Hey Cowboys,
Happy Friday! A new round of DTC, retail, tech, and ecommerce news heading your way today.
Today’s lineup 👇 and stories.
Today’s Squad: How Real Brands Get Built
A growth lead, a health-hardware founder, and a scaling-brand CFO break down acquisition, retention, and the numbers underneath.
Jamil Bhuya - Co-Founder & Head of Growth, Otherhalf Studio
Scott Hickle - Co-Founder & CEO, Throne Science
Brian Rosin - Chief Financial Officer, IM8 Health
Meta Is Killing Manual Placements
Meta has begun notifying advertisers that the ability to exclude placements, platforms, devices, and operating systems from individual ad sets is going away, pushing everyone toward Advantage+ placements with bid adjustments through value rules as the main lever. Media buyers immediately flagged that value rules only let them bid down a placement by up to 90% rather than block it, and that Meta's new creative flow no longer lets them upload separate assets per placement, only crop the same one.
The Rundown:
Meta's in-product notice says excluding placements, platforms, devices, and operating systems will no longer be available at the ad set level, with no timeline announced
Remaining options are placement value rules to raise or lower bids, per-placement creative customization, and account-level placement exclusions
Value rules cap the bid reduction at 90%, meaning a deprioritized placement like Facebook Reels can still receive around 10% of delivery
Account-level controls only allow blocking Audience Network apps and sites, Marketplace, and Right Column, not core placements like Reels, Stories, or Feed
Buyers report that Meta's new Ads Manager creative flow no longer allows distinct creative per placement, only cropping of a single asset, contradicting the notice's own promise
The change caps a multi-year push that started with branding Advantage+ Placements as the default in 2022, adding warnings when placements were removed, burying manual placements five clicks deep, and automatically sending up to 5% of budget to excluded placements
In February 2026 Meta merged Manual and Advantage+ Shopping campaigns into a single flow with AI optimizations on by default
Value rules launched in June 2025 for Sales and App campaigns, expanded to all objectives by August 2025, and gained placement-specific controls in 2026
Jon Loomer and Social Media Today report the notice is appearing in a subset of accounts, which is typical of Meta staged rollouts
The last meaningful manual lever in Meta's ad set is being removed, and the replacement tools leave real gaps: value rules throttle instead of block, account controls cover only fringe inventory, and the per-placement creative workaround appears broken in the new flow. With no rollout date and no comment from Meta, advertisers who depend on full placement exclusions are left with a short list of options and a clear signal that the algorithm is now in charge of where ads run.
Top Stories: Zuckerberg Buys a Castle, Gary Vee Joins District, ChatGPT Reads iMessage
Zuckerberg Buys Irish Castle - Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have purchased Strancally Castle, a 440-acre Gothic estate in Ireland. The off-market deal is estimated at $23 million to $35 million. The 16,000-square-foot castle dates to 1827 and includes 11 bedrooms, towers, a library, and dining rooms.
Gary Vee Joins District - Gary Vaynerchuk has joined AI commerce startup District as a strategic advisor. The platform lets brands create their own live shopping, auctions, and community commerce experiences without engineering teams. District already powers more than 1,000 businesses and has raised $14.7 million from investors including a16z and Kindred Ventures.
ChatGPT Reads iMessages - OpenAI added an Apple Messages plugin to the ChatGPT Mac app that can read, search, summarize, draft, and send iMessages, SMS, and RCS texts. The feature works on Apple Silicon Macs through ChatGPT Work and Codex and requires Full Disk Access. Messages are processed locally, with users approving outgoing messages by default.
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Seguno - the Shopify-native marketing suite for brands that run it themselves.
Insense - The all-in-one UGC and influencer marketing platform.
Postscript - Make more money from every SMS message.
Proxima - Use real conversion data to power your creative briefs.
Northbeam - Measure the “unmeasurable,” make your marketing profitable.
Rokt Aftersell - More profit from the orders you’re already getting.
Universal Ads - TV ads that deliver for performance marketers.
Richpanel - The AI helpdesk that saves you headaches (and money).
SATHI - Affiliate attribution beyond last-click commissions.
Slash - A better business banking platform.
Trendtrack - Track competitors' winning marketing strategies daily.
Tie - The internet’s #1 shopper ID platform.
Proppel - The best recruitment agency for ecom brands and agencies.
See you on the stream,
Ecomm Cowboy Team