Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading this, I hope you’re using this weekend to catch up on sleep, taking some time for yourself, but you’re getting ready for Q5. Before I get into explaining Q5...

Vendor of the Week

Growth marketers are always hunting for the next channel that can actually move the needle, not just soak up budget. In 2026, Roku is betting that channel is CTV.

Drawing on Roku’s new predictions for 2026, three things jump out:

  1. The ad-free viewer is basically extinct
  2. CTV is becoming a brand-safe escape as AI eats the internet
  3. Self-serve targeting is turning TV into a true local growth lever.

Roku Ads Manager lets you launch campaigns in minutes, target down to ZIP codes, and measure everything from reach to conversions in a single dashboard.

If you want to see how top performance teams will actually use CTV next year, Roku just broke it down in a new piece on how growth marketers will use CTV in 2026. It’s worth a read as you lock your media mix for next year, and get educated on the latest insights.

Click here to check out the report — it’s completely free!

Limited Supply

This past week on Limited Supply, I went through the PDP newsletter in-depth. Similar to the theme of this email, it’s one of the things no one spends enough time optimizing, and it’s revenue slipping through your fingertips.


Spend 37 minutes as an investment for your PDP’s performance in 2026. Listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify or YouTube. Just search “Limited Supply”.

I’m Saying This With Love: Fix These 8 Things

For those of you who aren't familiar, Q5 is the period of time from post-BFCM until the end of the year. Personally, I count the first 3 weeks of January as well, since that’s the real “Super Bowl” moment for health/wellness/supplement brands. Generally, I find December to be 10-20% bigger than November for brands, so no matter what you sell, Q5 should be a strong period for you.

Next Sunday’s newsletter will be focused around what I’m excited to test and spend my time learning in the first half of 2026. What channels, what strategies, what marketplaces, what formats of content, etc. But for today, I started writing down what all I thought about this past week, and after writing everything out, I came up with a list of what I find most brands miss. These are misses that they don’t see themselves (can’t blame them, I see 25-50 brands per week, learn them, dissect/direct them, and have more data points), but I can spot them and give it to them straight.

Now, these 8 things may not get you 100% there, but if you have a great product that delivers on its promise, you have a reason to exist, you’re competitive to the market, and you genuinely care, then you’ve got all the foundational needs. After that, make sure these 8 things I talk about today are all checked-off too. That should get you 85% of the way there... the last 15% is hustle, grit, and serendipity.

Whether I talk to brand folks (usually the founder or marketing/growth lead), I like to quickly learn the brand and understand context. I find out what they sell, how much of it, where they sell it, how it sells, why it sells, what others think of it, what works on paid media, what works outside of paid media, what offers work best, and more. Within 10-15 minutes, I have enough context to feel like I can be in the cockpit with them. Usually, when growth has stalled, or they’re unable to continue growing efficiently, it comes down one of these eight things:

  1. Elevated creative
  2. Testing with rigor
  3. Focusing on LTV, not CPA/CAC
  4. Strong visual identity
  5. Universal understanding of business results
  6. Top of funnel
  7. Doing the bare minimum on marketplaces
  8. Poor email setup

Anytime I dive into this, I always preface by saying, “Don’t get offended by this. I say this out of love and with respect.” So that applies to you too. If you feel called out on one of these 8, focus on making it 10x better. You’ll see the results pay off in your sales numbers. Let’s get into it.

Elevated content & creative.

By default, people don’t like to spend real money on beautiful content. Why? Because it’s expensive. One of my portfolio companies used to spend $40k for a product shoot, but their brand was immediately premium and every consumer could feel it. Good photos, great photographers, art directors, set stylists, hand models, etc. all cost a lot. Good content always performs better, but for most it’s inaccessible. Well, not anymore with AI.

While you can’t replace the photographer’s expertise, experience, an art directors knowing of what works best or a lighting experts experience, you can try to match it to the best of your abilities with AI. If you haven’t already spent time playing around with Google’s Nano Banana model, or explored the Instagram page, @mobileeditingclub, I highly recommend spending 6 hours diving in.

Your next sale, product launch or campaign assets can be generated entirely with AI. The secret/sauce here is knowing HOW to use AI tools — prompting. The better you can get at prompting, the more you will be able to do. I encourage you to spend that 6 hours, and go find prompts others have posted to Reddit, X/Twitter or forums.

This also works for copywriting. Your AI-written copy will sound like AI slop if you don’t give it better prompting on who is reading it, the tonality, style, etc. 

Elevated content, both creative and copy, drives an immediate boost on performance marketing and overall brand building. You have to spend time making sure this is done well, it flows out through every part of the brand — website, emails, packaging inserts, social media, how others talk about the brand, etc.

Testing with rigor.

When I see brands test channels with a measly $2500 and then determine it’s unsuccessful, it makes me roll my eyes. By the time you spend $2500, most people will have just figured out all the buttons they can press or levers they can pull inside the ad account. On top of a small budget, there is no attention paid to the post-click site experience (a landing page for AppLovin traffic needs to be different than your Meta LP or plain PDP), the offer, and testing a TON of creative to figure out the channel-creative fit.

For context, I’m talking about breaking out of just Meta and Google as your main channels. $10k is the smallest amount I recommend testing a new channel with. It gives you enough budget to rotate through a few versions of creative, where you send traffic, and what you’re merchandising. To test a channel right, you have to invest in creative, good site development process/practices/speed to test quickly, and an understanding of measurement and success.

If you don’t already have a text group going with peers from other brands at similar stages/challenges, this is one of the best reasons to have that group. Testing new channels is hard, but when you can ask people who did it recently, what won, what failed, and how to measure, you get to success faster.

Channels like TikTok, Snap, AppLovin, TV, organic YouTube integrations, podcasts don’t just “not work”... they don’t work because you likely didn’t test it properly. If your product delivers on its promise, any channel that reaches your audience can work.

Building a process around testing, that includes your creative, media, and development teams, is something that requires a time investment and a lot of attention-to-detail to get right. But once you have this mini-machine built out, it’s an advantage.

Focusing on LTV, not acquisition cost.

Yes, in an isolated chamber, like in your daily or weekly performance marketing stand-ups, you want to talk about acquisition cost... CPA (cost per acquisition), CAC (customer acquisition cost), whatever you want to call it.

But if you’re acquiring cheap customers who aren’t good customers... they buy once, never come back again, low subscription rate, cause chargebacks, whatever... it’s not worth it. You have to understand if you’re driving quality customers, especially if you’re building a brand for the long term.

As a brand, you should have an attitude that you want quality customers, and you’re willing to pay slightly more for those. Don’t just be cool with an affiliate network’s customers because they’re a fixed cost but then drive up charge-backs and customer service issues in exchange. Yes the CPA might be low, but it’s not scalable, and nor is it good for business.

A strong visual identity.

Everyone has opinions when it comes to design, but it’s important to acknowledge that good design instills trust from the beginning (just like good creative or copy). It’s like someone who’s got their hair nicely cut, nails clean, well-kept beard, smells nice... more trustworthy! The same thing applies with a brand’s visual identity. 

You might think you’re just selling a product, you don’t need to invest in a nice brand book. But that nice brand book flows through every part of your brand — website, emails, texts, ad creative, packaging taps, collaborations, etc. A weak visual identity looks lazy and not something people want to be a part of. People want to be a part of big, huge, cool, exciting things.

It’s almost 2026 — you can use AI, agencies, freelancers, agencies overseas, or learn basic design yourself and build a strong visual identity. Not having one isn’t the end of the world, but why be smelly and look lazy when it’s so easy not to, and it drives more revenue?

Some agencies charge $50k to $500k to do good visual identity work. But you can find freelancers and contractors who will help you get this whole project done for $10k (obviously not the same level but you can get 75% there).

A shared internal understanding of results.

It’s frustrating when the person who’s running organic social, the person who’s making decisions on how many bottles or boxes to purchase, and the performance marketer don’t have a shared understanding for what the high-level results are they need to hit. The company likely has 1-3 high-level results, and everything else has to ladder back up to that.

When the organic social team doesn’t understand that using social to drive more site traffic or email subscribers, or high-retention social engagers within close friends or a IG community... well you’re just leaving missed opportunity on the table. PS, check out the socials of Drunk Elephant, Lemme, Halfdays, Liquid Death and True Classic to get inspired.

Similarly, when the email team doesn’t understand the importance of driving repeat revenue or reducing subscriber churn, to help the overall goal of the business, then these tasks go completely untouched.

Everyone needs to understand what the business needs to achieve and be clear on how each function is going to go about doing that. It sounds obvious, but it’s not and it costs brands money through wasted initiatives, agencies, and media dollars. Not to mention, when you’re not on the same page, you’re likely missing out on low-hanging fruit opportunities.

Top of funnel & messaging.

Simply put, this is how you cut through the noise. Yes, you can make the first few million by a great landing page and good static ads, but after a certain point, you need to create top of funnel awareness.

This might be through a variety of ways:

  • You run a wildly successful creator-seeding campaign (like Jolie)
  • You build your own network of creators who constantly put out high volume of content and create your top of funnel (like Comfrt)
  • You do such a great job building the product and seeding it to the right editors and movers/shakers, you drown in positive earned media / PR / 3rd party content (like Cadence)
  • You run a ton of paid media and build the brand along the way (like Ro, Hims, Hexclad)
  • You have a celebrity founder that knows exactly how to harness eyeballs (like Lemme or Feastables)
  • You run a smart clipping strategy and have figured out how to  leverage the $3 CPM (like Zagged)
  • You have top-tier retail distribution and your product overdelivers (like Swishables)
  • You run advertorials and whitelisted ads, all performance marketing, but just well-done funnels
  • You spend money on upper funnel placements like TV, events, podcasts, influencer/celebrity deals, etc.

What I want to illustrate by listing all these examples out, is that when you’re told to create more top-of-funnel for your brand, it doesn’t mean go and run reach & frequency ads on Meta, or go spend on a billboard campaign. It means get smart about how you are cutting through the noise and reaching new eyeballs/people that learn WHO you are, WHAT you sell, and WHY you exist.

This might mean coming up with provocative messaging or a “campaign” theme that you go to market with. It can also mean just testing new stories with advertorials. But if you don’t build more top of funnel awareness of the brand, you can’t continue to scale your performance ads efficiently. That’s why the brand CPA keeps going up. You’re reaching fewer people who know your brand, conversion rate tanks, and acquisition costs go up.

That (likely) doesn’t mean the channel is dead, it means you need to switch your advertising strategy from just sweeping people to your site who know what your product can do for them, to: 

  • Focusing on/highlighting the problem that exists
  • Showcase/demonstrate how your product solves that
  • Communicate the emotion (confidence, peace, clarity, etc)

Again, doesn’t mean go run TV ads, but figure out what you can do, within your wheelhouse and skillset, that allows you to get the brand in front of other people, at scale.

Marketplace maintenance.

“Marketplace Maintenance” should be something everyone thinks about on a routine basis (weekly or monthly). How do the listings on TikTok Shop, Amazon, and anywhere else you sell look? Do they feel up to standard with the best brands on the platform? Do they answer questions within the allowed real estate properly? 

TikTok Shop, for example, gives you a large text box where you can input images/graphics, plus the image carousel. Within those two, you want to make sure that you’re doing the most. Image carousel with info-graphics, reviews, comparison chart, etc. Your description should read like a landing page, easy copy, graphics, etc. 

On Amazon, you have the image gallery up top, title, about the item copy, and then image and text blocks to convey everything you want. Everyone knows what a good Amazon listing looks like (full of content, UGC, etc.)... if yours doesn’t look like the best, why not? It’s FREE to make your Amazon page look incredible. Just spend the time and do it!

Poor email execution.

Even if you’re a brand that runs heavy on performance marketing, email (and SMS) are still a massive lever in this operation.

Whether it’s testing and optimizing the pop-up to collect the most number of emails (like Alia), maximizing how many anonymous users you identify on top of that (like Instant), or constantly A/B testing the welcome series flow to maximize revenue, email can NOT be something you setup and forget.

Most brands do that. You sprint to get all the flows setup in the beginning, then start running ads, focus on that, and email becomes an after-thought. You can’t do that! Email will make your MER (media-efficiency ratio, aka total ad spend to total revenue) more efficient because you’ll recover customers who you capture via email, but don’t buy on the first get. If your flows are bad, you’re letting revenue slip through your fingertips.

Whether you have an agency (like Lunar Solar Group), a freelancer, one person internally, or a full team dedicated to retention, I encourage you to constantly push the boundaries and optimize the flows, leverage dynamic blocks within campaigns, increase the pop-up opt-in rate, and continue pushing LTV.

Don’t let email be a set-once-and-forgotten channel. It’s easy revenue.

That's all for this week

I hope you enjoyed today’s newsletter — I had a ton of fun writing it. Yes, while I talk a ton about optimized websites and using the best creative practices in your ad creative, you can’t build a brand without the rest of these elements (and obviously a great product). Hopefully one of the points gave you an insight on something to test or fix going into next year.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you plan to get 9 hours of sleep going into the new week. I don’t know about you, but it feels like everyone is so locked in right now — laser focused. I love to see it.

I hope you have an amazing upcoming week. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Thank you for being a newsletter reader. I’ll see you next Sunday!