Goooood morning, DTC readers! Hope you had a good weekend.
Starting Monday with one for anyone who has ever spent hours perfecting an ad only to watch the slapped-together little three-minute version outperform it:
There may be a lesson in there somewhere.
Today, Mid-Day Squares is giving us a very good case study in keeping things simple, Google has more BFCM ad features rolling out, and Meta is getting a lot more interested in the profit behind your revenue.
Let’s get going.
đź’° Meta's now betting on your margin, not just your top line
@Peter_Quadrel spotted two new options sitting next to Value Optimization in Ads Manager, Profit and pLTV.
Standard value optimization treats a $200 sale at 15% margin the same as a $200 sale at 60% margin. Profit optimization fixes that by pulling in your per-item cost and sending net revenue to Meta instead of gross.
pLTV goes further and asks you to predict which new customers are worth more over time, before that value has shown up anywhere, which is the harder one to qualify for.
According to Quadrel, Meta wants a handful of distinct profit values and a real conversion volume before it turns Profit on, and even stricter thresholds for pLTV, so treat the exact numbers as his read on it and confirm against your own account before you build around them.
Worth looking into if you're running wide margin spread across your catalog, premium or luxury brands especially, since revenue bidding can't tell a low-margin one-and-done customer from a high-margin repeat buyer and pLTV can.
🔍 Your Search campaigns are getting rebuilt on Sept. 1
If you're running Automatically Created Assets or campaign-level broad match, Google's moving you to AI Max whether you opt in or not.
Starting September 1st, those campaigns get search term matching and text customization switched on by default. Google says it'll mirror your current setup to keep behavior consistent, but the real risk is looser query matching kicking in right when you're not watching the account.
Go find which campaigns are on ACA or broad match now, and put a settings audit on the calendar before the first week of September.
⏰ Shopping ads are getting a countdown clock just in time for BFCM
Google shared more info about how advertisers can get the Deal Ends feature, which slaps a countdown badge under your product price. The text "3 days left," "5 hours left," is pulled straight from your existing sale data in Merchant Center.
To qualify, your discount has to clear a threshold that gets steeper around the holidays, and the sale has to end within seven days.
🤖 You built your brand to make people feel something, and I bet that something wasn't "robotic"
Everyone's racing to replace humans with AI. Then they're wondering why customers stop trusting the replies.
That's why what HumanTouch is building is cool. They’re pairing smart AI to handle the repetitive stuff with verified real people to handle the conversations that actually matter. The whole thing is fully transparent, so customers know when they're talking to AI and when they're talking to a person. In case you missed it, this matters if you're selling into the EU.
Right now they're looking for a small group of founding merchants to help shape the product before they open it up more broadly. Spots are limited though so if you want in I'd act now.
If you've ever wished support felt more like you, this is your moment to claim your founding merchant spot.
*Â sponsored
🍫 The whole ad is a photo, a few words, and a five-star review (you probably have all of these handy)
Mid-Day Squares is running a static ad that's about as simple as creative gets - one clean shot of the product broken apart, four USPs layered directly on top of it, and a five-star review pinned in the corner from a "verified customer."
The primary text above does the same thing in words, a quoted customer line ("Stops me from over snacking. 1 square is enough.") followed by the actual product facts. A benefit-driven headline runs across the bottom of the image itself, "Afternoon delight without the sugar crash," with the CTA sitting right next to it.
Nothing here needs a production budget. One good product photo, your actual top three or four specs, and a real review you already have sitting in your reviews app. Layer the specs onto the photo the same way, pin one review in a corner, and you've got a version of this running by end of day.
đź’ˇ How to reach a YouTube audience that isn't looking at the screen
YouTube isn't just for clicking a video, falling down a rabbit hole, and emerging six hours later as a subject matter expert on something you'd never heard of that morning. A huge chunk of YouTube time is spent in listening mode instead, podcasts, music, background audio while someone's doing something else. Google just released a dedicated guide for reaching that audience with audio ads, and it's a genuinely cheap way to tap into reach you're probably not using yet.
Audio ads can run up to 30 seconds. Anything 15 seconds or under runs as non-skippable, 16 to 30 seconds runs as skippable. You upload a standard YouTube video URL as the asset, recommended aspect ratio 16:9, resolutions from 426x240 up to 3840x2160, file size up to 128GB. Google recommends a static image or light animation for the visual since the format is built around audio, not visuals.
To set one up, pick Video as the campaign type, then Audio as the subtype, under the Brand awareness and reach objective. Google applies Target CPM bidding automatically and shows impression and performance estimates through the Campaign estimates widget once your ad group is configured, as long as the campaign sticks to a single ad format. Don't narrow your targeting too much here, Google's own guidance is that it limits delivery and drags performance below the estimates you saw at setup.
For the creative itself, Google recommends 60 to 80 words of script for a 30 second spot with voiceover, and a conversational tone so it feels like content instead of an ad. Introduce the brand or product early, and give it a CTA, either spoken or as a short link displayed in the creative.
🎧 Sound on! The impact of audio
Do not forget that people are hearing your ads as well as seeing them.
In this episode of Ad-venturous, Aves breaks down how audio choices shape attention, emotion, and conversions.
Learn the key to using trending sounds, how to create stronger voiceover scripts, and make your ads sound unforgettable.
▶️ Watch here | 🎧 Listen on Spotify
‍🛒 Running an online business? Your experience can influence the future of ecommerce tools. Join Blink UX’s research panel, share your insights, earn gift cards, and test products for Big Tech companies at the frontier of AR and AI. Join here. *
🤔 How deep should you discount this Q4? Most DTC brands are guessing. Take our 5-minute Beyond the Discount survey (anonymous), see how your plan stacks up, and get entered to win $1,000 Amazon. Best odds on a grand you’ll ever get. Take the survey!
Note: Survey results may be used in DTC editorial and advertorial content. Personal info won’t be shared.
* One entrant will be randomly selected to win a $1,000 Amazon Gift Card. No purchase necessary to enter. Survey must be completed by Sunday, August 23rd, 2026 to be eligible. This giveaway is open to legal residents of the United States and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 years or older. Void where prohibited.
*Â sponsored
Did you find this valuable? Support us by checking out our businesses:
Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
