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Meta in 2014, TikTok in 2020, AppLovin in 2025 - Roman Khan (Co-Founder, Peak 21) of twice-yearly eCom founder events in HK/Shenzhen reports that his top-performing attendees already lean heavily on AppLovin alongside Meta, with the best operators putting roughly 10% of wallet share there today and likely 20%+ within a year or two. The framing echoes a familiar pattern: Meta in 2014, TikTok in 2020, AppLovin in 2025, where early movers won and latecomers paid retail, though he's candid that his bootstrapped, cutting-edge crowd is a self-selecting sample.

CTC Built a Living Database From 170+ Brands' Tests - At a recent in-person gathering of brand operators, Taylor Holiday introduced The Canon. Common Thread Collective's living methodology database built from every incrementality test run across 170+ brands. He also announced that CTC's Statlas MCP is now free for every brand the agency manages, signaling a push to turn hard-won testing data into a shared, queryable system.

Snap's Second Spinoff of 2026: Meet Dotmo - Snap is spinning off its internal generative-AI video team into a separate company called Dotmo, citing the high cost of doing the work in-house, with the new venture focused on AI models for interactive gaming experiences. Snap keeps close ties, taking a large equity stake and licensing its tech, while CTO Bobby Murphy acts as lead investor, in what marks Snap's second major spinoff of 2026, following its Specs smart-glasses unit.

By Colin Dougherty

Justin Anderson (Director of E-Commerce and Growth, Reekon Tools) has scaled brands since before growth marketing was called growth marketing, and he put it bluntly: he wouldn't take a job at a brand with a sub-$100 AOV.

The reason is arithmetic. With CPMs on Meta as high as they are, and Google traffic eroding as LLMs eat into search, a low order value leaves no room for the math to work.

At Reekon, where digital tape measures push the AOV well north of $100, that pressure mostly disappears. "We don't have to worry about, like, LTV or are we profitable on our first order," he says. When a single order clears triple digits, you can absorb a high acquisition cost and still make money on the first purchase, which is the position every brand wants and few have. A sub-$100 brand doesn't get that cushion, so it has to claw the margin back later through repeat purchases, exactly when high CPMs are punishing every new acquisition.

Contrast that with a sub-$100 world.

High AOV buys forgiveness. It doesn't just pad your margin, it buys room to be wrong on a campaign and still come out ahead. That cushion is the difference between testing aggressively and white-knuckling every single dollar you spend.

Before you obsess over funnels and creative, look hard at your price. A sub-$100 average order in this environment is a brand fighting uphill on every single sale.

Make more profit from the orders you're already getting.

Most DTC brands are obsessed with getting the next customer. But the real lever? Making more profit from the orders you already have.

Say you're doing 5,000 orders a month. What if you could add $3–4 to every single one — without touching your ads? That's exactly what brands like OluKai, Cozy Earth, and GrooveLife are doing with Rokt AfterSell.

They're adding post-purchase upsells and downsells — from cart through the thank-you page — and then stacking an extra 30 to 50 cents per order just by showing premium offers from brands like Disney+, HelloFresh, and Venmo. That's high-margin revenue straight to your bottom line: no hit to conversion, no impact on LTV, and you can be live in minutes.

If you're already getting orders, you should be getting more out of them.

→ Go to aftersell.com/offers and start monetizing what you've already built.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team