Happy Wednesday.

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

Selling Everywhere, All at Once: Shopify's Spring '26 - Shopify's Spring '26 Edition drops 150+ updates designed to put merchants' products everywhere people are buying — a response to a world where AI has made it cheap for anyone to spin up agent-powered apps with commerce built in. The bet: shoppers will soon expect to buy the moment they land anywhere, and Shopify wants its merchants there first.

Snap Goes All-In on AR as the Stock Slides - Snap has unveiled Specs, a $2,195 pair of standalone AR glasses that run without a phone using dual Qualcomm chips, hand tracking, and an AI assistant. Evan Spiegel's bet that people are ready to move beyond the smartphone. The market was unconvinced, sending SNAP down roughly 10% on the news, as skeptics noted the glasses are heavy and niche while believers see the start of a $10B AR category by 2030.

Gary Vee Joins Dad Gang as Fourth Partner - Dad Gang has brought on Gary Vaynerchuk as its fourth partner, formalizing a relationship the founders frame as a natural fit around the brand's fatherhood-focused mission and community. For the team, it's a full-circle moment. They've followed Gary's work since 2010, and now count him as a partner helping steer the brand's next chapter.

By Colin Dougherty

Most brands treat a winning ad campaign like something to protect, when it's actually something to press.

Mason Littlejohn (Founder, We Are The Select) has over a billion dollars in attributed revenue behind him. He was employee number five at Ruggable and helped run the brand to $500 million a year, three years in a row. The tactic he's loudest about, the one that gets him torched on the timeline, is what he calls the "double up method."

When a campaign is hot, you double the budget. Then you double it again. And you keep doubling until the account finally tells you to stop.

His logic is simple. Meta is a multi-trillion-dollar company running the best ad algorithm on earth, and that algorithm runs on signals. Every budget increase is you telling it "good job, do more of this." Small, timid increases send a small, timid signal. Getting to $500 million a year with small budget increases, he says, is just not possible. The hockey-stick runs only happen when you move hard at the exact moment conversion rates are on your side and the stars align.

He's not reckless. This year has been choppier. You still have to use your brain. But when things are genuinely hot, hesitating is how you leave money on the table. The cost isn't only the revenue you skipped. It's the snowball you never started: the customers you didn't acquire fast enough, the word of mouth, the buzz, the intangibles that compound once velocity kicks in.

Most operators never find out, because they're scared the moment isn't real. The top media buyers Mason talks to behind the scenes all do this. Almost nobody admits it out loud.

Our instinct when an ad takes off is to guard it.

When the signal is loud and the math is on your side, the move isn't to nurse a good campaign along. It's to double up and find out how big it actually wants to be.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team