Happy Tuesday.

We’re live on X and YouTube — let’s ride!

Meta Introduces NEW Live Video Ads - Meta has introduced new shopping features across Facebook and Instagram, including Live Video Ads on Instagram and expanded creator affiliate tagging to 22 countries. Is this a legitimate Whatnot competitor? The company also announced a virtual-card checkout feature built with Visa and Mastercard that generates one-time card numbers for in-app purchases.

Ben Azelart and Serial Founder Shaun Neff Enter the Cereal Aisle With Backflip - YouTuber Ben Azelart and serial entrepreneur Shaun Neff have launched Backflip, a seed oil-free better-for-you cereal brand now available at Target in four flavors: Strawberry Milkshake, Chocolate Sundae, Fruit Galaxy, and Cinnamon Magic. The cereal contains 6 grams of protein per serving and is gluten-free.

Forme Bets on World Cup With a Kalshi-Backed 100% Refund Offer - Posture-wearables brand Forme says it ran the first e-commerce promotion hedged on a prediction market, partnering with PlayAbly to offer shoppers using the "Team USA" code between June 26 and 30 a full refund if the US Men's National Team reached the World Cup final. The campaign drove a 4x week-over-week increase in menswear traffic and nearly 20x more traffic to its top men's styles, according to the company.

Aldi is selling blind boxes of mystery groceries now. 5,000 sold out in four days, so they dropped 5,000 more. Part of me thinks it's genius. Part of me thinks it's a bad sign for the whole economy.

Should grocery stores need to gamify food?

When you shop in person, you wander. You went in for milk and walked out thirty dollars deeper because everything on the endcap looked interesting. That wandering was free money for the store, a happy human experience untethered from “pressing needs at work,” and there was plenty of it to be had.

Delivery destroys that. Order your Aldi run on Instacart and you buy exactly what's on the list. No aisle, no impulse, no discovery. That entire layer of unplanned spending evaporates for the retailer who “lost” you to the app.

So a blind box is a store manufacturing the discovery that delivery removed — engineering a reason to browse when browsing stopped happening serendipitously in real life.

Efficiency is great until it kills discovery. Sometimes the smartest thing you can build is a reason for someone to wander, “waste time,” or be surprised.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team