Name: BFCM 2026: Win the Weekend
Uploaded: 2026-08-25T19:36:07.697Z
Duration: 2 h 14 min 56 s
Description: BFCM 2026: Win the Weekend

Transcript for "BFCM 2026: Win the Weekend": Hello, everyone. Oh, wow. Look at everyone is already jumping to the chat. Let me know where they're from. I love this. We already have such an active group today. Let's see. Oh, we have some order from Nigeria, Chicago, Dallas, New York. Let's see. Wow. We have so many. Vancouver, Newark and Ontario. Fun fact, I grew up in Newmarket, Ontario. So that is weird and also so much fun. You don't see that every single day. Victoria, BC from Pakistan. Wow. We have literally a global group. This is very cool. I really love this. Well, now that we're a minute in and we have so many people already attending attending the chat and we're here today. Just want to say hello. And whether it is the morning or the afternoon or even the evening where you are because we know that everyone's coming in from everywhere, I'm just very, very glad that you could join us today. While we give everyone a minute to roll in, I just wanna make this chat a little bit more interactive, get to know each other. We already know where everyone's calling in from, but why don't you tell me one area that you are feeling the most nervous coming into BFCM 2026. Is there anything that you're feeling a little bit nervous for this year going into 2026 BFCM? Is it maybe not feeling that you have the right strategy to acquire new customers? Is it your retention game? Yep. Deliverability. That's a really good one. Maybe it's your mobile app. You know, I've been it's something that you're still working on. Building up the high volume of ads required. Oh, oh my god. Yeah. Discount fatigue, I that's a big one. AI shopping, eroding some of our brand app. Yep. And own marketing. Oh my god. Searchability. Guys, this is really good. Keeping the list engaged. Retention. Leaning into attribution, and learning what is actually driving performance. Always a big one. Guys, like then yeah. Converting the website traffic into sales. It sounds like everyone is somewhat leaning into a similar direction as to areas that they might be nervous for BFCM. Because it might be the biggest time of year, but it also can be some of the most challenging time of year for a lot of brands. And it sounds like a lot of us out there are feeling the same pain, or at least similar ones. Content strategy. Yep. Okay. So now that we're a few more minutes in, again, welcome if you just joined us. Right now, we're just talking with the chat and seeing how people are feeling about BFCM coming up and what they might be a little bit nervous about. So with that, you are on the white webinar because today is all about winning the weekend. More specifically, winning the BFCM weekend. And I don't know about you, but it does feel a little crazy to talk about this since depending on where you're tuning in from, you could still be soaking up the last bit of summer. I know I am. Especially here in Toronto, we've had some colder days, so I'm trying to take as much of the heat as I can. But as we all know, once the summer starts winding down, it is time to start gearing up for that biggest sales season that the winter brings. Everything from retention to mobile checkout to AI automation to day specific offers, you will hear directly from the partners and platforms helping the top d to c brands build their real time command center for q four. If you do not know me, I'm Erin Watt. I am one of the tech partner managers here at Trip Oil, and I will also be your host for today's webinar, the FCM twenty twenty six win the weekend. So if you are new to our webinar series, this is where we really break down the trends shaping ecommerce and bring in industry experts to share some practical data backed insights that you can actually use. So, really, the goal of the session is super simple, for everyone to walk away with your own playbook. And that will include, but not limited to, how to get your attribution and measurement right, prep for a majority mobile cyber week, structure offers that build momentum instead of cannibalizing sales, and turn the this year's BFC and rush into long term retention, which I feel from the chat. It's what a lot of people are trying to do anyway. So this is great. Alright. So today is packed with some incredible speakers who are here to share what they've been seeing across the ecommerce ecosystem. And if you've joined Triple Whale's webinar before, you know we're passionate about bringing together some of the brightest minds in the industry, and today is no exception. So to kick things off, we're excited to welcome my colleague, Thamina, who will be speaking on behalf of Triple Whale. From there, we will hear from Dan, from Rebuy, followed by Taylor from Pilothouse. Then we have Brian from impact.com. We have John from Tapcart. We have Ario and Frank from Elk Marketing. We'll also hear from Chase Hughes, from Snapchat, followed by Meredith from TikTok. And to the wrap things up, we're thrilled to have Brian from Vibe closing out what promises to be an incredible lineup. Now we know that work, kids or even pets, might demand your attention at some point, so don't worry. Every session today is being recorded. So if you do miss something, you need to jump out for a moment, or you you just wanna go back and rewatch a presentation you found valuable, we'll send you the full recording to everyone who registered and also attended after the event. So you will have plenty of time to revisit the insights and take notes later. Okay. That is enough for me. I am going to jump off stage. Already, we have my beautiful colleague, Thamana, up and ready to go. If you want to share your screen. So someone will be speaking on behalf of Tripoyal and just very excited, for you to learn more. Thank you so much, Erin. Can you see my can you see my slides okay? Yeah. You're good. Awesome. Alright. Well, hello, everyone. I'm Tamanna. I'm, one of the tech partner managers here at Treboil. Thank you guys so much for joining. What an audience we have. And it's it's really special and it's it's a really exciting time of the year. So over the next few minutes, we're gonna be walking through the new BFCM framework for 2026. I'm gonna be covering how to spend smarter, how to move faster, and how to just earn more for every customer after the sale. Now this isn't guesswork. It's built directly off of our real BFCM 2025 data from brands running on Triple Whale. And and, you know, it's just a good example of things that you could be doing too. So let's get right into it. Now ecommerce brands today, they are drowning in data, but they are starving for insights that drive real action. Action. And that's where Triple Whale comes in. We are the ecommerce intelligence platform built for faster and more confident decisions. Now most analytics platforms are telling you what's happening, but at Triple Whale, we actually help you understand why and more importantly, what to to do next. And at Triple Whale, we're not just another data tool. We're actually the go to ecommerce intelligence platform for brands that are scaling fast and just need clarity in their decision making. Today we're also the proud source of truth for over 65,000 plus innovative brands. And that includes well known names like Kalpak, MeUndies, Peloton, Culture Kings, and so many more. But we're not just working with brands. We're also powering an entire ecosystem of ecommerce growth. And with 2,000 different trusted agency partners and 65 plus deep tech integrations, we actually ensure our customers get the most out of their data from marketing to inventory and, of course, to profitability. Now if you're wondering what that looks like in action, I highly suggest that you take a look at our website. We have a full section of case studies there, and and I encourage you to just check them out. Now Triple Whale Triple Whale brands drove 2,900,000,000 in BFCM revenue last year. That's nearly 20% of Shopify's entire 14,600,000,000 total. Ad spend share, held steady at 67%, basically flat year over year. So this isn't a niche sample. It's actually a meaningful slice of the whole BFCM economy, and it's telling us something real. So let's start by looking back. Let's actually look at what happened during BFCM twenty twenty five. Now across our network, those the the things that really stood out were that there was $2,880,000,000 spent in revenue. 606,600,000 in ad spend. 26,000,000 orders from 33,000 shots. Now the average order value was around $79 and new customers drove about 1,400,000,000 of that revenue, which is basically half. Now those are the headlines, but now let's actually look at the patterns underneath them. So the three patterns that we saw here at Triple Oil were number one, people started buying way before Black Friday. The week before Black Friday Cyber Monday alone brought in 1,770,000,000 and that's 65% of total spend before the big weekend even started. So really think of November as one long campaign, not just a four day sprint. Number two. New customers made up 48% of revenue down from almost 60% in 2024. Now it's worth sitting with that one for just a second because retention isn't a nice to have anymore. It's honestly number three, Meta versus TikTok. Meta held steady. 67.6% of ad, of ad spend was spent on Meta, which is pretty flat year over year. But TikTok quietly had a great run. Now ROAS was up 28% and CPMs were down 27.5. So if you've been sleeping on TikTok, this is your nudge. Now a few outside signals really stood out too. Salesforce found roughly 70% of Cyber Week orders came in on mobile. Now Adobe saw a 670% surge in AI referred real traffic on Cyber Monday. So people are shopping through AI search now and not just Google anymore. And buy now pay later crossed that $1,000,000,000 in finance spend on Cyber Monday alone. So mobile, AI search, and flexible payments are table stakes now. So what does that actually mean for 2026? Well, let's turn this data into three things that you can actually act on. So let's talk about how to spend smarter. So we dug into $607, $607,000,000 in tracked ad spend from BFCM 2025 to see what's actually working. And a lot of it comes down to how you're feeding Meta's algorithm. So enter meta rewards create creative diversity over volume. So give more ways to find your buy give it more ways to find your buyer because there are five things that you can actually test that might work for your business. The first one is a new persona. So a different customer or occasion. Think about a new problem, you know, a different pain point. A new mechanism. So a different reason that this product actually works. Then you can think of a new emotion which could be urgency, relief, or even confidence. And then lastly, you can think of a new format, a different visual world or even a creative voice. So more distinct signals will equal better matching. Now knowing your benchmarks is one thing but actually acting on them at 1PM on Black Friday across every channel is a complete other. So let's look at three of the fastest ways to actually automate. So in this section, we're gonna talk about how to move faster using automation. So first up, automation. So think of Mobi. Mobi is a triple oil product and Mobi runs your media buying rules on autopilot. It is consistently checking performance. It's consistently applying your your guardrails, and it's consistently, queuing changes for you to approve. So here, it flagged one. Oops. Sorry. So here if flagged one, bump this Google Ads campaign from $1,000 to $1,100 a day. Thirty days of strong ROAS backs this up, one click and it's basically done. Second, reporting without the busy work. So tell Mobi what you want. It could be a daily paid media brief. It could be a weekly performance report. It could be, you know, your current spend and revenue piecing against your targets. And it's literally just gonna show up for you on the schedule that you set and wherever you want it sent to. So here's an example. You can ask for pacing for your pacing report against BFCM and your monthly targets, and Mobi is gonna come back with the numbers already pulled together for you. So if it's projecting one thing against a target that you've already set, it is actually gonna tell you to take a closer look at that. No dashboard building. No exporting it it into a deck. It's basically already in the report that you've asked for. Now third, you get quick answers with no automation needed. So you can ask questions in plain English. For example, you can ask Mobi, why did new customer ROAS drop this week? And it will come back with an answer fast. It'll say, perhaps down 18%. Google Ads drove over half of it. This is a diagnosis in just seconds and this helps you fix issues before they even compound. Now smarter spend, and and faster action is gonna get you through the weekend, but the real twenty twenty six margins, they actually get made after checkout. So let's talk about retention here. So section four is all about how to earn more. Start with a post purchase survey sent within twenty four hours and keep it short. How did you first hear about us? What made you decide to buy today? What who's this product for? And what would help you get the most out of this product? And that, that data is going to become the foundation for everything else. Then basically match your next message to what's actually in the basket. So performance marketing director Hannah Hannah, sorry, Hannah Fleming put it really well. We look at lifetime value based on what category someone actually comes in with. So for example, if it's their first order and they're only buying one item, the recommended one useful accessory, could be sorry. Recommend one useful accessory. So if it's a gift, for example, you know, skip that upsell and actually lean into gift wrapping instead. If it's someone's first order and they're buying multiple items, maybe lead with onboarding. Hold the next sales pitch for later. And third, you know what? If they're a returning customer and they're buying multiple items, now you can actually push a few different things. So this is where you can test your premium bundles. You can test early access or you can even test memberships with this person. Now finally, give every first time customer a reason to come back. So as an example, give them a benefit earned at that first purchase. Loyalty points, you know, towards a VIP tier or a next purchase offering expiring in fourteen to thirty days, early access maybe to January or Valentine's promotions. If you give them some education that actually builds your product into their routine or even subscription messaging where reoccurring, use actually fits, then they actually have one clear reason to return, which beats a generic come back soon, email every single time. So let's put this all together into your 2026 game plan. So feel free to take a screenshot of this if you feel like it's worth coming back to. From now until September, focus on your foundation. So audit channel performance, attribution, and margins, and define the rules before your budget before your budget decisions. And then from October, start your testing. So turn reoccurring decisions into Mobi automations. Test creative angles and even get surveys and loyalty offers ready. And then from November to the FCM, treat it as a month long campaign. So daily pacing briefs, weekly ROAS reports, and even investigate changes before they get really expensive. And from December on, retention. Send those post purchase surveys within twenty four to forty eight hours and route your offers by basket size, you know, activate loyalty incentives, and just measure repeat purchase rates and ninety day LTV by first purchase category. Now I just wanna say thank you guys so much for joining. I look forward to staying in touch with you guys. I'm gonna drop this link along with my email and LinkedIn in the chat. If you wanna reach out to me or continue the conversation, please feel free to do so. All the best for BFCM, everyone. Awesome. Thank you so much for that presentation. Really love the game plan. It really just helps kinda get your your mind prepared for what you need to do now all the way to the day of BFCM and even after, and some great ideas to add to your BFCM playbook. So thank you so much for that, Pamela. Thanks, Erin. Great. Awesome. Okay. Very excited to now have our friend, Adan, from Rebide next up. Hello. How are you? I am good. I am good. Squeezing the last bit of summer out of Toronto just like you. Gotta do it. Gotta do it. It we never know with the Toronto weather when it's gonna turn, so fingers crossed. Hopefully. Hopefully. Alright. I will let you pull up your screen. Amazing. And can you see that, Aaron? I cannot, wait. Something's happening. Yes. Beautiful. Alright. The stage is yours. Amazing. Thank you so much, and thank you everybody for attending. Famunda, that was awesome. I was really surprised at the jump from 48% of new business last year from first time customers to like 59%. And that drop off, I didn't realize that. So, yeah, super informative. Thank you. Thank you all for joining. My name is Adnan. I'm here from rebuy. Prior to rebuy, I was actually at Shopify. So I've been in this ecosystem for seven years now. So this is gonna be my seventh BFCM prep, which sounds wild to me. So I've kinda seen this weekend grow from just the weekend to kind of a whole holiday season. The money had another really good point around how this has become a season of its own. So thank you all for being here. Hopefully, I can give you some actionable takeaways today. I've done lots of BFCM prep with, at this point, thousands of Shopify brands. Sometimes we get really into that minutia of what you can do to prepare, and hopefully, today, I can just give you some basic checklist items and some basic actionables that you can walk away with. Okay. So to start, a couple of things, actually, before this, if you're not familiar with rebuy, we work with 6,000 plus brands, Shopify Plus brands, and many, many more Shopify brands beyond that. So hopefully, I can give you some insight into how to use AOV raising tactics. So think upsells, cross sells, anything that's gonna help essentially add to your basket size across that whole site. Okay. So a couple of things before we get into specific actionable takeaways. Now, Thamunda did a really good job talking about this earlier as well, but BFCM is really turning into a whole season of its own. A lot of your prospective customers, a lot of your potential customers, they're already on the interwebs going around comparing your products, comparing your site to somebody else. You are a tab that's open in their browser. So they're clicking around to see what products are dropping. They're looking around to see what sales are coming up. They are looking to see what sorts of offers are gonna be coming up around the corner. So a lot of that research is being done before that BFCM weekend even starts. So hopefully, I can give you some actionable takeaways that extend beyond just that weekend and kind of fit into this window that we are now all talking about, which is whole BFCM holiday season. Okay. So when we're talking about this window, this window to prepare is actually getting tighter. And the reason is brand or sorry, customers and prospective customers are looking at your site even earlier than they used to. So that means that you have less time to prepare. So if you're here and you're on this webinar, that's good. You're ahead of the game. But as a brand, or as a merchant, this gives you less time to actually get your storefront in order or or, in or in order for actual customers and buyers to be checking it out. Couple of things to note is BFCM this year is a little bit later. So it's gonna give you a little bit more of a crunch time between BFCM, Christmas, and holidays. So that's one thing to note. But even beyond that, we are seeing data suggest that BFCM, influenced attribution is starting two weeks or even earlier than that, which is something else that I'm on the talk about, as well. So really, I'm here to give you advice on how to prepare for this window that isn't only gonna be BFC and weekend, but how can you start getting things in ready much, much earlier than that? Okay. When we're talking about this window to prepare, what is the number one thing that you can do? The number one thing without or or all holds bars, doesn't matter what else we're looking at on the rebuy side, is going to be your cart. Our cart or the cart in general, when we're looking at adding additional recommendations, additional AOV raising tactics and strategies in the cart, that is going to outperform all of the other strategies that you can do on your checkout, your post purchase, and your PDB combined. Now we're specifically talking about, AOV raising tactics. So, obviously, you can do things that could help with conversion, with searchability, with other aspects. When we're specifically looking at AOV and how we can impact, just raising the actual basket size, upsells on your cart deliver more than any other surface and all of the other surfaces combined. When we're looking at different verticals at rebuy and we're looking at our customer base over the last, few BFCMs, no surface has outperformed the cart. There is zero verticals that don't have the cart as the number one performer. So this is gonna be the number one thing that we could help you prepare in time for BFCM. This is gonna be the easiest thing for customers to be able to comparative shop as well. So this is going to be, a a big focus, but we'll talk about a couple of other things as well. Now, really, what can you start doing in the cart? I'll break down a couple of vertical specific strategies. But before we do that, you really wanna make sure that you're just fully taking advantage of this whole real estate. So a couple of examples here, you can see right at the very top, there is a banner, those free shipping banners. If there's any kind of discount codes, if there's any sort of BFCM specific banners that you have on your homepage, anything that you have on your homepage as a banner that you're shouting out to your customer base, let's get it into your cart. So that's gonna be number one for sure. Can also have that banner rotating so you can have multiple messages. But if you've got any sort of BFCM specific messaging, you need to get that into the cart. Now below the banner, you'll see that there is two different bars here in both of these options. We're calling that a visual tiered progress bar. Just think about it as a gamified way to increase AOV through different types of thresholds, like free shipping. Is there gonna be a free gift with purchase? Maybe there's even a discount threshold. If you have any sort of offer like that, we need to get it into the cart. It needs to be visible for your shoppers. If you even have a free shipping offer and that's all you're offering, let's get that into the cart as well. The reason it's gonna be super important is we can start helping recommend products that get the customer over those different thresholds, and it's gonna be so visually in front of their face, it's hard to miss the recommendation tying with that free shipping cart or sorry, that free shipping bar or this much money until you get to the free gift. So let's make sure that we have that bar very visible directly in the cart. Lastly, I've worked with hundreds, if that if at this point, not thousands of brands, and they are not taking advantage of doing upsells, cross sells, bundles directly in the cart. This is a huge missed opportunity. You need to be taking advantage of that real estate in one way or another. Now in both of these examples, there's several different ways to do that. You can simply have other recommended products. You can pull in the reviews and the ratings for those products as well, and you can have it as different variant options. You can allow people to choose size, color, whatever it is, directly in the cart as well. But you'll also see in the right cart a couple of different types of merchandising offers. So you can have buy more, save more. So things like buy two, get 5%, buy three, get 10%. So different types of AOB raising tactics like that. And then, please, if you're doing subscription, you need to have subscribe and save as an upsell in the cart. So a lot of brands will have on the PDP a one time purchase or a subscribe and save option, but they don't carry that over to the cart, and you are missing out on LTV and missing out on people that would have gone from a one time purchase to a subscription directly in the cart. So lots of different tactics around how you can implement upsells and cross sells, but you need to be trying to do something in the cart. Let's not waste that real estate. Okay. So a couple of different cart examples there, but what can we do beyond the actual cart as well? So a couple of different levers here, three different low lift levers. None of these are gonna require any interaction with your theme. So all of these are gonna be very, very easy to implement. Think of them as plug and play. They're not gonna require you to build anything, which is even more of a reason to make sure that we can get these things ready to go well ahead of BFCM. So the first one is gonna be checkout extensions. Last year, we saw a ton of success with this. Over a 140,000 orders went through with some sort of checkout extension of ours, involved. So some sort of upsell at checkout. One home goods brand saw over 8% of their incremental BFCM, revenue come from just checkout upsells. So this is definitely something that we wanna focus on, and it's very, very easy to turn on. Post purchase offers. I have been doing this for seven years now, and I'm still trying to convince people to try post purchase. It has one of the lowest take rates for all Shopify merchants. I know that there's complications sometimes with how post purchase can interact with your, fulfillment or your payment methods. And there's a lot of reasons to maybe get into, the the the nuances of it, but you've gotta give it a try. We had a brand, last BFCM, make almost 40 k in additional revenue just by turning post purchase on during BFCM. So this is an absolute no brainer. There's also different ways to try post purchase for different customer groups, which I'll touch on in a second. And the last one is monetize. So this is just gonna be how can you work with a brands or or brands like Disney plus, Hulu plus, ESPN, Capital One. How can we get those types of personalized offers directly past thank you page and turn that page into a profit center for you? Sarah, no. Post purchase does not only work with Shopify plus, it works with all Shopify merchants. So it's a great question. Couple of really quick examples. So checkout extensions. If you are on Shopify plus, you need to need to need to be looking at your checkout page. I would really encourage you to look at simple upsells. So again, we can do simple types of, upsells and cross sells. We can even tie that to things like free shipping. So if you've got free shipping over a certain threshold or a free gift, let's tie the upsells with that. The other angle for checkout though is you need to be customizing your checkout for conversion. So if you have any hypothesis around why folks are not checking out, let's address that by including content on your checkout. So is there shipping warranty concerns? Is there returns concerns? If you're in apparel, if you're a very high AOV product, maybe it's furniture or home goods, are you showing people how that product is gonna get there? If there's any concerns with who they can call? When I'm buying thousands of dollars of furniture online, I don't wanna just see a blank checkout. I want some comfort in how the product is gonna reach me. So checkout, there's gonna be upsells and how you can increase revenue, but also how can you can increase conversion. So that's definitely gonna be one to test out during BFCM. Post purchase offers, again, this is no risk to your conversion. This is gonna be after your actual whole checkout stage. So you've gotta give this a try. And then monetize, there's an example of that as well. Again, these are just gonna be blue chip advertisers to turn your thank you page and your post purchase pages into a profit center. Okay. I will speed up so we can get through a couple of other examples. Okay. So if you're in any of these verticals, cart carries the day. Cart is gonna be a very, very important implementation for you if you're on any of these. As mentioned, cart isn't going to be the be all end all, but we really need to make sure that your cart is optimized if you're in beauty, personal care, food and beverage, or health and wellness. For beauty and personal care, we've seen a ton of success with brands. One brand last year saw 60% of its incremental BFCM revenue. So additional BFCM revenue from upsells come just from their cart. With food and beverage, there's ways that we can tie things like free gifts with purchase. If you're launching new types of flavors, we wanna get that to folks directly in cart. And then for health and wellness, this one's really interesting because we can do things like bundling. We can do things like buy more, save more all on the cart, and a lot of these brands will have subscription services. So we need to make sure that we're doing that subscribe and save in the cart as well. Beyond the cart, I know that we've talked about checkout and post purchase, but especially if you're in apparel, think about things like bundling, think about things like complete the look. And we really wanna make sure that these dynamic recommendations are living as one click additions on the PDP. In home and garden, there's just so many different ways to touch on recommendations and upsells throughout that whole journey. Cart is just gonna be one aspect. K. Now a quick checklist, before we even start getting ready for BFCM or kind of your BFCM prep guide, feel free to take a quick screenshot of this. I will also put my email in the chat afterwards as well. But number one is let's make sure that your cart is optimized. Again, this is going to be the easiest point of comparison between you and other brands. It's gonna be the place where customers are showing the highest intent, and it's gonna be a place that we can still deliver on conversion rates by pulling all of your on-site messaging, like your free shipping or any of your banners into your cart as well. So that needs to be optimized well well in advance of BFCM. Secondly, let's see if you can turn on post purchase. It's incredibly easy, and it's always worth a try. Tons of brands see a lot of success once they turn it on. It's very easy. Beyond that, depending on your cart and your post purchase type of offers, is there other vertical specific things that we can, help you with? So if you're in apparel, is there a way to turn on complete the look type of upsells directly on your PDP? If you are selling a ton of different skew excuse me. If you're selling a ton of different skews, is there a way to implement some sort of bundling feature for your team? So, yeah, different types of vertical specific AOV tactics. Beyond that, gift with purchase is a hugely, asked for feature for us during BFCM. So it's a massive, massive, differentiator when you have old stock, maybe that you're trying to get rid of, or you're trying to implement or drop a new product line, Griffith purchase is an awesome one. And it helps with conversion. And then lastly, lastly, retest retest retest your cart, checkout, post purchase, honestly, your whole on-site experience well in advance of BFCM. Okay. I tried to power through that. Hopefully, that was valuable, and it gives you some actionable takeaways just in time for BFCM. That was really valuable. Thank you so much. And also post purchase surveys, I don't think we realize how important they are in so many parts of the buying journey. Even to be able to discover which channels actually help to drive that sale, it can also help really uncover the channels that are working for you. So a lot of different reasons to be using post purchase surveys. Also, great reminder that BFCM is a bit later, so we have a little bit more time to be working on things, but not as not that much time. So we gotta start now. it up. Yeah. And one more thing. As a fellow shopaholic, I can tell you that the cart upsells work. I spend way more money with brands that provide that option. So, also, a very good tip there. So thank you so much for that. your face. It's hard to say no. Thank you, Aaron. It's hard to say no. It's hard to know. Yep. Thank you. Alright. Well, my god. We've already had some incredible presentations, and it's just gonna keep coming. So right now, very excited to have Taylor from Pilot House. Welcome. How are you? You're amazing. Thanks. This has been an awesome awesome presentation so far. I've really enjoyed, everything I've learned as, well. it's been super informative, and we can't wait to to watch yours. Thanks so much. Well, I'll get right into it. Excited to meet, everybody here and spend some time walking through how we're approaching Black Friday Cyber Monday twenty twenty six at Pilothouse. And the theme of this presentation is win the weekend with growth strategy. So as I get into it, who is Pilothouse? We are a full stack performance growth agency, a trusted strategic partner with over 500 d to c brands served and a billion in attributable revenue generated. We're a team of a 160 plus performance specialists like myself, and we produce over 5,000 credit assets monthly, across our client. I think it's really valuable to share our philosophy and the philosophy this presentation is rooted in, which is the growth starts the strategy. It's having a unified approach and philosophy to the system that we're building when it comes to all the channels, all the creative components, all the, resources and features that we're deploying for the brands that we work with. So I think a really interesting point here is pilot has bridges the false choice between performance marketing and brand building by integrating them together, and looking at do we apply customer journey based insights without sacrificing speed. So all the points around gift of purchase, the value of rebuy, all those other elements, those are huge parts of the stack. I'm excited to look at how we're how we're thinking about, driving as much, growth through everything as possible this year with our clients. A little bit more about myself too. I'm a senior ecommerce strategist on the team. I joined Pilothouse at inception in 2018. My background is predominantly in, in social media management, so media buying and media planning. I have expertise managing, millions of ad dollars per month, per brand, on paid social in particular. I'm an expertise growing brands across a range of industries, including but not limited to fashion, home goods, consumables, outdoor digital, and automotive. I'm also currently actively overseeing omnichannel growth for a portfolio of high growth brands that we're proud to work with. When thinking about we win the weekend, as I start thinking about Black Friday being right around the corner at this point, even though it it still is a couple months out, knowing that that time will go fast, I immediately go to two questions. What decides who's gonna win this this Black Friday Cyber Monday? And how do these brands ensure they succeed? I think the through line that I see is that they have a unified strategy. They're considering data from past years, whether it's the fact that position has has shrunk and retentions grown, like that really compelling point from the first presentation, and how that then plays out across the business. And so my hope today is to provide you all with a look into the strategic framework that we'll be using with our clients this you forward to ensure that they win and achieve their growth targets efficiently. What does this growth framework look like? Well, I think it's valuable to think about it through a step by step approach because right now we're coming up on Labor Day to hit the ground running for the entire full season of of growth And so having context is key. That's where the foundation comes into play. And then using that context or foundation to define a philosophy a growth philosophy for the brand that differentiates what it's doing this year versus what it did in past years. Building out the roadmap so it's cohesive and aligned to that philosophy, and then executing, through the launch, evaluate, refine, and scale, and setting checkpoints along the way to make sure that we're ultimately landing where we wanna land as we approach the final moments of q four. So tapping into that a little bit more, when it comes to the foundation, this is the area that we're focusing heavily right now. Huge priority in both August and September. It the way that I feel the value in breaking this up is between internal and external context. So looking at not only your historic performance from past Black Fridays, your performance year to date, what kind of insights you're drawing from that between channels, between products and business facets, but also what's happening in the external environment and what might have changed since here or, in recent periods. This is where looking at things like competition reports from competitors when it comes to brand search, looking at the related when you're in Google Trends and looking at keyword interest, understanding what those related keywords are that are growing really rapidly and breaking out. These kinds of elements really do matter a lot and being able to understand where are we gonna go and what bets are we making that are gonna pay back and be proven at scale knowing that a good example would be editor launching another product that then enters your space for the product that you scaled last year and how does that then shape your strategy and where you're going this year. Those are the kinds of things we're starting to look at now. And so with that in mind, I have a a super simple worksheet here just with some notes, and I'll show you an example on the following slide, that digs into an example of how we fill this out and what kind of insights we gather. But we're big believers in having this all laid out well in advance so that it's, super easy and simple to, at least see it and then plan with it. So in this example, obviously, there's a lot of brand context there. I encourage anyone to take a screenshot who would be interested in, and take me into this a little bit further after as well. But contextual elements like what happened what's happened year to date? Where have our promos been consistent? How are consumers responding to promos? What are our competitors doing? Being able to lay that all out and then put that together, we're big fans of using Mobi to help synthesize this or speed this up. Once we have that information, putting it out in visual boards, things like Milanote or a Figma, and then being able to draw those through lines. Because you can see on the bottom, there are four connected points that ultimately tell a story, what's been happening and where then we can use that to plan where we're gonna go this year. And then following that, we're big fans as well of visualizing it too and then leveraging that to define our growth pillars for this year. So a good example is maybe we have a competitor that our brand is positioned as high value, high giftability. We're maybe a little bit more giftable because we're not as premium as another brand. It's a little bit more accessible. That gives us an advantage over another high value brand, which in this visual diagram is competitor one. So then that frames the pillar on the on the right, which our top pillar being giftable messaging, and then we build the tactics in behind there to make sure that we can hit those targets and and align it. But when you think about giftable messaging, just to add on to that, what we're doing in October when it comes to creating that kind of awareness and then being able to capture November, that's gonna be extremely critical. So having this done in September is, another major, we're behind all of this. And then following through from there, once from our POV, once you have that foundation, once you're starting to analyze the data, we're big believers in using moments like Labor Day or Halloween as opportunities to see prove out, various types of offers whether they're similar to past offers or different. But being able to then track that road map as you launch and continue evaluating, using Moby to create automated dashboards, that's something that we're really excited about doing this year given that Moby's already sped up within the last few months, our time drastically would be the the rapid advancements happening in the tool. So being able to go in and summarize all promo performance for the last twelve months and break them all down, those kinds of elements is that's how we're using it. Then from there, just continuing to refine and use a checkpoint approach. We're ultimately seeing the checkpoint approach as we split it up between acquisition and retention. We look at what's happening with product, competitors, all those elements. We'll be going through and regularly reviewing that on a weekly basis with all our clients so that we can continue to refine our roadmap and flush it out as it does tend to continue to change and require that dynamic approach as well. And then ultimately, the the aim of this process and having this in place is a really clear philosophy where we can say in August and September, we, placed the bet that based on the data we researched and everything we looked at internally and externally, we were gonna go after this and pursue x y zed. We believe we will win because of y zed. And then we can look on a monthly basis, are we meeting that and achieving that? And if not, what's changed? And how do we keep refining that together as a team and then setting the deliverables and media and everything, in alignment to that. With the last point being it's always helpful to have contingencies prepared, knowing that for example, inventory changes or other elements like that, there are these dynamic pressures that face every business. And so being ready and back to my end of this plan is powerful. And that's a quick run through of what we're looking at when it comes to the strategic side of things. I'll leave my LinkedIn and email here as well. And I'm happy to share this presentation with anybody who would like to refer back to that as well. yeah. No. There is a lot of great stuff. I don't think we all took screenshots fast enough. So please put your information actually in the chat so it's easy for everybody to copy and paste. And thank you so much for the Mobi shout out as well too. I've tried to use Mobi for my personal life, and Mobi keep reminds me remind reminding me that I can't do that, but it really can do almost everything for a brand. So appreciate the shout out. Alright. Well, let's keep this rolling. And now we have our friends over at Impact. Let me Brian. Hi. How's it going? Oh, you're just on mute. Hey, Aaron. You have to find you gotta love that. Live TV. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Thank you so much for joining us. If you wanted to, get your screen, share your presentation just to make sure that it's up. Got it. Are you able to see everything? Everything looks amazing. Awesome. Thank you. I'll leave the stage to you. Wait. Hang on one second. I'm gonna do this one more time. Did I lose the screen? Yes. Hang on a second. Sorry. I'm having some technical difficulties here, but we're we'll get there. We'll get there one more time. Okay. Can you see the screen? I'm guessing the answer is yes. I will do a quick presenter view here. Okay. Well, morning everybody. Thanks for your patience as I learned the technology at hand here. My name is Brian Marcus, and I lead the tech partnerships program at impact.com where we make commerce happen through partnerships. Just a little personal note, I've been in the industry for over twenty years, the partnership space, and worked in every phase of partnerships from affiliate to creator to commerce. Been in the driver's seat myself, starting off as a cataloger at an ecommerce company way back when and now kind of going full circle working in the channel that, that I found the most effective. Today, we're here to talk about a fundamental shift in how brands grow. I titled this the longer game because the era of simply re relying on sort of a quick transactional deal day is over. Today is about how you move beyond the transaction to build trust and meet your customers where they are. So first, a little bit about, Impact. Impact is the number one source of independent brand demand in the world. We are a platform of brands and publishers. We have over 7,000 leading brands and over 700,000 active publishers that range from everything from your typical kind of affiliate partnership, site to a creator site, content creator, and, commerce, conversion rate optimization, and so on. Our business, has been around over twelve years, and we are by far the leading platform with, an enormous amount of, gross merchandise value flowing through our platform. And that's one of the advantages of today is I'm gonna show you a little bit more about what's happening with the data that we're seeing through our platform. Couple couple things about, the data itself. We, surveyed and we took two sort of two snapshots between January and June 2025 and 2026. We have produced a number of data points and some studies that you can find on our website. But the idea here is that we have a ton of different and diverse brands that we've been able to look at, both from a h one perspective, a full year last year, h one perspective this year, some Prime Day data, and using that data to help us think about a little bit more about how we approach Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And just to sort of get right to the thick of it, one of the things that we saw across our platform, that shoppers, in the holiday, traditional trend right now that we're seeing is shoppers got pickier. Consumer spend up 8%, but transactions are down 7%. So we're talking about fewer but bigger sales. Average order value up 16%. Average item value grew from a little over a $110 to a $130. So customers are trading up versus just pure inflation taking place. We saw clicks up 6%, conversion rate down 12%, which means that as, clicks rose, transactions fell, reinforcing that that a lot of our, consumers that we're working with now are doing a lot more researching before they purchase. And then on the spend side, one of the things that's important to note is that in the in the partnership space, there's sort of two parts to spend. One is around commissions and commissioning where, where commissioning events and transactions, which is now about 90% of brand spend, up from 86% in 2025. And then there's a flat fee sort of nonaction spend, which really includes sort of, like, fixed placements and, a little bit more like slotting fees. Well, commissions were up 14% and flat fees were down 19%, which tells you a little bit about sort of the shift to performance and the focus on performance as time goes on. If we think a little bit more about sort of the category level shifts, we saw a couple of things on our our platform. Number one, for apparel, shoes, and accessories, we saw transactions down, but average order value up, meaning that shoppers bought less often. They chose pricier items. And despite flat online apparel prices, people, people were able to spend a little bit more on their on their average order value as we said before. On the computers and electronics category, we did see a lot of transactional increase, increased consumer spending that was largely driven much more by transactions than higher value. Actually, the items in the computers and electronics tended to be low, smaller and smaller types of value as time went on, I'm sure, reflecting the price of electronics. And on arts and entertainment, we saw a large increase, in transactions, but the steepest conversion rate decreases, in terms of tracked products. So maybe reflecting some of the pricing on entertainment these days, and being able to both shop and browse before you buy. So what I wanted to sort of kind of take this down to is so given all of these trends, I can sort of boil down four things that you have to think about going into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and and I sort of give you my Black Friday, Cyber Monday watch list. Number one, be prepared for longer decision windows. Number two, be prepared for sustained and boosted commissions. You may be paying a little bit more for a lot more in terms of items. Number three, your customers and consumers are gonna be doing a lot more researching before they buy. And, therefore, number four, you're gonna have to create a strategy that helps you build some zone coverage around that that consumer funnel. So let's go into each of these one by one. Number one, on the longer decision windows. If I use Prime Day as an example back in June 2026, we saw average shoppers purchase, journey stretch from nine point three seven days to eleven point o one days year over year. So that's really telling us right now that there's much more happening before that day, and a lot more people are spending more time using the resources that they trust. And then if you think about sort of the, research around how much do they start researching, 23% of researching started in September earlier, 24% plan to research in October, and only 24%, delay to mid November. So during the holidays, only 6% focus during the cyber week, and that tells you a lot about sort of when the action is happening. So Prime Day is an example and a solid proxy for what we probably expect to see in Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Brands need to be educating their consumers well before the game day. Number two on the sustained boosted commissions, we saw in 2025 that commissions actually started to drift upwards throughout the year spiking in November, on the commission side, but they the and the rates actually jumped well beyond an elevated baseline. But we also saw in h one twenty twenty six, commission payments rose 14% year over year, holding that elevated share of total brand spend. So if we project out to h two twenty twenty six, we know that elevated commission rates are no longer just a spike, but they may be the new baseline and standard rate for partners that, performance and not just during a single peak week. So we think something to think about very carefully is that branch should plan baseline commission rates relative today, not last season, and then don't change those contributors that are actually happening both at the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. Number three, we talked a little bit about research traffic outpacing purchases. We did see this in November 2025. We saw a sharp increase year over year in clicks while transactions remained flat. And it was sort of the the widest gap was concentrated in q four between browsing and buying. We also saw in h one twenty twenty six similar patterns. So if we project out to h two twenty twenty six, if this holds, then the click to purchase gap could even widen further, and then 2025. And, so know that a rise in traffic alone does not necessarily guarantee sales. Implication, you have to weight those partners that are contributing, like assists and research upfront and making sure that they're well compensated as well in what they contribute. And lastly, on the zone coverage piece, I just wanna give you a feel for what kinds of partners are doing what, when. If we look at sort of network types of partners, those are partners that have their own sort of, partner networks that we can tap into and creators. We saw that networks carry the the majority of the top of the funnel. 50% of clicks, happen up there through the network and, partners and only but only 20% of the transactions. Creators is a smaller part of transactions, but very, very efficient spend. The loyalty and rewards and voucher and coupon publishers carry the bottom of the funnel, 55% of transactions up from forty eight and fifty four percent of consumer spend. The voucher and coupons clicks fell from six to three. Consumer spend went from 11% to five, less reliable, at closing than the loyalty and the rewards partners, but important nonetheless. Third piece is around tech solutions. I think of conversion rate optimizers. They posted the large in conversion rate, growth of any partner type of 42% year over year. They were a smaller share of clicks but a high contributor in terms of, contributing sales. Implication again, gotta gotta get your strategy thinking like, across the zone and rewarding true contribution. So when I when I think about my best advice to give you, it's for the holiday season is to rethink and reallocate your ad spend. You gotta first start with influencing. You can't just rely on that paid social ad on Meta and Google, on Thanksgiving. Just not advised. You have to be able to know that the consumer is ten days, ahead of you, and they need that help upfront. Number two, think about orchestrating your top of funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel across all those partners we just talked about, and make sure that they are well represented in in pay and play. And then, don't, don't think about this only as a transaction driver. It's not just transactional. It's relationship building with your partners at the top and the bottom of the funnel. And I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about how we as Impact help our what I've just described to you and how you can use a platform like Impact to be able to orchestrate your strategy. Number one, as a brand, you need a whole bunch of different types of partners to reach your audience and your different audiences across the journey. Number two, marketing teams have a bunch of different ways to work with these partners, and they need the ability to scale across these partnerships as best they can. And number three, probably most important to our brands, is that the ability to measure incrementality and effectiveness is paramount. At Impact, we are at the top of the the leader, board, up on the top on the right and recently just, won over a lot of the the business from another former competitor over at Rakuten who's now a partner and and among our best partners, going out to market. So now we are the sort of the largest global platform in the space and trusted by many to be able to track and build partnerships on our platform in terms of ROI, adoption, and and leadership. The things that you need to think about when you're building your strategy on a platform is derisking your spend. So number one, being able to given the amount of, that commissions represent, is part of your total brand spend, you have to be able to have a system that helps you, actually pay for actual closed sales and not just impressions. But you need a system that actually helps you through dynamic contracting be able to actually pay for the the actions that you expect those partners to do. So maybe, helping on assist on the upper part of the funnel. It may be helping close in consideration in the middle of the funnel or closing at the bottom of the funnel. Attribution is a big part of our platform, making sure that we don't just attribute the sales to the last click, but we have a number of ways to, share the credit for those sales. And number four is around scaling those processes from the time that you bring a partner on, tracking, reporting, and paying, and making sure that that all that spend is justifiable. We do think of our partnership sort of ecosystem across no longer so much like a funnel, but more like a circle. So starting with on the content commerce side, a lot of the content you see out there where you're doing your research, a lot of, brands use other brands' audiences to to build trust with other audiences. We have creators that help sort of share their trustworthy advice, and then we have a whole bunch of partners around rewards and and the like. And those customers who do end up buying often become partners themselves. So we have actual advocates that help start spreading the word about brands. So you need all those guys to be able to follow your consumer journey. You also need a real world class tracking and attribution platform, which helps you see all the pieces in the assists and the sequencing of the sale so you could track the consumer journey against the partners that drive it in addition to contracting specifically very specific events and transactions the way you want to do that, and it could be highly customized. And lastly, you need that reporting and insights platform to be able to help you see what's going on, which partners are driving the most volume, which partners are driving the most, awareness and consideration. And so you can double down on those partners for different types of scenarios. And you also need a platform where you could pay these publishers fairly in a trustworthy manner, making sure that you're working with people that that you feel, is worthy of the incremental sales they drive. In addition to, as a publisher, getting fast payment for the actions and the the the types of, rewards that you help drive through. Also, it's about the future, and it's about making sure that as browsers change, cookies change, all these different events that can prevent a someone who's driven traffic to your website, we make sure that attribution is top, top, top priority and tracking is top priority to make sure that those partnerships are as best as they can be. So thinking about privacy and consent, deep linking, and, and making sure that people are getting paid what they deserve. We do work, in a world of partnerships. You need the brand side of the equation, working with some of the top retailers, b to c financial services companies, and b to b. We work with the leading content creators out there that are helping create authentic com content commerce commerce content, sorry, to help people, know what they're buying and know when to buy and know exactly why they wanna buy. We work with a ton of of the world's best creators that help, sort of build trust with their audiences and share products and deals with their audiences, to help build and drive growth. And we do this across the globe. We do this across the globe in twenty four seven so that, anywhere you are as a retailer, we follow, you extensively and extendably. But, really, where it comes together is where Impact and Triple Whale really enable true ROI visibility. That means that brands can see exactly how partnerships contribute to revenue, beyond the last click. It's about budgeting and making sure that you are allocating the right budget to the right different types of channels. It's about a unified view and taking that data that we have and being able to pipe it to you, through their dashboard. And it's about just spotting trends and insights across the entire marketing ecosystem in one place. And with that, I turn it back over, to you, Aaron, and, thank you very much for the time. I hope this was helpful and, informative. Very helpful. My gosh. I learned a lot there. Thank you so much for especially taking the time to provide all that data. I think that was extremely helpful for everyone preparing for BFCM. And over here at Trefoil, we're all about diversifying your ad spend. And with Impact, not only are you getting a chance to work with some of the best creators, but also publishers and also partners out there. So definitely take a time to look over Impact. And then plus, on top of everything else, they integrate with Trip Oil. So you can see their fabulous insights pushed into Trip Oil as well too. But, again, thank you so much. Please provide your information in the chat so everyone knows how to reach out to you. Thanks again, Brian. Alright. My god. This has just been so exciting. How is everyone feeling? Let's live up the chat a little bit. I have a really fun this guy has been in the industry for a really long time. He knows a lot about everything. So very excited to have our friend John over from Tapcart. Already look. He's already prepared. Not even on stage. I'm already sharing the screen. So once he gets on but please welcome John, any let me just check one second. Also, for the chat, if anyone has any questions for any of our present our speakers' day, like, you have the experts right here, right now. So please feel free to also ask questions. They'll stay back to answer anything in the chat, or you can also reach out and, like, contact them as well too. Let's just one second. This is your Taylor, this is your ninth BM weekend, and you're still feeling learned a ton today. That is great. That that mean that we we've done our job well, so thank you so much. And, John, he's finally on stage. Nice to see you. Hey, Aaron. Thanks for the tee up. I appreciate it. Yeah. Not a problem at all. Alright. I'll get you get off the stage. It's all yours. Awesome. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate you sticking around. I know it is, at the end of summer. Like it's been mentioned before, there's been a ton of good content thus far, and, hopefully, we can add, to the mix there. So really happy to be here with you today. My name is John Nutt. I'm the director of ecosystem partnerships at Tapcart. Based in Chicago, in New York today. This is not my background. I'm actually in a in a hotel for a conference, but been in the ecosystem for about ten years across, mostly Shopify ecosystem companies. So I've seen my fair share of BFCMs, and this is gonna be an exciting one. I feel like every BFCM is dominated by one central theme. This one seems to be the first, like, AI, native, BFCM. But there's a ton more data outside of that that I'm excited to dive into. But before we do that, I wanted to quickly just highlight if you're unfamiliar. So Tapcart is the only Shopify Plus certified mobile commerce platform. So we work with 3,000 of the leading Shopify mobile apps. We process over $10,000,000,000 in e commerce sales through those apps, many of which are brands that you probably have shopped with or are very familiar with today. We essentially help brands launch a dedicated mobile app at the center of their retention and their loyalty strategy. We power some of the apps that, again, you're very familiar with, and, if you'd like to download one of them to see what we're talking about, feel free to do that, while I'm while I'm chatting. So, today, like, twenty minutes ago, we just launched our BFCM data report, that we have Triple Whale, and rebuy that are both on this call, as a part of. So we've done this for the past five years, and there's there's an enormous amount of data that we've that we've gathered. Talking to 1,205 actual shoppers. Right? What's going to genuinely motivate them to shop? How are they thinking about this year as opposed to last year? What's changed? What's stayed the same? And being able to get a really good sense of how best to meet customers where they are. And as we can see, there's lots, to to dive into. The four key themes are the four shifts that are defining this Black Friday. Demand is not the problem. Capturing it is. AI shopping finally hitting its inflection point. Right? This is probably the one that you, assume would be on the slide. The calendar, being moved. Right? BFCM not just being a weekend, but being an entire shopping season starting as early as September. I think I saw a stat that says 66 of shoppers are gonna start their shopping in October at the latest. And then, ecommerce shopping, especially around the holidays, is predominantly mobile. Right? I think that Tamanna mentioned earlier, 70% of shoppers shopping on mobile for this BFCM. A lot of our brands see seventy five, eighty percent, 85%. Right? So it's just the fact that mobile is the, primary channel that you should be optimizing for to meet customers where they are. So let's dive into that last bucket there. I think we've we've talked about a good majority of these, buckets before. So I'll I'll spare you some of those, and let's just talk about the mobile, the mobile opportunity. So 84% of shoppers expect their favorite brand to have an app. Right? I think we've all shopped on the Sephora app, the Starbucks app, maybe even the Amazon app. Right? Consumers, have, said to us they say that, 35% of them, it's very important that their that their favorite brand app, has a a mobile app. And 49% of them are saying that it's somewhat important. Right? So a brand app went from a nice to have to expected kind of in a single year, and you can see some of that shift. Right? 33% to 35%, 44% to 49%. Downloading a brand's app is now mainstream behavior. Right? 65% of Gen z and millennials have apps for most or all of their favorite brands. Right? And so we see the the shift and the growing sentiment behind wanting to translate the mobile traffic that you already have into a more owned stickier channel. And so you might be asking yourself, okay. Like, what are the incentives? Like, why would I want to download the app in the first place? Right? And so, a good way to think about it is that discounts rent the attention, but loyalty earns permanence. Right? And so if we think about some of the incentives that get customers to download the app in the first place, these trends are are probably fairly, understandable, but some of them might be a bit interesting to walk through. So a discount or an offer, still gonna be fairly compelling. This is historically what I think a lot of BFCM campaigns have been centered around, but I'm really happy to see that, you know, loyalty rewards and points, better shopping experience, exclusive content or or products, are holding their own and being a significant driver for why customers are wanting to download or engage with the app in the first place. If we think about it, there's, a lot of our brands that have found a way to, to drive app installs, to drive the app as a differentiated channel. It's all about building the right incentive structure. Right? As I'm gonna show in a little bit, one of our brands, Oh, Poly, they do forty eight hours early access in app only. Right? They release their new collections, their new products to their app customers first because they know that the app customers are the highest LTV channel that a brand has. Let me let me say that again. Of all of our customers, right, 3,000 Shopify merchants, 95% of them said that their app customers have the highest LTV of all other channels. And so it's really important for our brands and for you if you're out there and you don't have an app today to consider how you might be able to translate your loyal your loyal customer following into kind of the LTV of your dreams by getting them into the app as a channel. Let's hear from one of our our partners as well. AvEx, a very, very well trusted, agency in the space that we work really closely with, says many brands have sophisticated acquisition machines, but underbuilt retention infrastructure. Right? This is what we see time and time again, is that brands are really excited to acquire the customers around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but they don't always have the full strategy behind how they're gonna retain them, where they're gonna be most sticky, how they're gonna drive customer lifetime value. And and John from, Access, mobile is where that gap lives. Right? A branded app experience gives your highest LTV customers a reason to come back. Right? The right incentives. And it gives your team the data and direct communication channels to actually nurture that relationship. Right? So you're spending all this energy, all this time and effort on acquiring customers this Black Friday. Make sure you have the retention piece equally thought out. And again, you can't optimize what you can't see. And this is across all of your channels, but it's incredibly true about mobile as well. And so that's why I'm incredibly excited to hint at the fact, that Triple Whale and Tapcart have been working over the past year or so to build something that helps not only our 3,000, customers that that, are working with Tapcart today, but also brands that are, that have an app or app curious to be able to tell that story, to be able to not just report on the data, but to be able to react on the data. So Triple l tells tells brands when demand is happening, and Tapcart is able to give brands their own marketing surface, to act on that demand. So with our new integration that is, launching next month, so this is a a world premiere. It's the first time that we've talked about this externally. So, get excited in the chat. Our new integration, is bringing native app performance into a dedicated mobile app analytics section inside of the Triple Whale, product, and it's gonna be separate from from web traffic. So you'll be able to truly see, mobile app as a cohort and be able to trap, track that, activity and those analytics separately from how you're tracking your your web activity as well. And so some of the analytics and some of the data that you'll be able to see is gonna be be able to directly give you more power, to be able to influence some of your BFCM, decisioning. Right? There's a lot that you're gonna do ahead of time to build out the strategy, but you can also be nimble. Right? You have a team or maybe you're a team of one, but regardless, you can take the data that you're seeing and be able to act on that data, to iterate throughout the BFCM season. As we know, it's now from September until the end of the year. Right? So if you see sessions are going up but add to cart, a percentage is going down, you should be asking yourself, is my discovery working? Are shoppers finding the right products? You might be able to update your merchandising, your collections, how customers are searching, product placement to discover, to, improve discovery. If your add to cart percentage is going up, but then your conversions are going low, something's happening. Right? There's some sort of friction that's stopping your high intent shoppers, from purchasing. So you can use targeted push, which, again, I haven't talked about push, but it's a free channel. Let me say that again. Push is a free channel to engage with your customers. We have brands of ours that have sent hundreds of millions of push because it's just, a an incredible way to break through the fourth wall. In addition to the email and SMS that a lot of our brands are doing, they had push as the third prong to their own marketing flywheel, and are able to bring customers back into their car in an incredibly cost effective way. Reinforce, Black Friday, Cyber Monday urgency, any sort of offer that's live, and maybe even offer them free shipping. Whatever incentives are aligned with what you feel is best, what you've seen best translate for your customer base. Few more examples here. New customers going up, but then conversions are going down. You should be asking yourself, hey. Are we converting the right traffic into customers? Maybe you have explored a new paid channel. Maybe you're, doing a new, a a new ad that's going into a new market. You you should be asking yourself, okay. Like, are we acquiring the right customers? Are these actually customers that are gonna be our high, LTV customers that we're looking for? So promote an app exclusive offer, potential potentially some sort of first purchase incentive, or get them into the loyalty flow so you can actually start to convert those customers, and and get them to be in your loyalty segment. And last example here, your app sessions are going up and your revenue is going up. This is a this is a great problem to have. Right? You should be asking yourself, like, what's driving our strongest app customers? Double down on what's working, the winning campaigns, double down on the push strategy, the product categories that seem to be translating well. And, again, continue to find ways to differentiate the app experience, that will keep customers coming back time and time again. So, just some time for a quick, case study or two. So this is a a merchant of ours. If you're not familiar, incredible brand, Credo Beauty. They are a beauty retailer. They have about 1,800, ingredients that are not allowed in their products. They're a clean beauty, leader in the space. They're an omnichannel brand. They have about nine, storefronts, I believe, maybe more. And they launched an app with us recently that's incredibly on brand for them. Right? They're very content focused. They're very, discovery focused because they they do they do work with, I think, over a thousand different brands. And so they really give customers the ability to use the app as a place to discover new products, to read and educate themselves inside of the journal, to be able to feel good about the the products that they're purchasing. Right? These are products you're putting on your face. Right? These are incredible, incredibly intimate products that you wanna make sure that you have a good relationship with, and the app helps them to to be able to translate their brand ethos in an incredible way. Not only does the brand ethos come to life, but they're able to see 15% of all first orders are coming directly, into the app. Right? That's an incredible, for first purchase step. 30% higher units per transaction inside of the app than their online store, and 23% higher average order value in the app than they're finding, on the online store. I think they hit their their six month revenue goal in just two months with us. So incredible, success that that one of our merchants, Credo Beauty, has seen. Oh, Poly, this is one of the merchants that I mentioned that has really trusted us, on the TapCards strategy. And this is something that you can do around Black Friday for sure. Right? Again, write BFCM incentives, get customers to download the app in the first place, and be able to turn those first time customers into engaged, VIPs. 40% of our total revenue coming from the app. That's insane. 18% higher average order value in the app, versus the website. And again, just a enormous amount of those cost effective free push notifications sent. And last but not least, I'm sure we, are all familiar with this band. If you're not, they're a luggage retailer that was just acquired recently by a Samsonite. They've been absolutely crushing it. They've been with us for about four years now. They see that 13% of their total US revenue comes from the app, almost 20% higher average order value, and, again, the app converting higher than some other channels as well. If you're asking yourself, it's October 25. Like, do I even have time to think about this? The answer is is yes. We just launched Barnes and Noble in two weeks. If you're Barnes and Noble size or smaller, then we got you. We have a team. We've been around for ten years. We've, we've definitely, had we have 10 Black Fridays under our belt, over the past several years, so we would love to to engage with you. Feel free to to scan this if you want to connect with me more on LinkedIn. And, again, really appreciate the time. It's always nice to do these sort of sessions and see what, has changed from years past and and how we can prepare brands to knock it out of the park this year. So thank you so much. I'll put my information in the chat, and, hopefully, we can chat more. Awesome. Thank you so much, John. Yeah. I think the. biggest thing that I've seen the evolution, especially with Tapcart, is that whole it's a nice to have with the mobile app versus it's it's necessary. Like, my favorite. brands and now that actually become my favorite brands are the ones that actually have their own app. Just, a, from the personal customer experience. Those push notifications are killing me because I spend too much. There's too many good I there's too many good promos and launches. And then lastly, even Adan mentioned it well too, like, the the releasing of the the products, but also Yep. sales. Just that sales you can only get on the app itself. Like, it is honestly, it's it's something that everyone needs to have. If you don't have a mobile app, definitely reach out to John. There is actually a question for you too in the chat if you can stick around, and thanks again for. the presentation. I could do it. Awesome. Thanks, Aaron. Alright. Alright. We have even more great content. If you can even believe it, but there's more great content coming. Very, very excited to be bringing on stage ELT marketing. We have Ariel and Frank from the team that will be speaking. Let's see. Yes. There they are. And, we are also did you guys have, a deck that you were sharing today? Yeah. Pulling it up. I love it. You have your branch shirt on showing off elk. This is great. Yep. Trying to represent. It was so good. Alright. And then once we let's just see. Yeah. Beautiful. Alright. The stage is yours, guys. Alright. Jumping in. I'm Frank Sanchez, cofounder CEO here at Elk. We're a performance marketing agency, but we're also backed by an AI search, and DevOps team here. So kinda helping brands with every problem that they're gonna come up against. Partnering up with Ario today, who's one of our senior media buyers here, give you some lessons and best practices and philosophy, around BFCM. And we've taken this from about 750 plus BFCM campaigns. So, we're gonna talk kind of more philosophy and how we can operationalize. If you're working with an agency, make sure that your agency and you are communicating. And then if your brand team, how are you all communicating internally during game day? So I've learned a lot today. Really, thank you, Triple Oil, for putting this on. It's always amazing to get everybody together and and share ideas. Alright. So with that, I think we're gonna kick it off. Alright. Awesome. So, yeah. Some of our, top, like, our biggest, learnings overall, is listed out here on the slide. The biggest thing that we've learned from managing, BFCM across different brands is that most of the problems that show up during the weekend and during the key moments, they actually started, weeks earlier. It's rarely just, like, a media buying or a launch, issue. You get to Friday and then suddenly realize the offer is changing slightly, inventory is tighter than expected, creative is still in the approval process. We don't have ready creatives that are ready to go and nobody knows who has the authority to make the decisions and who is the key stakeholders for key areas of the campaign itself. One of the biggest mistakes is waiting until Black Friday to, like, really start buying, really start your media buying efforts. We wanna enter that period with, our overall ecosystem and our warmer audiences to already be exposed to the brand, engage with the creatives, have already visited the site, ideally given us enough signal to understand what's working and what's not. The other piece is continuity. The ad all the way from, like, the front end, the ad experience to the landing page, to the offer, the cart, checkout, the email and SMS that follows, they all need to feel like they're saying the same thing and they're coming from the same campaign. So our mindset going into BFCM is remove as many decisions as possible before the weekend actually starts. Because when volume starts to hit, the team should be executing a plan, not creating one out of thin air during BFCM itself. And that brings us to, the next slide which is creative. One mistake that we see is thinking that you need an enormous volume of highly produced, high quality creative for BFCM. That's not necessarily the case. You need enough creative to cover the different jobs that your creatives have to do. So static is still incredibly powerful, especially during promotional period. Offer first, product led, gifting, reviews. These are all simple concepts, but they communicate very quickly. And we also want videos, product and use creatives, creator content, UGCs. And recently, the, really great promising, like, data that we're seeing with partnership posts when a brand has strong creator content available using the creator's handles and also dynamic, catalog feeds to cover the overall breadth of the product and our retargeting and potentially prospecting. As an example, us at Elk, we partner with another company called Marpipe that can custom design, the imagery that comes from our product feed and it's it's really promising. It shows really, really powerful results when we're just utilizing the catalog itself. The mix is going to be different for every single brand. This is not something that every single check every single box needs to be checked. The point is that you have to look at your budget, your brand, and the content that you actually have available to make sure you have enough variety to sustain the amount of spend that you're planning for BFCN. During that promo, clarity usually beats cleverness, so making sure that the message and the overall offer is very, very clear. And that brings us to the next slide that I wanna highlight. This question right here, are your ads better than this? It's not rhetorical. It's like an actual question that we're trying to ask. This is basically the creative benchmark that we like to use going into BFCM. What we really want to make sure is that the offer is impossible to miss. These are very different brands, different examples, but the key things that we wanna highlight here are the up to messaging. You immediately know why you should stop, why you should click, and what the promo is. It's really, and that's really like the pressure test we want brands to use during BFCM. So is your ad making the offer clearer than, like, these examples that you see right here? Because during a period where every brand is competing for attention, we don't want the customer spending two, three seconds trying to figure out what the ad is actually saying. That doesn't mean every ad has to be plain or discount led or like super simplistic. You just have to keep it You can still build it around your brand and around your product. So just making sure that it's offer first, product second, everything else supports these two things. During BFCM, clarity really wins. Simple is the benchmark. We call it KISS, keep it simple and stupid because we want to win the click during BFCN because every every like, every single person, specifically on the paid social channels, they are being bombarded with ads. So you have to do what needs to be done to in order to win that click. I'll just say, like, we work with a lot of amazing creative teams, and we don't want to harness, their creative output. But we should also include some of these, like, very basic ad sets, and they typically are gonna outperform the extremely complicated, overthought out concept. And so this is just have this in your mix. You know, don't hurt your creative seems feelings, but have this in your mix. It's gonna win the click, and it's what people wanna see, during this very special time. Alright. So this one, it becomes especially important once performance, start to move rather quickly and you're a little bit more reactionary as a media buyer, during BFCM. We want three numbers to basically be agreed upon with the particular brand or the stakeholders that are the main decision makers of the brand itself. The base budget, the pre approved scaling and the absolute maximum because based on the data that you get, you're gonna see opportunities to either capitalize on performance or to pull back. Because the worst time to start figuring out whether you're allowed to spend another $50,000 is when the opportunity is already happening, when the data is right in front of you. And we're not making that decision from, like, one meta metric or one in platform ROAS number. We're looking at the overall business, the overall revenue, inventory available, the media efficiency ratio or MER. We're looking at media signals that includes in platform performance but also includes third parties like Triple Whale. It depends on the attribution, model that you guys use. If it's going to be triple, linear paid, or the new clicks and deterministic views, we've seen it to show, like, great it's really promising when you are when your channel mix is heavily focused on paid social platforms where you need a lot of view through data, clicks and deterministic views. Seems to be very promising utilizing Triple Whale. So basically, we're looking for anything outside media that can prevent us from scaling site issues, checkout problems, inventory, tracking issues, if it goes dark, and overall operations. So from there, we try to make the decisions really simple. Green is basically saying that performance is there. Nothing is blocking us and we can name the amount we want to add. Yellow is basically saying that we're close. We're hitting the targets, but we don't have that much margin or that much like over, targets. Signals are kinda mixed and we need more data. So we identify exactly what we're waiting for and when we're going to check again to see if we're either green or still at yellow. Red means something is off, so we protect the budget and we just focus on solving the problem first to make sure do we do what we can to get back to yellow and hopefully green as soon as possible. The important part is that everyone knows these rules before the weekend starts. Yeah. I second all of that. I you kinda have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. Certain campaigns, we haven't been hitting numbers. And instead of dumping that incremental, we're gonna save that budget for a future date, and we're gonna focus on holiday gifting afterwards. So really make sure that whether it's your brand team, your ops team, making sure you guys are all aligned with the framework that you're establishing as you go into the the busy season. I always say, like, the FCM, those days are magical. They remind me of a pre iOS world. Right? Like, things just work really, really well, but at that, it's like the one time of year where we're really, like we're almost like stock day trading. And so be nimble and yeah. The the the one of the biggest game changers for us in the past five years is, like, having that real time dataset that Triple Whale is providing us and not having to worry about, you know, delayed attribution and things like that. So that that's really helped us operationalize. Alright. Okay. So on the retention front, I wanna give everyone here free license to spam your list. This is the weekend to be showing up in inboxes. So email, SMS, early access, launch. Make sure you're dropping as many emails as you feel comfortable with into folks' inboxes because everyone else is. You get a little bit of forgiveness from your end consumer here. If you do have unsubscribe metrics that you're concerned about, like, now is the time to kind of ignore those. So, yeah, send full list, send often, send updates, really make a strong call to action, create that FOMO. If products are selling out quickly, let your end customer know that they shouldn't be sitting on the timeline. Really lean into that foe FOMO. Fill up those inboxes. Always always open to a text only email as well, help with that helping with that deliverability. So, yeah, just some license to push, guys. This is the time. Alright. And finally, this is, like, another set of examples of how import how important it is to be prepared for the promo as opposed to dealing with being more reactionary during the weekend itself. We actually like to assume that something is going to break and in order to practice and figure out what needs to be done about it, not because. we're pessimistic, but because BFCM is probably, like, the worst possible weekend to discover that nobody knows what to do when something goes wrong or who the main decision maker is. So before we launch, we can literally rehearse scenarios like these. Tracking goes dark at 11PM. What do we look at instead? Billing fails. Do we have backup cards? Are there limits, confirmed? Is there lines of credit, like, built out? Checkout goes down. Who has the authority to cut spend and who contacts the site team and who's the key, stakeholder, key decision maker in those areas? Or maybe, like, one of the best problems to have, like, the hero product is selling out. What product are we shifting spend towards next? If we're, majority of, like, the traffic is landing on a collection page, are we doing a reassortment of the product line that we're offering to make sure that the hero product is, isn't shown as sold out? Examples like that. So, the specific answers and the specific issues may vary by company slash brand, but what what matters is that the first action and the owners are already known and predetermined. Because during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, speed matters, and speed doesn't come from making faster decisions under pressure. It comes from being prepared to figure out who the decision maker is and reaching a solution as fast as possible. Yeah. I think I totally. yeah. I just I mean, how many times has Meta gone down in the last five years, you know, like, the day before. You have to prepare for the the unanticipated outage. You know, we're all kind of I don't think I've had, like, a a Thanksgiving, where I don't have the football, which is my my go bag with my laptop and my my, Wi Fi, hotspot because, like, you just have to be ready. I highly recommend, whether it's your agency or your brand team, you do those check ins daily, and you have this racy framework, essentially, and those people's cell phones. Like, people aren't checking Slack as much. They're not gonna be checking email as often. So make sure that you have everyone's cell phone that you need to make decisions with. I've been on, you know, sir like, had to leave, Thanksgiving dinner to call a brand team to say, hey. We're hot. It's 50 we need another 50. Let's go. But we've also had that, hey. It's not hot. Our offer isn't working. We need to change up the offer, or we need to pull back and and fight this battle another day. So communication, is is paramount when we're working across so many cross functional teams. Ari, did you have another point here? Just a finishing statement talking about BFCM. It's not about reacting really well for four days. It's about preparing well enough that when those four days arrive, there are few surprises left to solve. Agreed. Cool. So, you know, the war game here is really know your plan, make the sale very, very clear to your customer, and have the answers ready. Like, who are you going to for real time decisions? Who are you gonna escalate to? And do this, you know, by war playing this out, and then constant communication throughout the sale, throughout the different modes in which you've established clear lines of communication. Blast your list. And, guys, I hope you have an amazing Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday season. Feel free to reach out at us. I'll drop my info in the, in the group chat here. But, yeah, wishing you all the best of luck, and thank you again, Triple Whale, for putting this all together. Of course. Yes. Thank you guys so much. thank you guys for attending. And, honestly, gang, like, if you've been finding that the last couple of BFCMs have been a little little more hectic than you than you wanted them to be or you're not getting the results that you were hoping for, I know at the beginning of today, we talked about some of the challenges that everyone's nervous for coming up to BFCM. You know, it might be time to be working with someone like an e l f marketing that is thinking about all those steps. Right? So, anyways, we have still more to come. My favorite PM in the industry. Chase, how are you doing? Doing great. You were already so excited to get on here. I couldn't even finish what I was saying. So this is so great. So Chase is coming from Snapchat. I will let him take the stage. Very excited for your presentation. Amazing. Can you guys all see my screen? I can't tell if you guys are. Can you see? Okay. Looks like you can. Perfect. Alright. So hey, everyone. As Erin mentioned, my name is Chase Matthew. I'm at Snapchat, and I lead our measurement partnerships. I'm very excited to talk with you guys about how you can use Snapchat to help make your Black Friday and Cyber Monday growth even more successful in 2026. Now I really wanna keep this simple. We've heard a lot of great strategies so far, and you've heard a lot of great things from people. But at the end of the day, one of the biggest hit things that I've seen throughout all of my years in media has been, first and foremost, just keeping everything simple. And so we're not for for Snapchat, we're not asking you to, like, reinvent your whole plan, your media plan, or make all these new creatives. It's about making three really practical basic moves and really doubling down on those fundamentals. So first, that means starting early. Next, it's about taking the creative that you have and making it work harder for you. And finally, it's about measuring Snapchat and all of your platforms across that full customer journey. And so during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, every dollar really matters. And so the question here isn't about which channel is driving the most conversions, but the better questions that you wanna ask is is the channels that I'm I'm working with, are they driving incremental customers? Are they building intent? And are they con are they efficiently, converting customers when the auctions are getting expensive? So let's go ahead and dive into the data. Across all major platforms, Snapchat is showing incredible efficiency. We have a 3.8 x ROAS. We have a 3.42% conversion rate and a CPA of $21.97. This is all based on Triple Whale's twenty twenty five ecommerce bay benchmark data. Now before we move any further, I really wanna make sure that we're thoughtful about how we're interpreting this data. This is not a promise that all brands will see these types of results. After all, we know that performance is really dependent on your category, your creative, your signal quality, and, of course, your campaign setup. But that directional takeaway is very important here. Snapchat gives all of your brands an efficient way to reach customers and convert them during one of the most expensive and pivotal times of the year. So if right now your media mix is heavily concentrated in those same few platforms, Snapchat gives you an opportunity to find more incremental customers and do this without adding more pressure on channels where you're seeing significantly rising costs. Now a lot of people have mentioned this year today, and I wanna double down on this, that Black Friday, Cyber Monday planning starts well before the rush. Holiday shopping starts way before people think. And so our our research shows that half of daily Snapchatters start planning for Christmas and New Year's well before Halloween. 60% are looking for holiday inspiration before December, and almost half of these customers are beginning buying before the advent calendars are even up. So like I said before, the demand is coming in well before Cyber Week. And so if you wait for that peak weekends to start, you're asking our platforms to do a lot to find the right customers, to learn from your signals, to drive results at that exact moment when that auction pressure is the highest. And that's a really difficult time to start learning. So what we see with brands that perform the best is they launch early enough to build that consideration, to collect signals, and to understand which audiences and creatives are working well before that most expensive part of the season happens. Now you don't need to move your entire budget forward. Even a deliberate early test can give you the learning and momentum that you need to enter that weekend with a lot more confidence. Now your creative is key here. You know? This is a huge opportunity for you guys, and this is where we really wanna double down on the idea of being really practical on your messaging. Now you don't need to create a whole new set of creatives to get started on Snapchat. If you have strong vertical nine by 16 assets on other platforms, bring it over and adapt them. But here's the key. You wanna make sure that you use these creatives in a way that's native to how people actually use Snapchat. 67% of daily Snapchat users use Snapchat to talk with their friends about q four gift ideas and present planning. 57% share videos and create our content with friends for shopping inspiration, and 44% coordinate shopping with their friends and family and chats about deals and discoveries. So here's the thing. You have this great creative, but what you wanna do is make sure that the creative you have is working for the audiences that you that are using it. So you you wanna make sure that this creative is designed to stop a scroll. It should be useful and interesting enough where someone can send it to someone else. So to make that happen, our recommendations are, one, keep it short. A few people earlier here were talking about grabbing attention immediately. That's key. Keep a product forward. Make it really simple. I loved how the pre the previous speaker was talking about keep it simple. Right? Keep it short, keep it product focused, and then keep it authentic and easy to share. At the end of the day, people wanna relate to the brand and people wanna be able to share this with their friends. So show the product quickly, make the value clear, and use a voice that sounds like a real person and not like a commercial or sales pitch. Now the point here is not to make your brand less performance oriented, but it's making sure that the creative fits the behavior of the platform and the people on the platform. Now we know that social influences holiday shopping, but here, I really wanna double down on the idea that platforms like Snapchat are not only influencing the last click. For daily Snapchat users, social plays a role across the entire path to purchase. 67% discovery, 54% during research, 59% of purchase, and even 49% post purchase. So this is a much bigger role than simply, checking if Snapchat helps with that last click. A lot of people here were talking about different types of models that incorporate this whole journey, and this is a huge part of getting the most value out of your ad dollars. Think about it this way. Someone may discover a product on Snapchat, research it later through search, buy it on another site, and then share it with a friend. If you only look at last click, you're missing so much of this whole customer journey. So the recommendation that we have here for you is to evaluate Snap across that whole customer path, not just the final click. And to do this, you have to start with the basics. Make sure your pixel and your conversions API are set up properly. Make sure you're using the appropriate bidding strategy. And finally, make sure you give platforms strong signals so that they have the opportunity to learn from it. Now for agencies and measurement partners, this is also where the conversion becomes really valuable. We wanna be able to move beyond which platform is providing that last click and ask which channels are helping create the right demand for you, influencing consideration, and generating that incremental purchase for you. Now to close out and bring this all together, I wanna go back to those original three moves that I talked about. First, start early. We're in August. We have plenty of time before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So let's go ahead and start building that consideration and start getting all of those learnings before the peak auction pressure happens. Next, let's go ahead and reuse what works. If you have those vertical, creative assets, go ahead and repurpose. Make sure that they're short, authentic, product forward, and easy to share. And third, let's go ahead and measure the whole journey. Platforms and, like Triple Whale give you so much data and give you so much access to the whole customer journey. So we wanna make sure that you're connecting discovery, research, purchase, and that post purchase activity instead of just looking at that last click. And there's a really strong reason to take this seriously. 58% of daily Snapchatters agree that they that content that they see on Snapchat leads them to make purchases or plan to make purchases. And so my closing thought for all of you is this. The brands that start with Snap well before the peak are better positioned to win not just the click, but the whole Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend. And so you don't have to choose between efficiency and growth. The opportunity here is to use Snapchat to find those incremental audiences, to build intent earlier, and to make every dollar in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday window bring it bring even more benefit to you. Thank you so much, everyone. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'll put my details in the chat. Awesome. Thank you so much, Chase. I've mentioned this before, but here at Trip Oil, we really do believe the importance of diversifying your your ad spend and what better way to do that than on platforms that have proven, some amazing results. And just there, you have heard, like, 58% of users reported the fact that they actually bought something because of Snapchat. So, yeah, if you haven't tried it yet, try it now. We still have time to test things out. Chase is also gonna provide his information in the chat if you did have any more more questions. Thank you so much for the amazing presentation. It's always a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much, guys. Yeah. Of course. Alright, friends. I know it's been a long one, but, yeah, like, just amazing content. Like, I could just be listening to everyone for hours. So we have another great speaker. We have Meredith over from TikTok. Excuse me. It was chugging water before this. Very excited to have you here today. If you wanna take a moment just to pull up your screen so we can make sure that we can see your presentation. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out how. Just bear with me one second. No worries. Just on the side, there's a little share screen. Ah, I see. And, again, to everyone here in the chat, if you do have any questions, please use this time to ask the experts as well. And, yeah, everything looks great. I'll leave the stage to you, Meredith. Perfect. Thank you so much. I can't really see you guys while I'm sharing my screen. So if you have any questions, please pop in the chat here. Just to start, my name is Meredith Zhang. I lead the agency measurement team at TikTok. So me and my team, we work with brands and agencies to understand what actually drives growth, not just who gets the credit for. So PFCM is a particularly interesting moment for me because when the stakes and spend go up, good measurement matters even more. So to star, I always think BFCM is not just a stress test for your media strategy. It's also a test for your measurement stack as well. Right? Because you're spending more, promotions are changing so quickly, consumers are bouncing between discovery, search, email, your site, etcetera. So a small measurement blind spot in September can become a very expensive budget decision in November. And we actually saw this pretty clearly in a recent analysis with Triple Whale across 13 brands. So when earlier and assisted touchpoints were included, the customer value associated with TikTok was 2.7 times higher than what last click has shown. And for new customers, the gap was even bigger, which was around 3.2 times. And that was a meta analysis. And when you zoom in from the aggregates to a single brand, the practical impact was actually become even more obvious. So this is a case study with Hackclub. So Hackclub is a great example of showing why this matters. This brand already has some ideas from metrics like engagement, follower, growth, and post purchase survey results show that TikTok was working. But once they added deterministic view through behaviors to their MTA model, they discovered about 413% lift in TikTok attributed revenue and a 157% more new customers that last click had missed, and a 61% improvement in measured CAC versus last click. And since then, this brand has changed how they evaluate creative, how they thought about conversion campaigns, and how confidently they invested. So to me, the risk isn't about undercrediting a platform like TikTok. The risk is about making the wrong budget decision before or because your measurement only sees part of that journey. And, also, one of the biggest measurement traps during BFCM, in my opinion, is confusing who closed the sale was who created the demand. Right? Think about how people actually shop. Think about how we all actually shop. Right? We might discover a product through a TikTok creator. We see another video on a different platform a few days later. We might see a email was an offer, search for the brand, and then we eventually buy. Right? Last click, give the trophy to the last interaction as we all know, but it doesn't necessarily tell you where the journey started. So that's exactly, what we saw across clients where we could actually observe the path. Right? TikTok appear as the first and middle touch points in 77% of TikTok touched journeys, and the lag between the first TikTok touch to purchase was almost eighteen days. So especially going to BFCM, you want a measurement framework that gives this discovery enough time and enough visibility to show up. And the channel that closes the demand and the channel that creates the demand aren't always the same one. And that's especially relevant to BFCM because they argues for building demand before promotional weekends rather than evaluating everything through a short conversion window. And I wouldn't necessarily ask a brand to find one perfect single source of truth. I would ask them to triangulate. So MTA providers like Triple Whale can give you a much richer cross channel view than just looking at last click alone. But attribution, at the end of the day, still answers a very different question from incrementality. So if you, as a brand, have the scale and the budget, incrementality tests like conversion lift or geo lift can tell you what TikTok actually cost or drove. And on the other hand, tools like can help answer the bigger budget allocation questions across channels. But at the same time, I also recognize incrementality and can be sometimes like a rich person's game. So if you are a smaller d two c brand, it doesn't mean triangulation is not for you. We do have tools like post purchase survey, PPS, which are also incredibly helpful. They allow you to ask consumers directly questions like, where did you first hear about us? It's simple. It's relatively lightweight, and it gives you another signal to compare against your attribution data, especially if you're still using last click. So overall, attribution tells you where the value is showing up. Post purchase survey tells you what customers remember influencing them. Experiments or incrementality tells you what was incremental. And tells you how these pieces work together over time. And you don't need every tool. Right? You just need enough independent signals that you're not betting your BFCM budget on one lens. Because like many speakers have mentioned today, the most expensive time to learn whether your strategy works is the Black Friday weekend. So September and October should be your test and learn window. Make sure your signals are set up correctly. You start testing the decisions that are going to matter when you scale, like your creative, your targeting, best strategy, offers, and campaign set up. One thing I'd absolutely try on TikTok is SmartPlus, so which is TikTok's AI powered performance solution. SmartPlus has used automation across areas like targeting, optimization, and creatives to help brands find performance opportunities faster. And with the upgraded smart plus experience, advertisers now can choose different levels of automation and control. So you don't just you don't need to just turn on automation and assume it's working, and you can test it as well. You can use TikTok's Split Test, which is AB test, to compare SmartPlus against your existing campaign setup, or you can use Split Test to isolate specific variables like bidding, targeting, creative, or budget strategy, and understand what actually drives the difference. So by the time September comes around, you know what performed better and you know what you're comfortable putting more money behind. Another thing that we encourage brands to think about is don't evaluate BFCM only on total revenue. Also ask where your new customers are actually coming from. BFCM is one of the rare moments where millions of consumers are actually open to discover and try do things. It's incredibly valuable, but only if your measurement can actually recognize the channel then that introduce them. So that's where our analysis, which Triple Whale, gets really interesting. Across the eight the 13 brands that we studied, TikTok accounted for about, 11.5% of the new customer value on average. And new customer value associated with TikTok was 3.2 times higher than what last click shown. And that's because a lot of these customers are closing on TikTok. They're discovering here, but they convert later and somewhere else. So to me, a really interesting question is not just how was my ROI looking this weekend, but did this media investment introduce my brands to my brand to customers that I would not have otherwise reached? And what are these customers worth to me beyond this weekend? So if I could leave everyone with three things going to BFCM, the first one is validate before you scale. Use September, October to learn so you're not paying November prices to answer basic questions. For instance, try SmartPlus on TikTok to see how it changes your CPA. Second is triangulate before you reallocate. Use attribution, PPS, incrementality, to answer different questions. Use the right tool for the decision you're making. And last but not least, measure demand creation as well beyond just demand capture. And especially for new customers, the touch points that introduce them to your brand may never get the last click credit. With that said, that's it that's it for me, and thank you so much for Triple Whale for organizing this. Yeah. No. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to have TikTok here and for you to speak on this, Meredith. That was great. I think the big thing that I took away, especially from this presentation, many. Obviously, you know, you wanna measure using a lot of different types of tools to actually be able to see real results. But I think also it's such a simple concept, but trial and error now, don't ask the simple questions during the most expensive time. Like, that that just like, I was like, yes. A 100%. Like, how like, that is the time that we need now to be going full force. It is a very expensive time, so do things now. And testing TikTok is definitely one of those. So thank you so much for your time, Meredith. Of course. And I'll pop my contact in the in the chat as well. That would be wonderful. Alright. I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but the last and surely not least, we have our friend Brian from Vibe. Gonna be speaking to us, one of our CTV partners. Very excited to have you guys here and for you to wrap up the presentation. So the stage is yours. Awesome. Thanks, Erin, and thank you guys so much for, having us today. It was really awesome session hearing all the speakers. As Aaron mentioned, last but not least, so I wanna keep it tactical. I wanna give you guys some real world, case studies, some, data points from last BSCM, what I saw on, CTV, for some of my accounts that I ran during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday period. So, with that being said, you know, if you don't know, anything about myself or VIVE, what we are is a streaming TV advertising platform where you buy connected television the same way that you buy paid social. Right? Log in, upload a spot, set a budget, build an audience, pick your inventory, and you're live. Right? We have over 500 premium plus channels like Disney plus, Hulu, Roku, Max, and we work with over 10,000 advertisers. No contracts, no commitments, go up there and run. And, you know, we're we're already plugged into the stack you guys are familiar with today. Right? Triple Whale being an awesome partner for attribution and then admin incrementality. Klaviyo is an audience partner. Shopify for, you know, store analytics as well. And recently, we were just acquired by Walmart, which is really exciting news for us as we look to really kind of bring connected television into the retail media landscape. So that's a really exciting update from our end. And really from this section of, you know, kind of who I am and and what I do, I'm a senior account executive here at Vibe. I've been in the connected television space for over two years. Prior to that, I was an influencer marketing for close to ten. So I've seen kind of how Black Friday, Cyber Monday shapes in terms of not just buying ads but also creating them as well. And, really, what I'm I'm I'm gonna be doing today is talking through the campaigns that I actually ran, with some of my clients last year. And so, really, when I look at my at these at these case studies I'm gonna be presenting and talking through, these these these brands are are seeing, like, you know, over $1,500,000 in attributed revenue from what we're seeing on connected television. And the part that that really matters the most for all of these different things is that I don't grade the homework. I'm really big on that, actually, over here at Vibe. We we we don't we don't use it. We actually use AAA a lot for a lot of these advertisers to actually measure the impact using the clicks and deterministic views model that you heard some of the other partners talk about in this session. And so, really, I'm not kinda gonna be here to tell you why it works. I'm actually gonna go through some, not necessarily horror stories, kinda like Frank was mentioning, where I'm gonna have to, you know, leave Thanksgiving and actually talk to, live clients. But things that I learned where it wasn't actually the CTV aspect that was not working, it was just how we set it up and, you know, things that you guys can take away from this as you prepare for Black Friday on your side. So I think the biggest thing to think about when you look at CTV as a performance channel, but also as a channel that you add into your marketing mix, you know, it's really important that the window is important to look at when an ad when an ad is shown on connected television and when you actually measure the impact of that. And so, like, for example, this is a a a really good example of, like, hey. What a one day window shows on connected television versus, like, a thirty day window. And that's why using partners like Triple Whale to actually show you the the impact later on down the funnel like a a top of funnel media platform like, you know, CTV is, really where that impact come from so that you can actually set a window that makes sense for your brand and actually measure the channel appropriately without turning things off, prematurely. And that's actually something that almost happened last year. So this is, the my one of my favorite case studies. It wasn't initially, but it turned out to be a great one. I have worked with, an ebike brand, so, like, those electric bikes that are pretty popular now. And we were doing an incrementality test. Started in October. We're looking to kind of find these incremental pockets, you know, of of audiences that could make sense for them come, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And when we initially ran the first read on the lift, we didn't see a great return. You know, as you can see here, only 41 in attributed incremental return on ad spend. But, ultimately, as you started to see the window extend out and really where the value of connected television came through, we were looking at, like, closer to a three x return after the Black Friday, Cyber Monday window from these buys. And I think that's the biggest piece of all of this is that oftentimes connected television sits kind of at the top of your, of of your media that you're buying online. And that's oftentimes means it's the first impression some people may get. Right? Like, where you're going out and you're seeing the brand on TV, then you're going on Snapchat, going on TikTok, and actually seeing these ads come up from these brands there, and then maybe going on Google. I think someone mentioned earlier, like, it's a circle. I really like that analogy because it it it's the truth more than anything. It it really is almost like an infinity loop of how people purchase. So really when you think about looking at this window, it it's really important to know, like, pick that window that makes sense. And oftentimes, it's not gonna be one day. It needs to be a lot longer for connected television simply because of how the media is delivered and how it's viewed and across all the other channels that you're running, from that perspective. And so, like, things that we wanna think about, like, in terms of, like, readiness for CTV come Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we wanna confirm a couple of things. We wanna first off confirm had the pixel that you place on-site that we give you guys that you install on your Shopify store, your WooCommerce store, wherever, is actually firing properly and it's passing back order IDs. Order IDs is extremely important specifically whenever we work with Triple Whale and their clicks and deterministic views model because that data point is is truthfully crucial in how they model out what percentage of the credit that connected television is gonna get for that for that actual order that's being placed. Next thing, making sure that we're reconnecting and verifying every single measurement audience integration that we have here available at Vibe, whether it's Triple Whale, Klaviyo. You wanna pull the the the numbers, making sure the data is passing, you know, through properly because, otherwise, that could be really, detrimental. And then also making sure that any audiences that I mentioned before are being used properly. Right? Oftentimes, we're seeing people upload Klaviyo lists, not just for targeting those people, but actually suppressing those customers so that you can actually, like, go after net new customers during a a Black Friday, Cyber Monday window. And then last, like, making sure that, like, you're raising your bid caps for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that that auction density that I think a few of the other party were talking about before. Like, if you look at something you set in October, you'll underspend before you get into November. Right? Like, raise that cap before you actually need it so that you can start to get these impressions and you're not wasted waiting for that to hit come that most crucial part of the of the holiday season that those those kind of two or three weeks ultimately. And, also, make sure that you have enough budget to run through the entire window. Right? Like, it's not just about, spending. It's not just about spending up until the the moment. You wanna make sure that you're properly funded throughout the entirety of the window, of the season actually, I should say. And then last, lock in that attribution window. I can't express this enough. Like, work with your finance team, work with your leadership team on a window that makes sense. You could ask, you know, are us, Triple Whale, whomever, on what window makes sense for your brand based off, like, how, you know, what the average order value is, what, you know, how long it takes someone to typically make a purchase. Is it like an impulse purchase? Is it more of a consideration purchase? Those are really important things to think about before we get into the this the season. So this is like a little checklist that I built up for you guys based on things that I saw last year. And then the next piece of this is, like, this is what, like, a purchase cost comparatively throughout the course of the window. So, like, a purchase that cost me a $191 in early November was actually $9 the week of Black Friday. It's the same creative. It's the same targeting. It's the same platform. The only thing that really changed is that people were showing up ready to buy. Right? And, ultimately, like, those two weeks those those two days, that's when you see the most amount of return. Right? Like, the sale doesn't just create the demand. Right? I think, Meredith was talking about this in her session, which I really liked. CTV can be a demand creation channel. Right? A sale doesn't necessarily do that. Starting earlier, it can it it will allow you to create that demand, and then when you apply that sale, it it moves that demand forward. So people who would have bought on December 5 buy on Black Friday instead. Right? So when you get a spike and then a dip right after, like, that's pretty common. Right? If you only look at Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you're taking that spike with none of the cost in consideration. Right? So I think that's a big piece of all this. And this is the biggest one. Like, in terms of, like, how the tactics of the channel actually work within connected television, drive up demand, do a ton of prospecting, find your audiences that are going to be able to be, you know, potentially in the market come that holiday season. And then during that week, switch it up to retargeting. This is an actual case study that I said where, like, retargeting purchases, like, retargeting people who hit your site but haven't made a purchase after you've already hit them with a ton of a ton of the ads before the sale is a great opportunity to really drive that return on ad spend during those during that actual holiday window. Right? Just think about the user behavior. I think everyone watches television during the holidays, myself included, whether that's football, Thanksgiving Day parade, you name it, it it's on. So So if you think about this opportunity where you're driving a ton of this demand and then people hit the site maybe before or during, you know, during that opportunity, they could be watching, you know, Thanksgiving Day football game and all of a sudden get your ad on television in an unskippable format, and that gives them the opportunity to buy. And then that's a tactical switch that a lot of brands make on connected television during the holiday season to think to think about as well. And then, ultimately, the the next piece of all this is, like, CPMs. Right? Like, your your your your your dollar that you spend on November 20 buys, like, a fifth fewer of the impressions. That's just natural when it comes to a programmatic auction for any type of inventory. And so, like, the CPM peaked in this example on November 19 and bottomed out on December 10. Like, your that November 20 buy bought a fifth fewer impressions than you did on the December 10. But if you just are are are forecasting it based off of, you know, the December 10, you're gonna miss a ton of the opportunity, early before the sale. So lock that creative in, in October. Use standard lengths. Right? Fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, sixty seconds. Those are big opportunities to make sure that you are capitalizing on effective media placement, especially on TV come the Black Friday season as well. And then the last piece of all this, like campaign structure. Right? Two or three strategies, split it out by audience. Audiences never by channel. I think this is one of the most common pitfalls that I see with any campaign set up on CTV. We give you the opportunity to select specific channels, specific day parts, which is all great. But during the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, time period, you wanna be everywhere. And more importantly, what you're trying to learn is what audiences are watching what content where so that you can plan again for the future as well. Right? Like, you know, keep your frequency at three to four per week per household, and make sure that your your your your campaigns are set up to not have any audience overlap between them. Right? Because let's say someone's in a prospecting campaign and they hit site, you wanna have that separate retargeting campaign that's gonna not allow them to go into the prospecting budget but be captured in to the retargeting campaign that actually captures that that actual sale at the end of the day as well. And then, you know, I think one of the things, that I I really liked, one of my brands do, and this is maybe something that we can't action on this year, but something to think about next year is actually simulating Black Friday, Cyber Monday throughout the course of the year. So I had a brand who runs basically two year two sales a year purely in in the essence to stress test their setup before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And not only stress test their setup, but stress test their spend increases leading up to the sale and what the spend needs to be after the sale while they are still incremental after all of that. So as you can see, like, in this sale, like, this example, this was in an April time period. They were actually spending about, you know, 80 k up and up running up until their sale period, which was the end of April. After that sale, they actually, you know, ramped down. And what we're working with them towards on this example is, what does that ramp up need to be to be incremental still? What does the sale period spend need to be at, you know, where they feel comfortable that in the retargeting, they're hitting enough people? And then after the sale, what spend level actually makes sense to actually reengage those audiences and work through some of that retention opportunity that we talked about earlier as well? And last but not least, a simple clean four step checklist to think about here just to re re rename all the stuff that I just talked about. Lock in your attribution window and your read dates for all of your testing that you're doing on connected television. Finish that checklist. I will share it for you guys if you want it. I can put I'll put my, LinkedIn and email in the chat afterwards. You wanna look at that checklist to make sure you're ready for it. Front load prospecting before the sale, focus in on retargeting during the sale, and always have some form of incrementality testing running presale, during sale, and after sale so that you know where your floors are in terms of spend to keep this channel, working and doing well. So that's it. Last but not least, like I said, thank you so much at Triple Whale for hosting, and, excited for this. Thanks, guys. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for a checklist. We need more checklist, especially coming from the CTV perspective. So thank you so much for that. And, also, if you can provide your information, that would be great in the chat so people know how to get ahold of you. And I know we're over time, so just really wanted before we wrap it up, just to give a big thank you to everyone who attended today's webinar. Your participation is what makes these sessions even possible, and we truly appreciate your engagement in making them informative and also really interactive. So if you do have any questions about Triple Whale, or comments about how we can even make these webinars even better, feel free to reach out, on my LinkedIn, or you can even email me at erinwatt@triplewhale.com. It is wonderful being your host, and we do look forward to seeing you at our next event. So thank you again, everyone, and we'll see you soon.