/SUBSCRIBER CONVERSION

Your SOLE JOB is to invert the funnel during the last week of November. At the start of BFCM sale period, your purchased cohort will be the smallest. It's on you to make it as large as possible.

Klaviyo customer segments I'm tracking during BFCM weekend through EOM... lowest to highest intent:

• Non-engaged subscribers that have not yet purchased (during sale period). Define engaged how you wish.

• Engaged (non-VIP) subscribers that have not yet purchased. VIP = 2+ historical purchases on store

• Engaged (VIP) subscribers that have not yet purchased. this cohort should convert to purchasers at the highest rate. this is where the lowest hanging fruit lives!

• Purchased

The goal is to optimize for moving each cohort to purchase between today & EOM. Turn upper funnel bloat into purchased bloat by end of the week.

If you see a pocket of opportunity with any of these segments, customize an offer that will potentially move them to purchase. Target them via email, SMS, or Meta ads. Don't forget: you can sync your Klaviyo audiences w/ FB and target any segment directly!

This is the window to capitalize on the opportunity created by your last 365 days of ads. View & Plan for your segmented pipeline!

7️⃣ BFCM SPECIFIC RETENTION AND RETARGETING AD SETS

Be sure to set up specific ad sets for each bucket.

Exclude ppl who've purchased from the START of your sale period to ensure you're spending $ on the ppl who have YET to convert.

Create a dynamic audience that aggregates purchasers from the start of your sale period.

Track daily frequency to make sure you're not getting too aggressive as the sale moves into the later stages.

8️⃣ MEDIA BUYING IS CRITICAL DURING THIS PERIOD!

BFCM is a time period where MEDIA BUYING is on full display.

SMALL WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY THAT SHRINKS WITH EACH PASSING MINUTE.

HOURLY ADJUSTMENTS!

9️⃣ CUSTOMER ACQUISITION IS STILL IN FULL EFFECT!

2 largest cohorts for "How long did you know about us?" question last BFCM:

- Greater than 12 months

- Less than 1 Day

🔟 IF NO DISCOUNT CODE NEEDED, CALL THAT OUT!

If you are NOT using discount codes and it's a SITEWIDE sale, CALL OUT THAT "NO CODE NEEDED" all over your sales materials.

THIS IS CRITICAL!!!!

1️⃣1️⃣ DON'T SHY AWAY FROM CUSTOM AUDIENCES!

Broad targeting is NOT king during BFCM.

In previous years, custom audiences like Meta LAAs and Shopify Audiences have outperformed broad audiences.

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My POV on AppLovin ($APP) as of TODAY

Will AppLovin be a viable performance media channel in 2025 for ecommerce brands? MY POV to date👇

AppLovin has been THE hottest name on DTC X for the past few weeks (rightfully so).

🚀 Since I first tweeted about it back on October 8, $APP stock has soared 140%.

Haven't seen hype about a platform reach these levels since TikTok first burst on the scene ~5yrs ago.

Two reasons for this level of hype:

1. Performance (direct response) is noteworthy

2. Access to ads is being gatekept (spend criteria makes 99% of brands ineligible to test in this closed beta). Scarcity breeds hype.

Despite endless critics out there refusing to believe $APP will be a viable channel, performance anecdotes coming out of ecom circles are undoubtedly more exciting than anything TikTok ads did right out the gate. Numerous trusted sources (among diff product categories) have posted in support of what they're seeing early on.

Prior to 3P attribution (MTA and MM), ppl were skeptical on AppLovin's self-reported performance. Early signs post-3P integration quelled that narrative.

Prior to incrementality studies, ppl were skeptical that it just captured demand other channels created. Very early report by Olivia Kory of Haus quelled that narrative. APP has answered the bell early on.

MY REMAINING QUESTIONS THAT WILL DICTATE HOW SIZABLE & VIABLE THE $APP OPPORTUNITY IS:

1. How big is the APP pie? When APP opens up ads to ALL ecommerce brands, how will competition impact performance? How will CPMs react? How valuable are the consumers in the APP network?

2. Is novelty factor playing a role in strong early performance? APP users have seen mobile game ads forever, now that they're seeing a trendy beauty product and intrigued, will they react the same when they start seeing endless ecom ads for a variety of products?

3. Brand safety/transparency: APP does not publicly disclose which apps ads appear on. Without transparency, it's hard to convince enterprise brands to invest there.

4. Competition from other mobile ad networks: APP has inventory overlap with other platforms. Will this drive up CPMs? Other mobile ad networks are surely catching on and have their ears perked. You'll start seeing these names circulate through airwaves.

5. First-party data: since APP buys inventory throughout mobile apps and does not own the users, how will it resolve identity limitations? Ex: no logged in users

With over 1.4 BILLION reported DAUs, AppLovin TRULY has the opportunity to become a channel of scale like Meta. Especially since click-performance is there.

If it could even command 5% of total media spend for ecom brands, APP would change the game for ecommerce (& its stock).

$APP ad revenue could easily eclipse $10B annually... with potential for more… IF it can answer the bell to my 5 biggest questions posed above.

💥 One of the MAIN questions I keep getting is:

“what about AppLovin’s ad placements could cause it to be drawing better direct response than more seasoned platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube, and Reddit?”

My Response is 2-fold:

1. AppLovin has 100% thumb stop rate.

   Comparatively speaking, on Meta lets say a solid thumb stop rate is 25%. Nearly all of the remaining 75% that scrolled past an ad on Meta had no idea what the ad was even for. They just knew it was an ad and scrolled passed it.

   AppLovin doesn’t allow users to skip an ad for at least a few seconds. APP users are on their phone when served the ad, so they won’t be able to preoccupy those few seconds with other phone activity. A few seconds also isn’t enough time to turn on the TV or do something else to occupy those “dead” seconds.

   This means that AppLovin is getting 4x captive eyeballs on each ad that it shows relative to Meta. Of the 75% who would have scrolled past the ad on Meta, there is undoubtedly a faction of that group who ended up clicking through the AppLovin ad and purchasing, whereas they may never have purchased from a Meta ad since they never would have given it the few seconds to consume the ad and realize they actually were interested.

   Simple math: just imagine you all of a sudden had 100% thumb stop rate on your Meta ads… your performance would obviously improve. This is one of my suspicions on why APP is performing so well out the gate.

2. Novelty Factor.

   APP users have been seeing mobile game ads for eternity. NOW, some of those dead seconds in between Candy Crush levels is being filled with engaging full screen UGC that’s showing them an interesting beauty product. That novelty factor alone is likely boosting CTR of these ecom ads. Who knows how ad fatigue will set in once users get hit with enough ecom ads over time.

5 PIECES OF LOW-HANGING FRUIT THAT $APP STILL HAS NOT YET CAPITALIZED ON THAT SHOULD ONLY IMPROVE PERFORMANCE:

1. 3rd Party CAPI integration w/ Blotout, Elevar, Popsixle

2. Shopify integration to allow for catalog ads/SKU level data pulling in, as well as native server sided tracking

3. Self-serve ad platform

4. More diverse ad formats

5. Audience segmentation (prospect, engaged, existing customer)

$APP has 2 main competitors to watch out for: UNITY and LIFTOFF

To my knowledge, these 2 competitors have a large % of inventory overlap w/ APP.

TLDR: $APP early performance and level of scale is better than any direct response platform we’ve seen since Meta. Yes, performance and scalability is already showing out better than TikTok ever did in terms of 1DC or 7DC.

Lots of questions still need to be answered, only time will tell.

Nonetheless, this is exciting for everyone in ecommerce & digital media.

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: Rony Seikaly on Keinemusik Radio Show

Rony dropping this mix a couple days before BFCM kicks off is like manna dropping from the heavens. Put this on full volume as you get into deep work this week. Rony is an absolute legend and is only getting better.

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!