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Good morning DTC people. I hope your July 4th weekend was as good as Zuck’s (and that you wore less sunscreen). Today we’re going deep on AppLovin best practices from Pilothouse, but first…
👀 ChatGPT's ad platform now generates ads for you using your own site
Click "add new ad" in ChatGPT Ads and it hands you a pre-built variant pulled from your website and campaign settings.
@AnthonyHigman posted screenshots of the flow: review, edit, activate. There's also an option to duplicate your ad, making it easier to scale campaigns.
OpenAI is following the same in-platform creative generation model Meta and Google built with Advantage+ and Performance Max. The creative lives inside ChatGPT Ads and runs there. You can't export it directly to Meta or Google, but nothing stops you from using the output as a starting point and rebuilding it manually in whatever platform you're actually spending on. The AI is pulling from your site so the copy is at least brand-relevant.
If you're running ChatGPT ads and have this feature, reply and let me know what it's generating. Genuinely curious.
💄 Cody Plofker steps down as CEO of Jones Road Beauty
@codyplof, a DTC Podcast alum, posted on X yesterday that he’s chosen to end his run and is stepping down as CEO of Jones Road Beauty. After 5 years leading the brand, he's moving to the board and staying on as an advisor.
His reason, in his own words (and not shocking seeing Cody’s recent posts about what he’s been cooking up with Claude): "I'd rather be building funnels and running ads than managing people and dealing with various BS that comes with being CEO."
Cody’s rise from elite growth operator to CEO has been fun to watch, and I can’t wait to see what he does next now that he’s truly following his passion.
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😬 Reinstalling your Shopify to Google app after August 18 may break your campaign history
The migration from Content API to Merchant API reportedly rewrites product IDs. A new ID reads as a new product to Google. If that is true, your performance history resets on reinstalling.
Worth following if you sync products through the Shopify to Google and YouTube app.
Google's Ads Liaison said on LinkedIn the team is looking into it, with no confirmation of a fix.
One workaround being floated: drop the Shopify app for your feed before the deadline and move to a feed management tool like Channable, so the product IDs stay under your control regardless of what Google changes on its end.
😰 Zuckerberg admits AI agentic development has been slow the last four months
Meta's CEO told staff in an internal recording that the AI agent bets behind May's restructuring "hasn't really accelerated" over the past few months.
That restructuring cut 10% of headcount and moved 7,000 people onto AI teams. He said the bet had "not come to fruition yet" and predicts more meaningful benefits will show up in three to six months.
Meta is spending up to 145 billion dollars on AI infrastructure this year. Stock dropped 5% on the report.
Slow going, but at least it ain’t the Metaverse.
We reported last week that AppLovin opened self-serve access to any advertiser, removing the referral code requirement that gated the platform for eight months. The ad product is now called AppLovin Ads, running on the Axon AI engine.
The format and measurement rules differ enough from Meta and Google that they require a separate playbook.
The audience skews toward mobile gaming usage patterns, which differ from Meta and TikTok demographics.
Fit depends on whether your target customer overlaps with mobile gaming usage.
Pilothouse, which has been running AppLovin for clients for a while now, reports the strongest traction in food, beverage, supplements, health, and beauty. Apparel has also scaled significantly. Results vary by category.
Here are some AppLovin best practices from the team to keep in mind:
Creative
AppLovin's units are full-screen and immersive, and the first 15 to 60 seconds are unskippable. That changes the creative brief.
Campaign Setup
Axon needs volume to optimize. Structure and patience matter more here than on platforms with longer track records.
Attribution and Measurement
AppLovin's purchase path is faster and more compressed. Standard last-click reporting understates performance.
Bottom Line
Start with a single well-funded campaign. Build creative to fill the full unskippable window, captions included, with a strong end card.
Leave the learning phase alone for a week before touching bids or budget. Layer a post-purchase survey on top of in-platform numbers. Confirm customer overlap with mobile gaming before allocating budget.
Meta used to let you pick your customer in the backend. Those days are over. Post-Andromeda, the creative itself carries the targeting signal.
Rafael Gi, who runs strategic growth and partnerships at Pilothouse, breaks down why the algorithm is forcing marketers to be good marketers again and what that looks like in an ad account.
▶️ Watch here | 🎧 Listen on Spotify
📲 Mobile gets wayyy more traffic than desktop, but converts 50% lower. The mobile conversion gap is real. Don't let your competitors get ahead in H2, grab your free copy of Tapcart's 2026 Mobile Trends Report. *
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