Ash Melwani (00:00:00):

Fatigue is real. And like, that's just, I, I feel like that's why it's still, like, I take back what I said before, which is like, oh, I wish I could spend all my money on TikTok, but like, I really can't cuz we don't have enough resources for the amount of content that it needs.

Rabah Rahil (00:00:19):

All right folks. So I'm, I'm here in the triple oil layer here right now and we have party club mode, but I think everybody wanted, no you want the, these ones, right? The angelic lights. Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Ash still seems very disappointed. I promise it's cooler in person. Go

John Coyle (00:00:37):

Back to the blue Ash is backtracking because he just saw the blue again. And he was like, actually the blue looks pretty good now that I you're into it now.

Ash Melwani (00:00:44):

Yeah. The blue

John Coyle (00:00:44):

Into it. Now he's adjusted

Rabah Rahil (00:00:46):

Go, let's go drop

Ash Melwani (00:00:48):

Into comments. What were we, what color were we walking with? What were we doing

Rabah Rahil (00:00:51):

Here? Okay. Because we got just

John Coyle (00:00:53):

Cycle, 'em just cycle it, you know, throughout like, you know, every now and then just

Rabah Rahil (00:00:57):

Switch

John Coyle (00:00:58):

You switch colors.

Rabah Rahil (00:01:00):

That's actually not a horrible idea. I love this. And if you don't know who that is, we are, we are back with your favorite D to C pod. I am in the, uh, new triple oil podcast studio. It's actually to be fair set up to be an in person studio. So I'm kind of rigging it because um, we had some cool stuff going on. We're finishing up our t-shirt while Ash who hasn't sent his, uh, obviously

Ash Melwani (00:01:22):

I thought its great thought it

Rabah Rahil (00:01:23):

Unbeliev unbelievable this guy. Um, so if you're seeing a little bit of, uh, if you're watching this and you see the, uh, unique, uh, shots where I'm not in my office, but we do have a cool triple well sign. So I will give you that. But uh, Ash is signing off on the blue. He was giving me shit about it before, but he's signed off on the blue. We do like it out, but better all as we will. Um, well that is a bunch of preamble, but Ash, my cohost partner crime, always a pleasure. And then one of the smartest media buyers, we actually had one of my favorite episodes on our, uh, sister podcast. You're not your Roaz John Coyle, one of the best media buyers. I know. And just generally amazing humans, X runner sponsored by, uh, Sketchers. I don't think we've ever had a pro athlete sponsored on here before <laugh> uh, we're just breaking all the rules.

John Coyle (00:02:10):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was like, you know, it was like 60 pounds ago. I measure it in pounds. Not yours. Fair put, you know, it was fair enough. It was a minute

Rabah Rahil (00:02:20):

I've I've been on that tip too. Uh, I'm trying to get back on the health tip. My fiance's making my lunches now I signed up. There you go. This fancy gym that I've only been twice to, but uh, I Ash you stopped posting all your inspirational picks. And so I fell off the wagon. What happened?

Ash Melwani (00:02:34):

Yeah. I took a break during the summer. I'm gonna get back to it next week, October 1st, baby. Let's

John Coyle (00:02:39):

Go

Rabah Rahil (00:02:40):

New month. New

John Coyle (00:02:41):

Me.

Ash Melwani (00:02:42):

Yeah, exactly. Baby. Let's do it Q4. Let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (00:02:46):

Q4. Let's go. Yeah. If anybody else in DDC wants to lose some lb shacks over here, fucking getting shredded, buying multimillion dollar homes. What, what am I doing? I'm over here. Justing in a studio with, with me.

John Coyle (00:02:57):

He just always makes you feel like that. Right? Rightt doesn't even,

Rabah Rahil (00:03:01):

It's crazy. Right? Like

John Coyle (00:03:03):

Then when you talk to him, like you really deserve all this. You deserve all this.

Rabah Rahil (00:03:07):

Yeah. He's such a good human, but yeah, I got a little bit of like gimme some of that house. Let me crash, man. What's on. Gimme that. Gimme that his puppies all trained up. I mean what this

John Coyle (00:03:15):

Guy? Yeah, living, just living he's

Rabah Rahil (00:03:18):

He's he's gonna come out like 20 years later he has like, he's a serial killer with like bunch of bodies under his basement or something fucking SHA

John Coyle (00:03:27):

The whole time

Rabah Rahil (00:03:28):

Knew it just jokes. Speaking of Shaq, uh, shameless plug, uh, Nashville geek out is in November. So you guys should sign up for that. I think tickets are on sale. Are you speaking, John?

John Coyle (00:03:39):

I believe I have been, uh, put on the reserve. I've been put on the IR

Rabah Rahil (00:03:45):

For the IR, right? Okay. PO possibly

John Coyle (00:03:48):

I do not think I will speak. Yeah. This because if you're on the IR at geek out these days, the yeah. There's no nobody's gonna sit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah,

Rabah Rahil (00:03:57):

Yeah, no, it is definitely the, uh, Ron crushed it. Yours was amazing too in, uh, what was it? San Diego? I believe. Right, man. That seems like

John Coyle (00:04:06):

18. Yeah. San Diego was less when I was at. Yep.

Rabah Rahil (00:04:08):

Amazing. Um, okay. For people that don't know you though, John kind of give us your little accolades, what you're doing now, kind of what you've done to kind of color it, the water, and then we'll get into the discussion.

John Coyle (00:04:19):

Yeah. I mean honest. I don't know how I got here. I like don't even know what the show's about. <laugh> um, somebody said deep to sea. I looked that up. I don't know what it means. No, I'm just kidding. Um, <laugh> so I, my background I'm uh, currently, uh, head of performance, uh, at, at the structured agency. That's why we're talking about Shaq. Some people probably don't know Shaq. They're like you talking about the basketball player. Um, that's what we're talking about. Shaq, Nick shack for uh, who, who is one of the founders of, of structured agency. I'm currently head of performance there. I, more or less run that he brought me into sort of replace him running the media buying team, um, overseeing all of our paid media efforts there. Uh, before that I had my own agency and not really before sort of overlapping had my own agency called explosive growth marketing that got acquired by structured. So, um oh cool. Sort of part of an acquisition acquihire you didn't know that?

Rabah Rahil (00:05:13):

I thought I didn't know that. No, no, I didn't know that. Yeah.

John Coyle (00:05:15):

Cool. You just were, you just haven't paid attention the other times I've done this whole thing.

Rabah Rahil (00:05:21):

Who guy? You guys giving shit about the studio? I'm not paying attention to the guests. It's holy hell. Oh man. I'm just getting

John Coyle (00:05:27):

Roasted rough. You're not gonna have me back. You're like John just makes fun of when he comes. Yeah. So before that I was, uh, I was doing the EGM thing building my own agency. Um, and before that I was working at agencies and then before that I was, uh, I worked in retail and I like did like sales. Like I think I've told this story on, you're not your RO as, but I, I used to be a mall kiosk sales person. Like I like the UN I'm like the untouch like the people you're like, don't look at them or they're just gonna like grab you and, and start selling you stuff. That was me at one point. And I did do that. Like I was, yeah. I mean, I, I think I've told this like give this whole intro on myself so I can tell this story that has nothing to do with e-commerce or advertising.
But, uh, I, I know how to juggle, like, this is a random thing about me, but like everybody who's like my age who grew up in the city that I grew up in knows how to juggle. We just had it in our elementary school curriculums. Um, and like our PE curriculums. So I know how to juggle, which is uncommon, you know, where I went to college. And so I would juggle, I sold this like supplement, you put into a water bottle. So I'd juggle these water bottles that had the supplement mixed in there. And people would say like, that's how I'd get people to look. That was my click date. Right? Like that was my, that was my ad or my hook. I get people to look once I notice that someone like, I could feel it, like you can like kind of notice somebody's looking at you.
I would like catch 'em and be like, you want a sample <laugh> and they're like, oh my God, like staring at me, like, uh, I forgot the one number one rule that you're not supposed to look at these people, you know? So then they'd be like, yeah, sure. And they'd like reach their hand out, like, okay. Yeah, sure. And then I'd be like, I'd pull it once they're leaned in a little bit. I'd like pull it back and I'd be like, well, this one's lemon and I'd always use lemon. Cuz that's a flavor. Nobody feels like they want this one's lemon lemon. But do you want, we have other flavors. Do you wanna like see our other flavors now they're gonna come over and they're gonna look at it and I've got 'em you know? And so like that's, that's basically, you know, that story just describes a whole lot about me basically.

Rabah Rahil (00:07:20):

<laugh> I'm just thinking out loud here. Hear me out, spin off show for the mall kiosk instead of D TOC, you have mall kiosk tips. No, nothing

John Coyle (00:07:28):

Mall.

Rabah Rahil (00:07:29):

KIOS tough crowd, tough crowd today guys.

John Coyle (00:07:31):

Tough crowd. You know the mall kiosk folk, you know, most of them are not looking to make a career out of, out of the mall kiosk. It's

Rabah Rahil (00:07:37):

It's

John Coyle (00:07:38):

That's tough. It's not a long term thing. Yeah. It's like usually especially the kiosk people, usually they work at like three different kiosks and one of the stores like mall people are just mall people, you know?

Rabah Rahil (00:07:48):

Yeah. I used to be quite the mall rat when I was, uh, a kid too. I did the, all the stores in there and stuff like that. But uh, yeah, that is one of my favorite stories.

John Coyle (00:07:55):

Yeah. And then you date the other mall people and it's just like one little world, you know?

Rabah Rahil (00:08:00):

Oh, for sure. It was uh, yeah, I did the whole Abercrombie and fit. I did. I did all the <inaudible> one. I was that guy. Did

John Coyle (00:08:07):

You work at hot topic?

Ash Melwani (00:08:08):

Standing outside the, the store with your shirt off robo. What was

John Coyle (00:08:10):

Going on? I was selling it hot topic.

Rabah Rahil (00:08:13):

I did do hot topic, but I did. This is how old I am. I did structure. So speaking of structured, I did structure, which is now express for men. That's how old I am. I did

John Coyle (00:08:21):

Express is a good one. That's like one of the better spots to work.

Rabah Rahil (00:08:24):

Yeah. I worked at coach handbags, um, which taught me a lot. And then I worked at, uh, Nordstrom selling highend women's shoes. That'll also be that's. That was, were you,

John Coyle (00:08:36):

Do you ever do any kind of sales job Ash? No sold. I've sold a whole bunch of collagen. So I

Rabah Rahil (00:08:43):

Don't know exactly sold,

Ash Melwani (00:08:45):

Stopped

Rabah Rahil (00:08:46):

To keep my portfolio in the green. I don't know what you talking about kids.

Ash Melwani (00:08:49):

I was slinging sneakers in college. That was about it.

John Coyle (00:08:52):

Were you like flipping them? Like yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. The whole resale market was insane. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:08:58):

Do you guys remember power hours? Did you guys ever have those at, at school where you you'd take a, like a shot of beer every minute? Oh yes.

John Coyle (00:09:06):

Yeah, yeah. Every

Rabah Rahil (00:09:07):

Minute. Yeah. So I used to sell, uh, these DVDs where I'd cut up every minute of like the popular music videos to make like a power hour and you could put the DVD in and I used to sell those at my

John Coyle (00:09:17):

University. I, I, in my head DVDs, you were talking about, like you said, did you guys ever do power hours in school? And in my head you were talking about elementary school and like, are you not a beer? Like, didn't go power. You went to the same kinda that time. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (00:09:36):

Oh man. Yeah. Well, I have to say this is probably the most off the rails intro that we've ever had, but it's, it's aligned with the club mode I have here. So

John Coyle (00:09:44):

It is, I mean, you started it. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (00:09:47):

<laugh> fair play. Um, so John, what are you seeing in accounts right now? What do you, how are you thinking about acquisition? What is kind of top of mind for you? What are, what are kind of the big wins? What are the things that you're kind of staying away from? Are there any headwinds that you're experiencing give, give people I know you said across a lot of big accounts kind of. Yeah. What's the, what's the state of the Duc right now.

John Coyle (00:10:09):

I mean, so for anyone who's still listening and hasn't been like, this guy has no credibility. Uh, I'll give the actual thing that you wanted in the intro, which was like, why should people listen to you? And, and that's, that is it. So, uh, over the last several years, I've managed many millions and spend across a lot of different verticals and different channels even. Um, and that's what structured monthly, like, you know, probably, I don't know, multiple millions of dollars in month of spend across like multiple verticals, which is really interesting. Um, a big trend I'm seeing right now. So, so I would actually break out like things I'm seeing that are interesting into two categories. And one be like, what am I seeing account like accounts wide and what am I seeing within like one account? That's like, oh, that works there. That's working here.
Like maybe we should try that somewhere else. Um, one of the things I kind of hate about agency, the agency world is because I is that like, if you actually look across 20 ad accounts, Facebook ad accounts, Google ad accounts, whatever, if you, if you actually look across like 20 ad accounts, let's say Facebook, which most people kind of think of. You see very little that you can say like that totally works every time. Like there's very little like that, that you're like that totally works every time that kind of creative crushes it every time this so like, trends are, are, are much harder because a lot of people are like, you have so much data, you must see the trends like trends are any kind of statistical significance on trends are much harder to spot than you might think. Um, the more data you have the harder, like, and maybe there's a, a tipping point where it's like, if you, you have Facebook level data, maybe then it's easier, right.
Or meta level data, maybe then it's easier. But I will say that, uh, a couple things that I'm seeing that seem to be common or they've happened more than once or like more than three times or more than four times are, um, number one medium mixing is, is like for the win right now. So instead of just like, we're not doing so much, just like plow money into Facebook and scale and, you know, find a winner in scale, find a winning creative in scale. Um, it's a lot more like I would say a lot of our most profitable accounts or most profitable brands right now have a heavier mix of Google than they ever have. And some heavier mix of Google than Facebook. Um, and, and not just search and not just shop, not just search shop PAX, I'm talking, they're running YouTube, they're running display discovery.
So like, here's the tip. If you're not running the discovery network on Google, do it because we have multiple accounts where it's like, you can look at like the one day click Roaz on discovery on the discovery network. And it's like really good, you know? Or, or like comparable with Facebook. It's probably not gonna scale as well as Facebook, cuz it's not as big. But um, yeah. So, so some stuff like that where it's like Google and the, and like the actual Google prospecting channels are starting to like truly take budget away from Facebook, because any way we cut it any way, we look at the data in whatever tool, right? Um, it's like these YouTube is performing at the level of Facebook discovery networks. Performing at the level of Facebook. PAX is very interesting to me as well. Uh, PAX is performing super well across multiple accounts.
I haven't yet scaled it. And I wonder where you're at on this Ash. Like I haven't yet scaled, PAX so hard. And it's so black boxy, cuz you don't know like you're like, are you, is this just retargeting? Are you are, is like, like who, who is this hitting? You know? Um, I haven't scaled it so hard yet that I'm like, this is driving. Like this is actually driving like new business, new eyeballs, new prospects into my funnel and it's doing it really effectively from a profit standpoint. But like the tools are there. It's, it's almost like you're looking at, you know, it's like when you're looking at a player and you're like, you know, he's got all the tools, he's got all the tools, he could be a good player, you know, he's, he is not proving it. That's what I think about PAX. Um, so yeah, that's, I'll stop talking cuz I just rambled for a couple minutes. I I've got some other stuff too when that we can dive into specifically in Facebook and, and creatively and stuff like that. But I do wanna stop there because like kind of number one thing, number one is probably like Google really EV indexing a lot more heavily in Google and in the different campaign types. And I wonder Ash, if you're seeing similar with Avi.

Ash Melwani (00:14:40):

Yeah. I think what you're you're saying is absolutely true for like what we're seeing, but just maybe on a different level. Right. So we haven't fully gone so hard into Google just because like our category is very expensive. Right. You have these like top dogs, vital proteins doctor acts like just going PPC on this type stuff. It's like, it's very expensive. Yeah. Um, but I mean not to say that we're not going to right. Um, two, what I am noticing is that when our overall like efforts on top of the funnel and I'm not just saying like Facebook, top of the funnel campaign, I'm saying like, how are we introducing new people into our ecosystem? That's like TikTok or even like now YouTube, uh, shorts, or even like, you know, utilizing like IG reels and like really getting the reach on some of these organic platforms.
Um, getting like newer people into the ecosystem is like my number one priority right now. And it's, and, and when I say that, I'm not saying running prospecting on Facebook because I feel like now more than ever, it's always it, the frequency is gonna be pretty, pretty high. Right? It's like once you start feeding people in, they come to the website, you're gonna get hit by like a Facebook ad. You're gonna keep getting hit with a Facebook ad. Right. Once that machine knows who your people are, it's like, yeah. It just circles the wagons, no matter what it circles. Yeah, exactly. Right. So like I think the biggest piece to our puzzle has always been fully diving into the influencer stuff, which like you said, right. It's, it's just mixing up this like, I guess media mix. Right. Of all right. Whether it be Google, cuz you're one, you're attracting a, a completely new audience, right.
People who are looking for certain product or whatever it is, they're, you know, they're shopping. Um, but then like, uh, influencers are going to drive a ton of reach and ton of awareness, even though like you may not like get that direct conversion. I've been talking to a lot of people lately. Like who've been doubling down on like YouTube influencers mm-hmm <affirmative> and like what they've been saying is that the long form content, if you can find like channels that have like, they, they put out 20 minute, 30 minute videos and they're like super engaged audiences or they have super engaged audiences, you know, hundreds of thousands of views. Like you should get a 62nd spot in that video if it relates to your, your product. Right. So that's like, one thing that I'm trying to do right now is dive into YouTube. Um, whether it's like a podcast or like just a, a lifestyle influencer and just be like, Hey, I just want a 62nd, you know, clip in the video of like, say, let's say it's the lifestyle influencer.
Like, Hey, I just started using this. Um, let me show you my, my recipe, whatever it is. Yeah. With the link in the, the comments discount code, whatever, whenever we, I, I feel like the long term, long form content of, of like, whether it's Facebook or YouTube, people have like written it off because like TikTok is a new thing. It's like 32nd video, 62nd videos. But the people who are fully engaged in those long form content are like, whatever they're watching, they're gonna like absorb. And if your like, product is in there, I think that's where it's like really gonna drive awareness. So to kind of close this up, we had, uh, one of our influencers. I I've talked about this influencer a while. Right. She's the one that kind of like blew things up for us. And luckily we just started working her with her again.
Right. And she posted a video maybe like two weeks ago, two, three weeks ago, 15 minute long video. Okay. But in that 15 minute long video, she talked about us for about 30 seconds and sales pumped for that, for that like hour kind of dropped back down. But now the rest of the week's efficiency from like the ads was like 10 times better. Yeah. Right. So now imagine just one person, right? Like that video got like a hundred, 150,000 views within the first day. Now that video continued to go on and get views and this and that. And we were mentioned in it for 30 seconds and it just improves our efficiencies, like everywhere else. And so when that kind of starts to wear off, you start to see this like efficiency or like CPAs kind of go back up. You're like, what the fuck? Like I thought my ads were doing really, really well, this and that. And it's like, it's not that it's just more people in your, your, your ecosystem.

John Coyle (00:18:50):

Yeah. Um, I actually wanna come back to TikTok in a second, but, um, I will hit on like, uh, in certain, some maybe in, in industry based, uh, trend that I see a lot of is anything that we work with. That's in like gadgets tech, uh, accessories, you know, um, does really well with YouTube product reviewers as well. Like really well, and almost always like, whatever it is you like they'll charge a lot, you know? Like somebody might, some, a big product reviewer might be like, yeah, it's a hundred K just for me to review it. And I'm not even guaranteed. I'm gonna say good things about it. But if a product's good, you'll say good things about it. And uh, almost always it's like so worth it. You know what I mean? Like if you've got the inventory, um, it's like, so worth it for at least in that industry tech and stuff like that.
But I wanna say something that, or hit on something that you said, which was like, like the, the Roaz or the efficiency for the rest of the week, uh, was really good during that. I, I see a lot of that, like macro trend and this isn't media buying, but like a macro trend of like the brands that are good at creating events on a regular basis and by events, I mean like a, a mention from a big name or a new product draw a new flavor, a new product, a sale. I don't want to rely on sale after sale for events all the time, but a sale, you know, it would be one, one variation or one version. New product is great. Especially if it's like gonna go fast and be limited. That's the best thing a lot of people are like, I don't wanna sell out a product that means I'm missing sales.
I'm like, mm you're missing sales. If you're not selling out a product, honestly. Um, if you're, if you are selling out a product, people will buy it up so much quicker. If you never sell out a product, then there's no urgency ever. But, um, the, the brands that are really good at, at creating events on a regular basis like that are the ones that are still growing in what may be a macro trend of, uh, tough economic times at the moment. Um, and I would say though, that one thing, a challenge that, that poses, and I, I'm gonna kick this to, to you Ash as well, like a challenge that, that poses is, um, how to assess the performance of your media. Uh, when a brand is so good at creating events, some sometimes work with a brands that are creating big events weekly, you know?
Yeah. That's really, that's the outlier. Usually it's like maybe once a month, if they're really good, quarterly is really common. Um, but like, it really throws off, you know, uh, like we have one brand that's really good at influencer. It really throws off the paid media cuz it, it makes it so much better that it's like, uh, how do I assess <laugh> this creative test that I'm doing now that I launched. And then it got a day deep and then this thing happened and then that thing ended. And so now I have this like really tough read and like all of these creatives look like winners because they were in this time period. Um, and then I'm not really even gonna get that much time till the next event. Right. And so do I just hold and not test anything new? Um, I'm, I'm wondering how you approach that. Cuz I have a way, I, I have some that was kind of, one of the things I was gonna talk about is I have like some stuff that we've started doing around that, but yeah, you're interested in your thoughts.

Ash Melwani (00:22:03):

So it's funny that you say that cuz I'm actually very interested as to what your solution is because we had, um, I don't know, again, something I probably mentioned before, but we did a community nominated flavor, uh, caramel macchiato and last year it sold out like once every quarter. Right? So like almost four times during out the year we brought it back about two months ago. Right. And in my creative testing for that week, cuz we brought it back as like a full-time flavor instead of like a limited edition flavor. So I was testing content around that specific flavor. Right. So now when we launched it, obviously we had the, the launch and, and the restock of it to really, you know, kind of boost the sales there. But that entire week, those ads were performing like really, really well. Right. They're still considered top they're top of the funnel.
I'm excluding customers, but those ads still on in platform and in triple, it all looked amazing right. To the point where, okay, do I scale these now? Like, are these winners like right? Or is it just because like we just had this launch, people are still like, they're coming into our ecosystem. They're seeing that there's a restock. Oh they saw this specific flavor on the ad, let me go and buy it. Right. Is it it's, is it still retargeting in some sense, you know? And then after like two weeks, those ads completely crapped out and they weren't actual winners. Right. So like to your point, you can like, it's tough to actually do that. So I'm, I'm curious, how do you even determine that? I think initially my first thoughts would be like, is this driving sales on like a first day click? Um, versus like a last, like a, a

John Coyle (00:23:45):

Yeah. You know what I mean? So I'm curious what, what, you're, what you're thinking on around there. Yeah. Uh, it has been, it has been tough because, um, so there's a couple things that we've, and, and I think you are, you're an end brand media buyer, which actually probably gives you a leg up on thinking about this because if you're an agent, I mean just put yourself in a position of an agency buyer, like you're gonna be like check out these creatives, bro. Like these pop, you have to look for it. Right. Like you're gonna be excited about it and you wanna tell the client, um, and stuff like that. But I was like, that's the biggest thing for like for a minute we had, I had to be like, Hey, all right, hold, wait, like don't say anything yet. Right. <laugh> um, and, but once we started that and doing that got committed to like actually assessing the, the like, uh, validity of the evergreen creatives and how, you know, out, outside the lift that they were getting.
Um, there's a couple things that I've landed on so that you could try I'll I'll give a couple, but I'll, I'll tell you kind of, what's worked sort of best for us was um, so, so number one is we have started to, uh, create benchmarks for we'll call it an event and out of event. And, and this is not that hard because most brands that create events for themselves create the same kind of events on a pretty regular basis. Right? So for Avi, it's gonna be like limited flavor drops. Those are the kinds of events you create on a pretty regular basis or bringing a flavor from limited to permanent, you know? So, so you could probably categorize 'em it's like it's new flavor drops, limited drops, sales and, uh, graduation of a flavor, right? Like you probably bucket 'em. So we started to benchmark KPIs, uh, for, during evergreen period, not an event.
And then during like, uh, during period of, of, of event by category, right. And this is kind of a lot of work, but like you can go back over this data. Right. Cuz you know, when the dates were and stuff like that and then, um, break it down to at least channel, right. So at least like Facebook, Google, stuff like that. But like within Google you probably need to break it down to campaign type, you know, like YouTube and, and shopping aren't the same. Um, but within Facebook I would even suggest further, uh, breakdown of KPIs. So this is another big thing that we're doing right now, breaking down KPIs by position and funnel has been always a thing, right? Like what is a good retargeting? What is a good prospecting, but we're actually looking at it a little bit differently now instead of retargeting and prospecting, we're actually looking at like, what is a, what is kind of like, where does this ad sit in?
Like the awareness funnel, right? So like with obvi um, you might have a comparison ad that's like, you know, ABI versus some other collagen brand that ad might perform really, really well from a, from a C standpoint or your image ads that just ha like call out a benefit. Those could perform really, really well from a C standpoint. But like what are those at their core? There's something that speaks to somebody who's probably pretty aware already of the problem, aware that collagen is the solution aware maybe even of your brand and another brand. Um, but at least aware that collagen is the solution. Whereas if you have like an informational video or an advertorial that talks about like, Hey, here's what you are you feeling this? Like, is this how you feel? Right. Like, let me tell you what problem you're having. Like they're not even problem aware.
Right? Like they're just like vaguely aware of this thing that they don't like, that kind of ad gets a different KPI. Right. And so I'm kind of like going this long way to answer your question of saying like, we'll even break it down all the way to that level of like inside event and during evergreen period and by like ad type, so to speak and not like prospecting, we don't even look at it like prospecting and retargeting anymore. We more look at it like level of awareness. And we usually don't go any more complicated than like two or three categories. Like if it's like a deep retargeting type ad, if it's like a middle of funnel, like they're aware of the solution type of ad and like a top a funnel, like, you know, they're maybe vaguely aware of the problem type of ad and they get different KPIs cuz vaguely aware of the problem type of ads.
Like they're just not gonna, and a lot of times people like say things like, oh yeah, on Facebook, like just do these testimonial like, like do a photo ad image ad with a testimonial, you know, or, uh, a image ad with like a comparison. And I'm like, well, yeah, they work well, cuz Facebook knows to put those in front of people who are solution aware, right? Like they work better than your ones that are for people who don't even know about collagen. Right. Like they do, they're going to, but those ones that for people who don't even know about collagen are still important. Um, and they play an important role. So I think a lot of times when people have hold like one standard for their ads and their creative testing across like all creatives in prospecting, uh, they end up cutting a lot of stuff that actually would be good long term ads.
You just gotta give those a different KPI. So that was like, let me get off my bar, my pedestal there. I was gonna say bar stool, I am on a stool. But um, and but, and just say like, yeah, so we'll, we'll set KPIs inside and outside of time period, um, relativity is another thing we've used in the past. And that's like, if you, first thing that's easiest enough is just to say, how did it perform? Like, you know, whatever, uh, $20 CPA is no longer the standard. It is. What was the average of the account, right? Or what, like, you know, maybe the average during that period was a $10 CPA and that's the standard. So this 20 is actually not that good. Um, but the, the best way that we've actually done it in shout out to shout out to T w here, shout out to the whale is, uh, using a attribution model.
Like either first or last click, you could play with that, but going with like a CAC, you know, like a new customer CAC last click on like a really tight attribution model that seems to regulate that a little bit. Right. Whereas like your true ads that, you know, are winners on evergreen will stay consistent through this like event period. Or maybe they'll go up a little bit, you know, but those ones that are being lifted will like really be lifted during that period and, and come like, there'll be more volatility during that period. Or they just like, they like, won't see a lift. So that's the best is like, oh yeah. Like when I like really make you stand on your own merit and say, drive clicks and convert 'em today from new people, um, that, you know, it, it shows up usually with like when you're looking at something strict, like new customer C and first click or last click or something like that. So those are the ways that we've found. Um, but yeah, that was, that was long. I don't know. Have you done any of that as well? And have you seen trends that are like, yeah, it doesn't help.

Ash Melwani (00:30:19):

I think, I mean, it's great. Great, great feedback. There's a lot to, there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah. Um, I think from what you're saying, you know, just setting those like KPIs, um, like pre post during, you know, like, I, I think, I think agencies, or even like just media buyers in general, just have to like assume and understand that these events or whatever it is. Like, even if it's a, a restock, a launch, or even like a PR article that comes out or influencer post, like you have to understand that your marketing efficiency is going to get better. Right. Right. And when those things wear out, it's going to get worse. Right. And so like, you just have to understand that you can't be like, okay, this new ad is just crushing. I wanna scale it. Like you have to understand the entire ecosystem. And then to your point as an agency, you guys are so, you know, your performance and obviously pay and everything is so focused on performance. Like you guys, it it's tough. True. Yeah, exactly. So

John Coyle (00:31:22):

It's gotta be true. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, I I'll call it out to a different higher level concept here that Rob called out on my podcast and that is incentives drive, drive actions. So step one to assessing how is my creative performance performing and how much lift did I get from this event is incentivizing. Whoever is doing this properly to, to assess that properly. Right. Because if they're incentivized to want it, like they want it to do well. Like, and that's how they're incentivized, then that's what they're gonna see. And they're not gonna dig in you. Ash is both a business Mo owner and media buyer have unpacked this because you are incentive is aligned that way. Right? Like you want to grow the business. So, and that's really hard. It's really hard to incentivize either employees or external vendors to like really desire to grow the business as much as you do as the owner. But, um, that, that's probably like the really core tenant here is like, what are the people who are making this assessment incentivized by? I think, um, I wanna talk about TikTok. Oh, sorry. I'm not trying

Ash Melwani (00:32:29):

To, no, I was gonna, I was gonna say, cuz Rob you're I think for triple oil's, like marketing strategy, the biggest push has always been like influencers, right? Yeah. Um, when you guys are running the ads, do you, do you see certain events, like, say for example, triple posts, you know, um, you know, a bang or thread and you know, impressions go through the roof. Do you guys see Lyft in performance with like Facebook ads or like, you know, or not?

Rabah Rahil (00:32:58):

It's a great question. So we are in a little bit of a different boat because so first off to, uh, your point, John, I do think like, I don't think people are good and bad. I think people are just driven by incentives. Yeah. So making sure the incentives are aligned is great, but we are so SaaS is consumed and purchased in a much different way than DDC. So DDC has a very nice linear progression, right? Like to your point, John, of however you wanna do, whether it's awareness, consideration, conversion, top funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, problem aware, not problem or whatever. There's a nice linear pathway to conversion where in a SaaS company, it's just not that, especially at our price points. So maybe something like, uh, shout out our creative director, Zach Murray has a great product called foreplay. It's $50 a month. Like that's a nothing burger, right? Like that's just, Alexa's gonna kill me. I said that that, that has been take, is that a horrible, nothing

John Coyle (00:33:53):

Burger? Oh, Amazon, are you talking about Alexa? The person or Alexa? Amazon. It's very confusing.

Rabah Rahil (00:33:57):

No, the, my head of brand Alexa, she, Alexa person hates it. My fiance hates it. My head of sales Rigo hates it. So nothing burger got eliminated from the vernacular, but it's, it's, it's an impulse purchase. Right. Whereas when you're spending, like our lowest plan is 300 bucks. And so like when you're spending $300, especially for somebody, you know, making under a million dollars for a store, that's a decision. And so what I'm trying to get at is we are more of like a pinball or a neural network. And you get into this web that is the triple whale ecosystem and you might buy today. You might buy a month from now. You might buy three months from now. So for us paid media is not a big lever of growth. It's a necessary evil in a way, but our ecosystem is or what we drive our community content education.
Those are the three pillars of acquisition and paid is just kind of to stay there top of mind, um, like CPG. And so we do see bumps on when we turn paid up, but they're almost like a two to three week lag of like, well bump paid. And then it takes two to three weeks for that actual two actually to materialize into new Mr for us. Um, and so that's why, and to be fair, you have to be really careful with that to John's point of benchmarking and stuff, because say, we might have had a geek out that month. We might have had a whale road show. We might have had a bang over thread. There was all these things in the ecosystem at our driving, all this. Um, and so it's very hard for us. And the irony is we don't have triple well for triple well yet <laugh> um, so we don't have a really good insight into what is driving conversions from our paid media channels.
Uh, and so the, the too long didn't read is SAS and D to C are just, SAS is more akin to CPG or SAS products at a certain price point. Like us are more akin to CPG than they are D TOC. The other thing is we don't really care so much of cost per acquisition, as we do LTV to C because we are an LTV play, right? Like when people, people they get involved with triple activate, triple download the mobile app, all these things, there's not a lot of churn. And so we care more about how much this person's gonna be worth more to us in six months, 12 months, what have you, and then what's the C the cost per acquisition there. So it's a little bit different where D to C you're usually you, you care about the front end, then you're hoping on the back end, like you guys have some pretty tight handle on your numbers at obvious.
So you guys can kind of buy off LTV, but I, I really caution people to buy off of anything more than a six month LTV in a DTC company, just because there's a lot of fuckery that can go on when you start to extrapolate, oh, well, I know they're gonna give us $800 in a year and then it's like, COVID hits. And then you're like, okay, cool. How did you, you know, account for that stuff? So I get really wary with longer runways for LTV extrapolations for D TOC. But anyways, long-winded answer of, um, paid media is important to us, not a huge lever for us. And honestly, the neural network is more important. Like I think of like an ecosystem and to lean into the whale pun, like the blue whale is the biggest mammo on the planet. And it's basically supported by plankton, which is one of the smallest microorganisms. And so if the plankton dies, the blue whale can't live. And so we, we think of our acquisition model in a more holistic sense of the marketing ecosystem. Then we do strictly in, um, paid levers.

John Coyle (00:37:12):

The, and that's a lot more like agency, right, where it's like community content engage. Is that what you said, community content and

Rabah Rahil (00:37:19):

Community content, education,

John Coyle (00:37:21):

Education, engage education. That's a lot more like acquisition close enough. And, and yeah, yeah. In my head I had CCE. Uh, so, and, and, and, uh, paid paid is really just fuel for the fire, right? So like when you create good content or, you know, good education or something like that, all, all it is used for is to, to fuel that, uh, because it's, it's very difficult to directly attribute any kind of AC meaningful acquisition to paid. And, um, I mean, at a $300 a month price point, I would say in, at a harder or easier, even than at a 5,000 or a $10,000 a month price point or something like that. Right. Um, but, but still very hard. Um, but like, yeah, you said another thing there of like, you know, you kind of essentially said that, uh, you guys look at it on an incremental lift basis.
Yep. And there's some people who like assess their whole paid media that way. I don't wanna call anybody out, but there's like one person I'm thinking of, and I'm sure you guys know who he is on Twitter. Who's like their whole point is like the way you assess performances on incremental lift, um, you know, by a channel or something like that. And my, that, that exactly what you said is my problem with that is like, there's so many, if you worried about variables, right? Like there's so many variables on incremental lift and I've preached it. Like, I, I'm not against incremental lift. It's just like, there's so many variables on, uh, validating a channel by its incremental lift. You know, that, I think that's like, it's a dangerous thing to get into, unless you're really, really big, you know, from a, for an e-commerce brand. Like you need to be pretty big before you're trying to do that. Kind of like statistical modeling. Right. <laugh> um, yeah,

Rabah Rahil (00:39:05):

Take

John Coyle (00:39:05):

It away. I wanna talk to you about toss, Rob. I'm just gonna ask you to like, pull some data out of the air. Hopefully it's real, but if it's not just make it up. Um, all right. Do

Rabah Rahil (00:39:16):

I have some numbers top of mind? So, yeah,

John Coyle (00:39:18):

Yeah, yeah. I'm just kidding. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, no, I, but I was actually gonna ask you for media based, cuz I basically, I, I started out saying like media mixing and mixing away from Facebook, which you talked about in March at geek, out in San Diego. I am interested in if the trend is still the same or if it has trended heavier into Google in, in TikTok specifically because I actually have the cold take, I guess it's a hot take, but I actually am. I'm, I've cooled significantly on TikTok in the last six months. Whereas many people have not. Um, yeah. I love the ashes, not in his head cuz you're one of the people that I've seen. That's been like, we spend more on TikTok than face, but I, if you've said that, but like we're, but I'm like, I didn't, I've not seen an account yet that I can be like, and TikTok is better. I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of talk, so, but, but yeah. Tell me, uh, Rob, if you got it off the top of your head, like have we, have you set the stage moved more from Facebook over to Google or TikTok yet?

Rabah Rahil (00:40:14):

Yeah, absolutely. So just to give you kind of some back of the napkin math, so year to date Facebook spend, and so this is across we're about 5,000 stores, 50 plus countries Facebook spend is down about 25% overall Google's up around 60% year to date. Wow. So this is basically, yeah, it's pretty big because this

John Coyle (00:40:33):

Is wow. I mean the channels up Q

Rabah Rahil (00:40:35):

Q2 to Q3 essentially versus, uh, the biggest spending quarters. This is compared to the previous period. So not year over year. So you're talking Q3 Q4 of last year. So pretty big to have these bigger or to have the drop off when anyways and then TikTok again is so Google's up about 60%, which is a ton. Um, Facebook's still the biggest spending channel by orders of magnitude. So don't, don't get it twisted. Like it's going outta business. It's still the biggest spend probably arguably the best spend out there. Uh Google's uh, so Facebook's down about a quarter, year to date in terms of spend Google is up about 60%, um, year to date, which is pretty insane because it's such a big number. Um, and I think to your point of a lot of the things you mentioned, but I do think people are getting some mileage outta PAX, whether it's real or not. I, I do hear a lot of people getting, getting some, some, uh, performance max is what we're talking about. Sorry that we're using a short

John Coyle (00:41:29):

Yeah, I don't think I even said performance.

Rabah Rahil (00:41:31):

Yeah, yeah. Is what we're talking about with PAX. Um, so I think there's a lot to be said there and TikTok is absolutely exploded. It's like 1700% growth. It's still a pitance again, out of those three channels. Right. It's still a pitance. Um, what is interesting? So this is a little, uh, spilled tee, um, Pinterest jumped Snapchat. So Snapchat is now our least spending channel and Pinterest is actually up like 40 or 50% as well. So again, snap and pins are like basically nothing. Um, TikTok is okay. Uh, Google's pretty big and Facebook's massive. So it's still, Facebook is the king Google's secondary. Um, TikTok is, uh, still small, but absolutely exploding. Uh, Pinterest is growing again and jump to shark in terms of Snapchat and Snapchat is just, um, I, I actually don't even know anybody spending on Snapchat ironically, but it is not, not looking good right now across all our stores. So I mean, maybe there's some people that it works for, but um, that's across all our stores.

John Coyle (00:42:30):

It's hard to tell whether it works, cuz it never can make up that big of a medium mix. Um, so, so, uh, here's how I think of it. And I don't know if you know these numbers off the top of, of your head, how I always think of it as percentage of spend allocated, right? Like media mix. Yep. By percentage. So like, like for example, um, Q let's say, uh, 20, 21 is so such a weird year to compare, but, but let's try, I'll try and do the same thing and try and think of probably close to what it was off the top of my head. If I were to look across our current portfolio brands, Q3 2021, Q2 2021, I would've said we were 85% Facebook, eh, 80% Facebook, 15% Google, 5% other I'm gonna put all of them together in other, um, and now I would say Q2 Q3 of this year, it's like maybe like 60% Facebook, like 35% Google.
I might be even being a little bit generous to Facebook here. And uh, then like a solid, so wait, sorry that was 95. So probably like 60, 55, 60% Facebook, maybe 25, 30% Google, a solid five to 10% Snapchat and then other, you know, to fill in the rest. Um I'm but, but like a lot of people are like TikTok over Facebook, you know, like saying that they can spend more on TikTok than Facebook and, and maybe not a lot, but like some, like I put out a tweet and I'm like, who are you? And can I see your ad account please? Cause I I've not seen anything yet that like we've got some brands where TikTok is good, but it's still not able to spend at the level Facebook is, or it might even be more efficient, but like at like a fifth of the spend or something like that. Um, so yeah, I am interested in, in Rob if you know the numbers broken out like that.

Rabah Rahil (00:44:16):

Yeah. Yeah. I have a, a kind of, again, a little bit back of the napkin, um, numbers for you. And then I want to hear Ashe's input, but I'm a hundred percent with you. I don't the only people I know spending is huge money on TikTok. I know two people and one is a celebrity backed brand. Um, and two they're both really niche products where it's almost feels not like a money grab. It's a hundred percent it dropshipping be. That's a really good point. It's not dropshipping. Like there's a brand behind it, but it feels in that same vein of like under a hundred dollars, they

John Coyle (00:44:47):

Can't arbitrage it on Facebook

Rabah Rahil (00:44:48):

Anymore. Impulse by there's no LTV play here. It's get the money on the first touch or go F yourself kind of thing like that. Those are the things that I've seen actually take off on TikTok, um, where people are spending. I know somebody's spending upwards a 30 K day on TikTok. He's the biggest spender I know of. And it's a super niche product. Um, and it's very cheap. It's like it's in it to be fair too. It's in the UK. So it's not even,

John Coyle (00:45:12):

Yeah. And talk and also talk to me in five months, you know what I mean

Rabah Rahil (00:45:16):

To be

John Coyle (00:45:17):

I'm I'm not saying he won't, I'm not, I'm not saying it won't, but I'm just saying like that's how Facebook was.

Rabah Rahil (00:45:21):

There's a difference there's between building a business and making money. And so think that's a really important bifurcation of like to the five month thing is like, this guy could be absolutely loaded in five months, but this business might not exist. So there's no judgment there. It's a totally different thing of making money versus building a business. Yep. Uh, and so what we've seen honestly, is a as ironic as this sounds, the parade principle 80 20, where people are still 80% Facebook, 20% Google is the best performing accounts we've seen. And then we've seen some, some 60 forties where Facebook goes down to 60% and Google's and 40%, but really all the accounts we've sit across and all the biggest spending. So I'm, I'm excluding kind of like baby spends, right? Like if you're, you're not spending real money, there's no judgment on it, but I'm not including in this analysis, but all the people that are really pumping real money are still Facebook, Google either 80, 20 or 60 40.
And then they have, yeah, like obviously there's some smatterings of things here and there, but nobody I know has a really big, um, mix in terms of triple channels, which, you know, there could be some influencer stuff going on that I haven't seen quite frankly, but it's funny because one of my thesis was that people are succeeding are diversifying their spend and that's not what my preliminary analysis showed, um, where people are still pretty heavily reliant upon Facebook and Google. So again, this is caveated with, it was very once past kind of, I need to check my math, but that's what we saw with our biggest spending, most efficient accounts or 80 20 or 60 40,

John Coyle (00:46:53):

Our, our yeah. And biggest spending. I, I would say that maybe that's, that's where we're at too. Um, especially cuz it's like a little harder to scale Google, the baby spend accounts. I don't know what anybody would consider baby spend, but like let's say under 50, 60 K a month. Yep. Those are the ones that are 80, 20 Google. Those are the ones 80, 20. Yep. Um, yeah. Ash, tell me about TikTok. You still spending more, there were, were, was there legitimately a time where you were both spending more and getting better efficiency on TikTok than Facebook Ash is like, well,

Ash Melwani (00:47:28):

I told people there was so I'm just kidding. There was there. I was, I was, I was at a point where we were spending 50, 50. Okay. Um, it did not last long, but it was there. And then I think the biggest thing that I've seen is that I have like random periods where I can scale very quickly. Yes. And then I have to scale back. Right? Yep. Yep. And I've always attributed to a content thing because like to, to spend, I think the most I've spent in a day is like nine K to spend that for like two weeks straight. You need content. Yeah. And like, what I've seen is it's not all of it to hit, not everything will hit. Right. So like if I'm going and getting 10 creatives a week and like, I think there are times where all 10 will hit, those are the periods where I can like really bump up.
But then like there'll be a week where like everything just doesn't work and then I have to bring it back. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so I think when I first talked about it was probably like in April may when we did originally figure it out. So like, but that's the thing. We were so new to the platform that when we were spending, it was driving more discovery, like first time visits, new visits than anything else to the ecosystem. So everything, everything performed well right now you start to hit that like, all right, are you gonna start, you know, showing the ads to the same people, less discovery, less new visits per you know, session and then efficiency comes down. Right? Yeah. So we probably like we're at seven K a day AK a day, brought it back down to about a thousand. Right. And like, I think June, July, we were just kind of hovering.
And that is when we were like, not plotting, but like we were, we were getting a lot of our, like ducks in a row to get enough content to support those levels of spend. Right. So reached out to 200 U GC creators got 200 videos, started testing. So like over the last month when we were testing, like we had a lot to test, I was able to then spend a lot more. But now what I'm noticing is that I think for the, for all of August, we spent quite a bit, like, I'd say over, not, not like more than Facebook, but like, I would say F like 10%, 15% of like total budget. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, like over a hundred, a hundred grand for the month. Right. And what I've seen is like this, like rise things like do really well. And then instant, like just sharp drop.
Yeah. Yeah. Because like the creative just fatigues. Right. So when it's, when it's like really working, I always, like, for some reason, we're like, all right, don't touch the account. Don't do anything. Don't test anything like it's performing. And then when it comes down to it, it's like, wait, we really should have still been testing because like, as soon as these creatives die, it's done. Right. Yeah. So like right now, like, do I, if you would ask me this, this time, last week, I was like, yeah, nine K a day, this and that, like over the weekend, complete shit show. And like I'm back down to like two K. Yeah. Cause I hadn't cut like a lot. Right. So like now it's like going back into testing and like getting more creatives, but like fatigue is real. And like, that's just, I, I feel like that's why it's still, like, I take back what I said before, which is like, oh, I wish I could spend all my money on TikTok. But like, I really can't cuz we don't have enough resources yeah. For the amount of content that it needs.

John Coyle (00:50:43):

And, and, and, and I would say that you won't cure that with more content creation. I don't think so. My, my observation across all of our brands has been on TikTok. You're either spending the testing budget or you're scaling really hard. There's no in between. Right. So it's like, we have this much testing budget set aside. This is gonna be, we're always gonna spend this to test, test, test, test, test something hits it, scales really hard. Even if you keep testing, like the, the hit rate on it is just not that high or whatever. Like, and it just, you know, sometimes you'll get another one in there and you might get two weeks of scale instead of one or something like that. Yeah. But like, for us TikTok, it's like, you're always either spending the testing budget or scaling really hard. It's, it's kind of like being an affiliate, right?
Like that's how affiliates roll because they don't need to hit volume targets or they don't need to keep overheads or anything like that. It's like, we're either making money or we aren't. And if we aren't, we're just gonna spend the testing budget. You can't run an eCommerce brand that way you need some channels that will provide stability. And that's why I'm kind of like, I'm, I'm not saying talk's not good because it's like, I will, I'll take a gravy channel all day. Right. Like if it's gonna give me gravy, when it's scaling and you know, I'm gonna test the other times, like fine, you know, as long as I'm not always testing and never scaling. Um, but it's, you can't make it like a core foundational piece of your business at this point in time in writing. It's not,

Ash Melwani (00:52:00):

No, no. I, I think one thing you said was is that like, I don't think enough content is gonna fix everything. And what I've noticed is that this, this is also true, but what kind of combats it is that, which is why we reach out to so many U GC creators is because I wanna have like, people talk about creative fatigue. I think there's also creator fatigue. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so like, if you're seeing, for example, like, you know, blonde and white girl talking about Avi. Yeah. And you're still seeing her like in five different types of videos, you know, what's happening, right. Yeah. Like, you know, what's going on and talk's really bad at circling the same group of people. Right? Yeah. So if you're like, introducing, this is why I think this month did really well. Cause you were testing a hundred different creators that like flood your feed of you're seeing everyone using Avi.
It's like, oh shit, okay. There's that layer like that has that effect to that, you know, the whole, the whole vibe of like, oh, everyone's using it. But again, now these 10 that like did really well fatigue. Now I gotta get more. And it's like, it's a lot more that goes into it to really make it successful at scale. But like you said, I think Facebook will always be like, Hey, I can, I can run this creative for three months. And like, it still does well. So I think that's where the, the issue of the volatility comes into play. So I, I do think, I, I do think the platform is going to get better with time. I just don't think it's there right

John Coyle (00:53:29):

Now. Uh, user volumes, a big thing, you know what I mean? Like it has grown like crazy, but, uh, it still can't touch the user volume of Google or Facebook. And that's exactly how Snapchat was. It would be this like boomer bust channel when it was doing well. Um, but it's be, it's like you scale it, man. And it's like, you, you re you've reached everyone on Snapchat today. You know? Like, that's like, that's really it. Like your frequency. You could go like wide open with an impressions campaign and you'd still have a three frequency once you get really scaling on there. And uh, so that's a big thing and that'll be it like if TikTok can get that kind of penetration that Instagram and Facebook have and like that kind of usership, then the platform will improve. If it can't, then it'll become another, maybe better version of like Snapchat, Pinterest, Robbie, you were gonna say something. I saw your point. Yeah. Saw your little light bulb go on there.

Rabah Rahil (00:54:18):

Yeah. No it, throughout the neons, I still have a light bulb. Um, the thing that you touched on I think is very precedent because I think this is the big headwind that Snapchat has, where a lot of people don't buy on their mobile phone. Like you just don't especially bigger purchases. And so if you're not buying on that mobile device, it can be really challenging to understand anything outside of like, it turns into basically a topple funnel awareness, this campaign mm-hmm <affirmative>, and you're not really bringing sales in, unless it's under like again that like $50 purchase of like, oh, this is cool. I'm gonna buy it on my phone. BA blah, BA bash, BOSH. I use shop pay or apple pay. And I get through it, um, where, like I'm not gonna buy $400 or $300 of supplements or even $200 of supplements on my phone.
I'll probably check it out. This is cool. Awesome. Then I go to my computer and I buy it from a web session, blah, blah, blah. And so like there just gets to be some issues where it's hard to justify the spend there. And then there's just kind of, it just, it starts to devolve in terms of asset allocation, right? Where to Ash's point like the costs that go into running successful TikTok campaigns, you start to have to factor that in where it's like crap, like these campaigns fatigue really quickly. And so on Facebook, when you hit some stuff on Facebook, you can scale to the moon. And then when they start dying, just cost cap and then test some more stuff. And then if something hits on there, it's just much more, has way more legs. Like the longevity's just so much more valuable versus you hit something on TikTok to your point of like, it does feel very FEAS or famine there isn't a stability.
And so I think that's one of the challenges TikTok has to figure out if it does wanna get into cuz I loved what you said there. And that's one of, I think the life bloods of a, a fantastic D TOC brand is what are some stable acquisition channels that I know will be there and that I can grow uniformly. Like the exponential stuff just doesn't happen. Like you can't grow paid media exponentially. It just does. Does it does paid media does not compound content compounds, community compounds, but it won't compound forever. Like there's somebody that's never run retargeting and then you run retargeting and you'll have this nice hockey stick, but then that'll actually go to a linear distribution. Once you get to a point of like, there's just no way to compound paid media. It just doesn't happen. And so I think that's the big challenge that TikTok has is, I mean, our attribution helps to kind of see what's going on and to your point of changing attribution models of like, okay, cool.
Let's look at first click and see how much like TikTok is actually driving like top of funnel. Cause I know you've commented on this Ash when your TikTok is doing better, the whole ecosystem lifts Facebook, which makes a ton of sense, which everything does better, but it just starts to get to a point where the opportunity cost of like having to do all this stuff for TikTok where it's like, what if I just work with micro influencers? What if I just do this, that and the other, like, can I get the same amount of return or more then just dealing with the, you know, ebbs, ebbs and flows of TikTok.

John Coyle (00:57:21):

I, and so, so you said, I mean, okay, like you, like you said, a lot of like really true stuff there. I think that, um, we're getting into at structured, starting to work with some like really big brands, you know, a hundred million, 200 million fi like the game is different at that level. Um, meaning, meaning, uh, you outgrow the algorithms, you know what I mean? Like it's just like you, like, you just really can't put that much more into Facebook unless you wanna start using different, uh, campaign types, like impression and you that's what you'd end up doing. You end up using like video view campaigns, cuz you like, it's impossible for you to reach anybody new run in a purchase campaign. Um, that's where things like, you know, Snapchat or like these kinds of things that it's like, it does just drive a lot of top of vulnerable awareness and like some sales, but not a lot really come into play, but to assess the effectiveness of them is, is really hard.
Um, if you're not that big, because if you're that big, you can do some conversion lift studies and some incremental incre incrementality tracking and stuff like that. And it actually has some decent statistical significance. But if you're not that big, you know, if you're trying to check the incre mentality on, I don't know, $10,000 a month of Snapchat spend, like it's gonna be tough. You know what I mean? Or 10,000 a month of, of TikTok spend, it's gonna be tough. And tho those channels do lift, like you said, they lift the equal system and you can subjectively see it, but it it's really hard to measure until you get that big. And once you get that big that's when other things come into play, like, you know, if we're gonna talk about Snapchat driving that top of funnel stuff, like let's talk about the Google display network or, or like, you know, uh,

Rabah Rahil (00:58:53):

Native

John Coyle (00:58:54):

Advertising TV. Yeah. Native advertising, programmatic. Yeah. I mean there's stuff that has massive reach. The GDN has more reach than anything, you know? So it's like on the internet. So like, yeah. I mean, that's, we're getting into a zone where most people aren't in, in that conversation. And so you're absolutely right. If you're not in that zone, you're listening to this and you're like, oh, none of you guys are saying, it's true. Then you might be in that zone. Um, but like if you're not in that zone, it's pretty tough to assess the effectiveness of, of those like real top of funnel channels. Um, one thing that I will shift, I, I'm gonna shift gears and say like I have you guys probably hear my kids screaming in the background. It's really distracting me. Um, I, I have, uh, found that some of those like YouTube, Snapchat TikTok, one of my favorite brands that I'm buying media for lately is, uh, my own.
It's not my own brand, but I am a, I'm a partial owner of it. I'm a shareholder of it. Um, and so I'm, you know, buying the media, um, and incentive alignment. Yeah. Incentive, alignment, look at that. Um, it is, we run everything it's pure last click. We track everything last click like AFI, but, but you gotta be real mature. Right. Because it's like, you're, you're gonna do some stuff where it's like, you know, we're running YouTube and the C on there is really high, but we can just see, it's like, it's lifting the ecosystem. We see that we're getting a lot of, so it, like, it's a matter of just setting different standards for different channels. So if you're doing stuff like that, something like TikTok or, or Snapchat or whatever, like you might become a little bit more of a stable, like true diversification. Um, but it, yeah, it's tough it, but with that brand we can afford really. We have like great LTVs so we can afford really high tax. And that's like, what? You really need to diversify into those channels. That just, they're not gonna be as efficient on a, like a direct click, any kind of direct click basis. Yeah. I don't know if, um, if you guys have anything to say about that or that's just like long,

Ash Melwani (01:00:54):

Um, I mean the one thing you said, right? Like for example, you're running YouTube, CAC doesn't look great. Right. But your overall efficiency makes sense. Like that is where I will probably say for awesome right now. Cause wet, we're not running YouTube yet for TikTok. I will let things run a little bit longer even though in platform and in triple oil things don't look good just because I know it's helping Facebook. Um, like for example, today I was like looking at some of our numbers. Our C is under KPI goals right now. Right. But if I go and look at like TikTok and like in platform is like, it looks like garbage, right. So like, do I make a change and like risk or like is TikTok really bringing discovery and is Facebook performing well because of TikTok because I've noticed that on several occasions or do I just let it run and just like, all right, all things look good. Blended looks great. Let me just keep things going. Right. So that's like the internal struggle that I think a lot of brands are going to have, and especially like agencies that are running like YouTube or even snap and like, or it's hard to get that like first day conversion and like show that this is working. It's very tough. So I definitely like feel for you guys, but then on the brand end, I think brand owners have to understand like, Hey, blended looks great. Keep it going.

John Coyle (01:02:12):

Yeah. Yeah. And blended CA like, you know, don't, don't fool yourself. Like cuz sometimes Mer is misleading or whatever, but like it is yeah. Dead on. I mean, for us, it's like this blended CAC looks really good. Right. And, and our LTVs really solid and it's very worth it to us to have a diversification away from like if our Facebook ads, but Facebook shut down our ad account tomorrow and said, you can never advertise again. It would hurt. Don't get me wrong. It would hurt. But we would survive. Like we, our, our, our payback periods on the LTVs would get much longer. We'd grow way slower, uh, running YouTube and, and TikTok, but we would survive. Right. And that's the position you really wanna be in as an econ brand. So why I kind of got involved with that brand is cuz I could see that potential. And, but like be, you know, that, I mean, that's kind of like my high level TLDR of like, it's not a media buying tip, but like if you're brand owner, that's where you really wanna be is in this position of like, I can actually handle the higher CS, higher trackable CS from these channels. And so I'm not really married to one channel. Um, yeah. And that's kinda where this conversation is going is like channels. Right?

Ash Melwani (01:03:21):

Yep. That was good. Perfect.

Rabah Rahil (01:03:24):

Cool. Amazing. All right, boys, we're pushing up against it, uh, time for the creepy question and then we'll wrap it

John Coyle (01:03:31):

Up. Okay. Uh, let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (01:03:33):

All right. What was, what was last? Week's creepy Ash. We didn't do it last week. Ollie. Ollie was out. Yeah, we're doing double this week. I forgot. What was the last one? <laugh> I always the Gina elephant once. Just always just pops to mind for me. It's the elephant in the room. <inaudible> um, okay. So I'm trying to think of what was a good, I didn't do my homework. So I have to pull one outta the hat. Mm. If you could be a pro sport athlete in any sport, what would it be? What's the sports league you're going with Ash. You'll go first and then we'll do it.

Ash Melwani (01:04:15):

I'm doing F1. I do F1.

Rabah Rahil (01:04:19):

Of course. Schumacher is arguably one of the, the best, uh, that drivers or athletes ever most dominant.

Ash Melwani (01:04:26):

That's good. I think that like that requires like a lot of skill. Like it's like life or death shit.

Rabah Rahil (01:04:33):

<laugh> yeah. You get concussions.

John Coyle (01:04:34):

That's why wouldn't do it. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (01:04:35):

You get, you get many concussions from it and uh, yeah. Ooh. That's a good one though. Ash.

John Coyle (01:04:40):

That's a good one. Yeah. So if I'm looking,

Rabah Rahil (01:04:43):

That's strong answer.

John Coyle (01:04:44):

If I'm looking to make money, I'm gonna probably be a golfer, maybe a baseball player. But if I'm looking to do the thing I really like to do, I'm gonna be an NBA player cuz I love basketball and I, I, I legit play basketball four to five times a week.

Ash Melwani (01:05:00):

That's awesome.

Rabah Rahil (01:05:01):

Golf was what I was gonna go with. Baseball's a terrible answer. Cuz you're never home. You pay like 700 games during the season. It's horrible. Like those better

John Coyle (01:05:09):

Game seasons are killers.

Rabah Rahil (01:05:11):

No, to be fair, they make a ton of money. But like NFL players per, per game, get compensated way than baseball players. Like when you amortize their salaries across, you're living in a hotel room three, four of the year, plus you got spring training. If you go into the playoffs, it, it gets pretty long in the tooth. The games aren't as intense to be fair, right? Like it's, it's a little, well, depending on what, what position, but unless you're pitching and even if you pitch you don't pitch

John Coyle (01:05:37):

Catchings. Probably the only thing that's that intense.

Rabah Rahil (01:05:39):

Right. Cuz you're and even then, unless people are stealing a lot, it's not outside of the stance of sitting there. Right? Like it's not this arduous thing on your arm where you're throwing lasers to second base all the time. Right. Um, F one I like, it's

John Coyle (01:05:54):

Mainly just standing in like heat. You know what I mean? Like it's like, you're a bunch of layers in the heat. Yeah,

Rabah Rahil (01:05:59):

Yeah, yeah. That's fair. Uh, baseball's terrible answer F one's great. Golf is great. You guys stole both of it. Uh, I guess I do.

John Coyle (01:06:09):

I'll go. I'll go basketball. I'll go NBA. You can

Rabah Rahil (01:06:12):

Take golf NBA strong. Okay.

John Coyle (01:06:13):

It's it's pure love though. It's pure love though. I know. I'm not gonna make the most money doing that.

Rabah Rahil (01:06:18):

Yeah. I think I'd play soccer though. I think scoring a goal in a world cup match would probably be the, one of the most invigorating like experiences ever.

John Coyle (01:06:27):

That's fair. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (01:06:29):

But winning a grand Prix would be pretty cool or like a, a race.

John Coyle (01:06:34):

Here's my, here's my thing. I just wanna drive the cars. Here's my thing with car racing is that like, like if I have that big moment, I want to be able to like put my arms up and like have the crowd looking at me and me looking at them

Rabah Rahil (01:06:47):

Where

John Coyle (01:06:48):

Lap. I know, but you're like in your car, it's not like you interacting, they're interacting with the car. You know what I mean? Like you're not out there. Like yes, like looking at them and they're looking at you, you know what I'm saying? And it just doesn't feel like the same fair enough. Like I kinda, I like basketball cuz like, like what does D Wade do when he hits a game winner? What did D Wade do? When he hit a game winner? He like goes and jumps up onto the scores table and like lets the fans like touch him. You know what I mean? Like that's

Rabah Rahil (01:07:13):

Fair. Like

John Coyle (01:07:14):

That's

Rabah Rahil (01:07:14):

Cool. It's definitely the most intimate. And you don't have any like football, you have gear soccer a little bit, but you're kind of far from the pitch to be fair. Yeah. But there's nothing like football. You're an armor essentially. Right? <laugh> so it's not that vulnerable or intimate. Um,

John Coyle (01:07:29):

Sometimes they'll jump up and let 'em like grab 'em or whatever, but like yeah,

Rabah Rahil (01:07:32):

Yeah, yeah. But you're still in petty and stuff. All right. Yeah. So what we got, we got an F1 driver, NBA player and golf slash soccer player. That's not bad. We'll make it work. That's

John Coyle (01:07:42):

Cool. Golf. If you're golf and soccer, then you're really making money.

Rabah Rahil (01:07:45):

Yeah. It's MJ status, right? Let's go kids. Let's go. Um, John, thank you so much, dude. I love your thoughtful, eloquent answers. Let the people know how they can follow you. How they can get more involved. The structured taking clients. This time's yours. My friend.

John Coyle (01:07:58):

Yeah. Structure's taking clients so structured.agency. Um, if you wanna work with me, work with us. If you go to structured.agency, book a call, then you will talk to me at this point in time. Um, if you wanna follow my podcast, it is modern commerce. You can search it on YouTube or maybe Roba will link it up if you're on a linkable place. Yep. Uh, I also, I'm glad you asked a sports question because I just launched a sports POS podcast, um, called triple cross. Uh, we do sports debates. We argue about sports things. So it's a good time. Um, if you're into that and then if you wanna follow me on Twitter, it's at John J H coil, pretty simple. Um, that's probably where I'm most AC active in terms of socials. You could connect with me on LinkedIn, but like we're not gonna talk. So that's all you can follow me.

Rabah Rahil (01:08:45):

Amazing. You're you've been dropping some, some hot takes on Twitter as well. I

John Coyle (01:08:50):

Like it. I'm a, I'm a big fan of Steven. If I can just stir up the pod on the bird app, honestly, that's kinda what I'm,

Rabah Rahil (01:08:56):

You've been, you've been, you've been doing good work there. Good for

John Coyle (01:08:59):

<laugh>

Rabah Rahil (01:09:00):

Ash. If people see a vitamin shop, what do they need to do?

Ash Melwani (01:09:06):

If you are buy a vitamin shop, please, please, please go in, find some a, move it up a shelf. I'm just kidding. Uh, take a picture, send it to me on Twitter and uh, tag me. Uh, yeah, that's it. And then, um, you know, I'm on Metro pass. If you need help with anything paid, um, follow me on the bird at Ashvin Melani and um, yeah, that's it for me.

Rabah Rahil (01:09:31):

Amazing. Are you on me pass yet? John?

John Coyle (01:09:34):

I am. Yeah. I guess you could find me there too. Mentor pass.

Rabah Rahil (01:09:37):

Yeah. Buy summit. John's time. Shout out Kenny for having an amazing platform. Uh, that's it for us folks. Another one in the books. What do we got? We got whale mail every Tuesday. Thursday. You can subscribe there. It's our amazing newsletter. Subscribe at triple.com/whale mail. Um, we're on the bird app at triple whale. What else do we got? We got some really cool events coming up. We have a pickle ball tournament. You guys should sign up. You should come out. Uh, we'll drop a link for that. The beluga bash. We're doing a creative event. It's uh, another one in the books. Ash. Always a pleasure. John, thank you for taking the time and then, uh, go follow these wonderful humans on the bird app. If you're not, um, send Ash his picture of Avi and then buy some of those fruity pebble, what is it? The fruity pebble protein bars or whatever I a addict is.

Ash Melwani (01:10:20):

Oh, the fruity syrup crack. Oh, we have a, oh, I think by the time this comes out. Yeah, the, the time this comes out, we just launch a new flavor.

Rabah Rahil (01:10:29):

Oh man. Those are so good. Oh, those are so amazing fire. They're amazing. Um, awesome folks. Thanks so much for the time. If you do enjoy this podcast, definitely tell your friends, um, subscribe to our YouTube channel or any podcast listener of your choice and we'll see everyone on the flip. Thanks again guys.

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