DTC1148: Amazon Fast Delivery, Google AI Search & BFCM Creative

Good morning!

Calendar’s full. Productivity TBD.

Let’s get into today’s read.

🚚 Amazon is letting sellers bid for two-hour delivery

Amazon is letting some FBA sellers bid to place products in its sub-Same Day network. Orders can arrive within two to five hours, and Amazon says products in the program have seen up to 12% higher sales than standard FBA products.

Sellers pay their bid only when a unit ships through the faster service. Test it on a few high-margin ASINs before paying Amazon another fee across your whole catalog.

✏️ Google Ads adds performance reporting for AI-generated Shopping titles

Google’s new Product titles report puts its AI-written title next to the title from your product feed. You can compare impressions, product clicks, CTR, cost and average CPC for each version.

There’s no conversion or revenue data, so a higher CTR does not mean Google wrote the better ad. Pull the report and check whether its titles leave out your brand, change a product detail, or make a promise your PDP cannot keep.

🔍 Google auto-expands AI Overviews and rolls out AI search reporting worldwide

Google has started opening some AI Overviews by default, pushing regular search results farther down the page.

At the same time, Google opened its AI search reports to every website worldwide, showing which pages appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover. The report includes impressions, countries and devices, but no clicks.

Google also added a global opt-out, but using it removes your content and links from those AI results entirely. Check the report and watch CTR on your comparison and informational pages before turning anything off.

🎙️ Google says a human voice can lift YouTube conversions by 12%

Google’s July U.S. data found that adding a human voice to Demand Gen in-stream ads was associated with 12% more conversions on average. Text overlays were associated with a 3% lift, while showing the brand during the first five seconds added 4%.

Ekimetrics also analyzed 778 campaigns for Google and found that stronger creative could more than double YouTube ROI. Before producing another batch of silent product montages, test the same concept with a spoken hook and your brand visible before the skip button arrives.

💰 Williams-Sonoma says shoppers using its AI assistant convert three times better

Williams-Sonoma says engagement with Olive, its AI shopping assistant, has grown 700% since January while revenue tied to it has grown 620%. The company also says Olive users convert at three times the rate of other shoppers.

Personalized visits across its ecommerce sites now bring in roughly nine times the revenue of an average visit, up from twice the revenue last year. Those shoppers may already be more ready to buy, but the numbers are strong enough to earn a test. Start with one high-traffic category where customers need help choosing between similar products.

💡 Your best evergreen ad is also your best BFCM ad

Pilothouse's Meta team keeps testing this combination every Q4, and it’s a consistent winner and low lift.

It’s genuinely this simple → take your best evergreen ad, the one Meta already knows converts, and add BFCM offer copy onto it.

It’s so low lift I don't think I even need to convince you why it’s worth a test, but if you’re skeptical, read this:

1️⃣ Uses existing signals

Meta already knows exactly who converts on your top evergreen creative. When you pair those proven creatives with BFCM copy, you keep all of the existing learnings from the creative and increase urgency to push users to purchase immediately.

2️⃣ Has low friction and high trust

Cold traffic can be skeptical of polished content and users are being bombarded with hyped up sale messaging right now.

Keeping the core visual simple, authentic and product focused can maintain trust and drive impulse clicks, while letting the ad copy communicate the discount.

3️⃣ No approvals needed

Creating net new holiday and offer videos requires more lead time, costs more and can require long approval processes.

It’s definitely worth it to mix in new content, but swapping headlines, ad copy and adding an offer banner overlay to proven assets lets you launch in a fraction of the time.

Pilothouse shares Wellow, Sheertex, and Dr. Fuhrman all ran versions of this last Q4. Pull your top three evergreen ads by spend and get BFCM versions of each into your ad sets this week.

🎧 People, products, angles: The creative coverage check

The Meta creative debate right now tends to split into two camps:

1️⃣ Make more ads.
2️⃣ Or make better ads.

Aves’ take is that the winning strategy is creative coverage.

That means making sure your account is actually covering the right people, products, and angles.

Because volume alone can get messy fast. Aves has seen brands pump out huge batches of AI-generated creative, only to watch CPMs climb and audience quality fall. On the other end, spending weeks perfecting a single ad leaves you without enough creative to keep up.

So pull back and audit what’s missing.

Are you only making ads for your existing core customer?

If your bread-and-butter buyer is a woman in her 20s, but growth means reaching women in their 30s and 40s, does your creative actually speak to them?

Are you ignoring products that could make acquisition more profitable?

Aves is cross-referencing acquisition efficiency, shipping costs, and margin to find products that deserve more paid-media attention. Sometimes a SKU brands think of as a returning-customer product turns out to be a strong acquisition opportunity.

Are you speaking the language of the person you’re trying to reach?

This is where “creative is the new targeting” gets very literal.

Aves is looking at the creators people follow, the jokes they recognize, the phrases they use, the fonts they see, the audio in their feeds, even the camera angles they’re used to.

Because Meta can find the audience. Your creative still has to make that audience think: "Oh, this is for me" (and that applies to copy, too).

Aves starts with copy before the visual. On one account, an ad built around an emoji and strong copy generated more than six figures over a weekend.

Before adding another 20 ads to the queue, check your coverage.

Right people. Right products. Right angles.

Aves and Eric break down the full framework, plus hyper-relevant creative, copy, landing pages, and what’s working on Meta right now in the latest DTC Podcast.

Listen to the episode here

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