Meta Ads Cost 12% More, So Buyers Are Saving for Q5

Ads are awesome. Ignorance is expensive. And the American dream is alive on the wild web.

Today, Meta ads cost 12% more, and some buyers are saving their budget for "Q5" plastic-free coffee makers that are selling out, and one founder says ChatGPT turned his tax bill into a refund. Jimmy Kim of Commerce Roundtable and Cody Wittick of Kynship are our guest hosts today, SearchShopAI's Nathan Grotticelli joins us live, and Northbeam's Bryan Bumgardner brings the Weather Report. Here's what we're riding into at noon.

✶ PAID SOCIAL

Meta's average price per ad rose 12% year over year in both Q1 and Q2. Meta says the ads are worth it: an internal analysis of more than 1 million campaigns found advertisers made an average of $4.13 for each $1 spent, up 25% since 2022 (Marketing Brew).

Some media buyers are moving part of their holiday budget to "Q5," the stretch from late December into January, when CPMs usually drop. Others are buying more Advantage+ and testing more creative to offset the higher prices (Marketing Brew).

✶ HOME & KITCHEN

Caraway launched its first appliance on September 22, a 10-cup drip coffee maker where no plastic touches the water or grounds. It sold out within a week and brought in more than seven figures in sales. Keurig's Alta, which uses compostable pressed-coffee pods, sold out on pre-order within days at $499.99 for the early-access bundle (Modern Retail).

✶ COLLECTIBLES

LEGO's Marvel Skyline (set 67006) packs Avengers Tower, the Baxter Building, the Daily Bugle, Oscorp, and more into 1,261 pieces, with a Galactus minifigure (IGN). It costs $99.99, is open for pre-order now, and ships January 1, 2027, with a limit of three per household (LEGO). The first look has 370K views (DiscussingFilm on X).

✶ FOUNDER FINANCE

Bill D'Alessandro's draft 2025 return said he owed $117,360 more. He asked ChatGPT to check every number against his source documents. After 90 minutes it produced a 15-page report saying he was actually due a $191,173 refund, and his accountant agreed. "The LLM couldn't have done my tax return from scratch - I still need my accountant," he wrote. His prompt is in the thread (Bill D'Alessandro on X).

✶ WATCH & REACT

Runners in a Denver ultramarathon had to hit 10 Taco Bells and eat a menu item at 9 of them, all within 11 hours. The clip has 761K views (Mike Vorkunov on X). And Higgsfield launched Ad Multiplier, which takes a winning ad, breaks down what drives it, and generates new versions for your product to test (Higgsfield on X).

FOUNDER & CEO, COMMERCE ROUNDTABLE

Jimmy founded and ran Sendlane, the email, SMS, and reviews platform for ecommerce, from 2013 to 2024. Now he leads Commerce Roundtable, the DTC event community he built with Nick Shackelford, Chase Dimond, and Taylor Holiday (The Org, Commerce Roundtable).

CO-FOUNDER & CO-CEO, KYNSHIP

Cody co-founded Kynship, an influencer marketing agency for DTC brands. Before that he built a seeding program of more than 500 influencers at QALO, the silicone wedding ring brand (Kitcaster, Cody on X).

FOUNDER, SEARCHSHOPAI

Nathan spent more than 12 years in performance marketing and user acquisition at companies including Spotify, AT&T, Blizzard, and Netflix before starting SearchShopAI in December 2025 (LinkedIn). SearchShopAI helps brands, mostly in beauty and skincare, control what AI platforms say about their products and lets shoppers check out from the chat (SearchShopAI).

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF GROWTH MARKETING, NORTHBEAM

Bryan writes The Media Buyer, Northbeam's newsletter on growth, attribution, and media mix modeling, and comes on with the latest read on ad performance (The Media Buyer, eTail).

Follow the guests: Nathan Grotticelli on LinkedIn ✶ Bryan Bumgardner on LinkedIn

Grok Bot can now search, read, and monitor X. Ish Verduzco's plan: build a 24/7 community manager, a content strategist that studies every post you've made, and an analyst that flags the influential accounts engaging with you (Ish Verduzco on X).

"If you learn marketing engineering, you will never be unemployed again." Ira Bodnar says all you need is Claude Code and a GitHub account, and lays out 11 projects, from an ads agent to programmatic SEO (Ira Bodnar on X).

"We've seen this with photography, then video, then 3d, and now motion design," Drew Brucker wrote. His team's podcast graphics come from a system built on their recordings and brand kit (techbimbo on X).

Snackolator spotted Lemon Pepper Doritos at the NACS show and says they look likely for a January release (Snackolator on X).

Illustrator Brad Woodard made woodblock-style art for Wild Alaskan Company's new frozen fish packaging, now in Target stores nationwide (Brad Woodard on LinkedIn).

The Financial Times reported that Starbucks has explored a takeover of Chipotle, which CEO Brian Niccol used to run (Reuters via U.S. News). Chipotle stock jumped more than 6% on the report, and a combined company would have almost $50 billion in annual sales (The Kobeissi Letter on X).

Liquid Death's Chief Media Officer, shared by Larry Cheng. One reply pushed back: brand matters most when the buying decision takes 10 seconds in front of a cooler, less so for big, slow purchases (Larry Cheng on X).

On Fox News, Bezos said AI productivity could let Americans support their families working three days a week, and could cause labor shortages rather than mass job losses. He didn't explain how the shift would happen (Forbes).

"This is an appropriate time for everyone to watch this series from over 20 years ago, coming from a person that doesn't care about cartoons" (Gator on X).

✶ FEATURED SPONSOR: PROPPEL

People are the most important part of your business, and finding real A players is hard and incredibly time-consuming.

And that's exactly where Proppel comes in.

Proppel is THE BEST recruitment agency out there for ecom brands and agencies. They're marketing and operations specialists who source talent from the US, LATAM, and beyond for some of the best companies in the space.

From video editors, graphic designers, media buyer, and more in LATAM, to managers, directors, heads of department, and VPs in the US, they can help you build the team you actually need to scale faster.

The best part? They work on performance. You only pay a one-off fee once you hire someone, so there are no retainers and no ongoing costs. And every hire comes backed by a three-month guarantee.

So if you're an ecom brand or agency looking to build a great team, I highly recommend them. Mention Ecomm Cowboy and you'll get 10% off your first hire with Proppel.

RICHPANEL
AI helpdesk that automates 70–80% of interactions. Ridge cut cost per ticket by 70%. richpanel.com