DTC906: Google Updates, Creative Workflow Hacks, Misleading Marketing Measurements, and Visual Hierarchy

Good morning,

Here’s what you’ll find in today’s DTC:

💀 The Value of A Post-Mortem
And how to create a content machine.

⚡ Google Updates for Q4
New tools to win over holiday shoppers.

🚨 Daily Tariff Update
Supreme Court update.

❌ Misleading Marketing Measurements
And what actually works for brands.

💸 Fix Your Visual Hierarchy!
How this tweak resulted in a 6-figure gain.

You’re reading this newsletter along with new subscribers from: Fora Travel, Outdoorly, and RM Soap Market. 👋

💰 The Value Of BFCM Isn’t Just About Driving Revenue. It’s About Building Customer Relationships That Last

📈 Peak-season traffic is vital for your brand.

But it’s even more valuable when your brand knows how to keep those customers coming back—just the way Happy Wax does. 😁

👀 Tune in to this on-demand webinar with Happy Wax VP of Marketing Rachel Fagan and Klaviyo’s Gabby Esposito, where they’ll share how a loyalty-first approach can turn BFCM shoppers into year-round customers. 🛍️

👉 Get actionable strategies for using loyalty data to personalize every touchpoint, aligning teams around one clear strategy, and retaining new customers long after the holidays.

Want insights you can put into action before, during, and after the season? 💥

Watch the full recording to see how a loyalty-first approach can help your brand capture more long-term value from every seasonal surge.

🎧 Building A Monthly Creative Review and Post-Mortem Process

Too many DTC brands treat creative as a volume game.

But churning out content without review or reflection often leads to reactive decision-making, missed insights, and burnout.

You need a repeatable system.

Review what worked, why it worked, and what to do next.

Aves from Pilothouse lays out a simple and tactical system for doing exactly that.

It only takes a few hours to put together and allows you to keep your creative strategy on track, uncover new testing angles, and act with clarity.

Step 1: Start With Performance Review

Look at three key creative categories:

• Top Ads: The clear winners on your KPIs.
• Bottom Ads: The losers that need to be retired or reworked.
• Spicy Ads: High engagement, high CTR, low conversion. "They didn’t win, but they did something."

Don’t just look at top-line KPIs. Dig deeper:

• Who saw these ads? (Age, gender, demo)
• Where did they run? (Reels, IG Feed, Stories, etc.)
• What does the data challenge in your assumptions?

"If you don’t look into the demographic data, you miss the context of why things are working or who they’re working with."

Step 2: Capture And Sort Your Ideas

Everyone has creative ideas while scrolling. Most of them get lost in the ether.

Fix that by adding them into two categories:

• Iterative Ideas: Based on things that already worked.
• Contrast Ideas: Wildcards meant to shake up results.

Drop all ideas into a shared board. Use Slack or Google Docs to do a brain dump.

Make space monthly to review, evaluate, and kill the weaker ones.

"This is when we start to kill our darlings. It’s a fun group effort to figure out what we have the most confidence in."

Step 3: Plan Baseline Content

Once you've reviewed data and ideas, establish a baseline creative calendar:

• Product launches
• Holidays / seasonal drops
• Persona segments that need attention

This is your foundational content for the month.

Leave space for responsive content based on performance insights mid-month.

👉 Listen to the full episode with Aves here.

📊 How Ready Are You for BFCM? (Enter for a Shot at a $1,000 Amazon Gift Card*)

DTC’s BFCM Pulse Check survey takes just 5 minutes, 13 questions.

Share how you’re setting budgets, channels, offers, and creative velocity. Get the full benchmark report when it drops.

👉 Where spend is flowing
👉 How deep discounts go
👉 What tactics top operators trust

Hard data. Sharp insights. Your shot at $1,000.

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, September 28th, 2025 to be eligible. Winner will be notified via email by Friday, October 3rd, 2025. This giveaway is open to legal residents of the United States and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 years or older. Void where prohibited.

📦 Your Daily Tariff Check-In

Whether it’s a minor tweak or a major shift, we’ll keep you posted on the latest tariff changes—so you’re always in the know.

September 19, 2025 update:

• Supreme Court to Hear Tariff Case on Nov 5
  • The Supreme Court will hear arguments concerning whether Trump overstepped his legal powers by imposing sweeping global tariffs using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) on Nov 5.
  • Previously, a lower court ruled such tariffs were unlawful, causing the President to post a rant declaring, "If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America."

💰 Major Google Updates For Q4 Holiday Season

In the next three months shoppers will be more intentional with their searches as they shop for the perfect holiday gifts and more budget-conscious than ever.

Google shares this important stat:

Impulse buys in the U.S. have dropped from 30% to 26% last year.

Meaning? Customers are doing more research than ever.

So brands that win will be the ones helping customers research, compare, and buy with confidence.

Here are four ways you can capture more sales from October through January:

1️⃣ Connect With Customers at Discovery

• Over 5 trillion Google searches happen every year.
• More than 60% of shopping queries now use broad, conversational phrases like “outfits for a summer wedding” or “comfortable running shoes.”

Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode make these complex queries shoppable by surfacing relevant ads alongside AI-powered answers.

Advertisers can also use AI Max for Search (now in beta) to optimize campaigns instantly.

👉 This is the biggest shift in Search since paid ads launched. Get in early while CPCs are still efficient.

2️⃣ Turn YouTube Browsers Into Buyers

YouTube isn’t just for awareness anymore. It’s a shopping engine.

• Demand Gen campaigns now optimize across web, apps, and in-store purchases.
• Local offers surface nearby deals.
• The Creator Partnerships Hub makes influencer collabs easier to activate.
• And the YouTube Masthead is now shoppable (your products can be featured in the most visible spot on YouTube!)

👉 With shoppers moving fluidly between online and offline, YouTube is a must for capturing omnichannel demand.

3️⃣ Fuel Campaigns With Smarter AI Tools

Google is giving advertisers sharper levers just in time for Q4:

• Merchant Center AI Insights flag shifting demand so you can pivot quickly.
• Product Studio & Asset Studio use generative AI to refresh creative assets (Imagen 4 is coming soon).
• Total Budget Campaigns let you set a single budget across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and YouTube with AI allocating spend to peak periods.

👉 These tools free up your team to focus on creative strategy instead of budget micromanagement.

4️⃣ Convert Shoppers Into Loyalists

Holiday shoppers don’t just want discounts. They want value.

Google’s new loyalty integrations let you showcase perks like member-only pricing, free shipping, or bonus rewards directly in ads.

Retailers like Sephora are already seeing strong retention lift from this feature.

👉 Use Q4 to seed loyalty programs and turn first-time gifters into repeat customers for 2025.

The takeaway?

Consumers are more thoughtful with their purchases and spreading spend over three months.

If you’re not leveraging Google’s AI-powered discovery, YouTube shopping tools, and loyalty integrations, you’ll be leaving Q4 revenue on the table.

🎧 The Hard Truth About Marketing Measurement with Constantine Yurevich of SegmentStream

In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Constantine Yurevich, founder of SegmentStream, breaks down the three core types of marketing measurement and explains why so much of what’s being sold to DTC brands today is either flawed, biased, or impractical.

He makes the case for evidence-based attribution strategies and also explains why incremental lift studies and fast MMMs often mislead more than they reveal.

In this episode, we dive into:

• The 3 Types of Measurement: Empirical attribution, statistical modeling (MMM), and causal testing, and why only one is useful for most brands.
• Why MMM is Misunderstood: How fast MMMs use “priors” (aka  assumptions) to feed marketers the results they want to see, and the dangers of confirmation bias in model-driven decisions.
• The Limits of Incrementality Testing: Why confidence intervals make most claims about exact lift misleading.
• The Case for First-Click Attribution: Why tracking the first click (plus robust identity graph) offers a clearer view of what’s actually acquiring new customers.
  • “Everyone complains about last-click attribution. But nobody’s asking why we don’t talk about first-click, even though it’s often more honest and more useful.”
• Re-Attribution Using Self-Reported Data: How SegmentStream pairs self-reported attribution with actual behavior to uncover awareness channels like YouTube, podcasts, and word-of-mouth.

👉 Listen to the full episode with Constantine here.

Can a simple change really make a difference?

Dave shares how just moving review stars above the product title added over $855K in revenue.

Ways to fix your visual hierarchy: Test small PDP tweaks like star placement, price position, and CTA buttons.

These micro-optimizations compound, and skipping them could cost you big this Q4.

📥 Got a B2B Biz?

Join dozens of B2B companies finding demand-gen success through our niche community of 150k brand leaders and founders this year. Talk to our team to learn more.

DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight and Frances Du. Edited by Eric Dyck.

Please note that items in this newsletter marked with * contain sponsored content.