Sweat Equity

The 7 Shifts Top Brands Are Quietly Betting On for 2026

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Summary

At-a-Glance

  • Verdict: Skim
  • Core thesis: Consumer brands should shift 2026 growth investment away from isolated macro-influencer posts and bottom-funnel paid-media optimization toward scalable creator networks, creator-led ads, social commerce, owned experiences, live programming, and long-term brand demand creation.
  • Why it matters: The video offers a practical DTC/social-commerce playbook for lowering creative costs, improving paid-media credibility, and building demand that is less dependent on increasingly exhausted Meta acquisition economics.
  • Best use: Use it as a concise set of hypotheses for a consumer-brand GTM or investment diligence checklist, not as validated market research or an implementation guide.

Executive Summary

The speakers argue that brands are behaving like slow-moving “cruise ships”: they can see platform and consumer changes but continue placing disproportionate bets on familiar tactics such as one-off macro-influencer posts and tightly measured performance marketing. Their proposed alternative is a content-and-commerce system built around large pools of nano creators, reusable creator assets, and platform-native conversion.

The clearest operating argument is for volume and optionality. Rather than spend $5,000-$10,000 on one macro-influencer deliverable, brands should activate many sub-10,000-follower creators, provide product or modest monthly compensation, train them on required formats, and let a broad creative portfolio produce both organic winners and paid-ad inputs. The speakers see TikTok Shop affiliate ecosystems and Meta partnership ads as the mechanisms that make this model operationally viable.

They also see YouTube as underused paid inventory because Google/YouTube targeting can pair highly specific audience intent with customized first-five-second hooks. On TikTok Shop, they argue that the platform is moving beyond low-ticket impulse products: higher-AOV brands can create urgency through channel-exclusive offers, high creator volume, and seamless discovery-to-checkout.

The broader strategic shift is from harvesting existing demand to generating demand. Experiential marketing should solve a context-specific problem rather than merely distribute samples, and events should be programmed before, during, and after the moment—especially through live coverage. Brand marketing is framed as the work that makes customers more likely to search, subscribe, open messages, and buy without needing to be persuaded anew at every conversion touchpoint.

Key Takeaways

  • Claim: Nano creators should replace a large share of one-off macro-influencer spend because a broad creator portfolio offers lower-cost creative volume, greater authenticity, and more chances to find breakout content. | Evidence: The speakers define nano influencers as creators under 10,000 followers and compare spending roughly $500-$1,000 per month across many creators with paying $5,000 for a single influencer post. Their framing is that 100 smaller bets can collectively generate many 5,000-view posts and potentially one million-view outlier, whereas a single paid macro post may receive about 100,000 views. | Implication: Treat creator programs as a managed content-production and testing engine, not as sporadic endorsement buying; build a creator community and measure portfolio-level outcomes rather than judging every post independently. | Caveat: This requires an operational system for recruiting, briefing, training, product fulfillment, compliance, and quality control; the speakers acknowledge some creator output will be poor.
  • Claim: Meta partnership ads are positioned as a more effective successor to ordinary creator whitelisting because they combine creator credibility with the brand's underlying targeting and conversion data. | Evidence: The speakers say Meta is heavily promoting the partnership-ad format and cite Meta's stated claim of approximately 30% better CPA. They distinguish it from simply running ads from a creator account, arguing that partnership ads tap the advertiser's pixel and backend data; their own use case is applying the format across an army of nano/UGC creators. | Implication: Run a controlled test comparing partnership ads against brand-handle ads and conventional whitelisted UGC, using the same offer, audience, spend level, and creative family. | Caveat: The 30% CPA figure is attributed to Meta rather than independently substantiated performance data, and results will depend on creative quality, offer, audience, and account setup.
  • Claim: YouTube paid media is an underexploited channel where brands can combine TV-scale attention with Google-level intent targeting and short-form creative discipline. | Evidence: The speakers point to BPN and Jones Road Beauty as brands investing meaningfully in YouTube, while arguing few brands have developed the channel well. They note that YouTube has surpassed Netflix as the leading U.S. streaming-attention destination and describe targeting viewers of relevant keyword-based content, such as serving a content-calendar product to viewers watching videos about building content calendars. | Implication: For products with identifiable search intent or adjacent educational content, test modular YouTube pre-roll: retain one core video body but produce 10-15 tailored opening hooks matched to search terms, videos, or audience segments. | Caveat: The case is directional rather than supported by channel-level performance benchmarks, and YouTube requires specialized creative, targeting, measurement, and iteration rather than simply repurposing standard Meta ads.
  • Claim: TikTok Shop is maturing into a viable high-AOV commerce channel, provided brands create a credible exclusive deal and generate creator volume at scale. | Evidence: The speakers report that eight brands exceeded $10 million in TikTok Shop sales during November and say QVC reached $28.5 million. They cite SharkNinja selling $150-$300 products, including a vacuum listed at $300 and discounted to $200 on TikTok Shop while priced at $229 on Walmart, Target, and Amazon; the apparent $100 discount gave affiliates stronger promotional language while delivering a real $30 channel advantage. They state that each top brand had around 30,000 videos in November, produced by roughly 7,000-16,000 creators. | Implication: Assess TikTok Shop as a distinct pricing-and-offer channel, not merely another storefront: model margin for a channel-specific promotion, affiliate commission, creator seeding, fulfillment, and the content volume needed to create discovery. | Caveat: They explicitly consider category and unit economics important: high price alone will not overcome a weak offer or poor margins, and the sales figures are presented without source methodology.
  • Claim: Experiential marketing works when the brand owns and improves a real moment in the audience's life rather than simply appearing at an event with samples or a street team. | Evidence: Good Wipes is cited for sponsoring music-festival portable toilets and turning an undesirable utility into a premium branded experience, while Pure Sport is cited for a hydration station at the London Marathon. The speakers contrast this with a hypothetical coffee brand simply having a presence at a farmer's market; their preferred approach would be an integrated, useful pop-up that solves a direct attendee problem. | Implication: Select events where the product naturally resolves a high-friction audience need, then design the activation as a memorable utility or destination that participants actively choose rather than a passive sampling point.
  • Claim: As paid acquisition becomes less efficient, brand marketing should be treated as upstream performance infrastructure that improves the baseline of every downstream channel. | Evidence: The speakers reference a recognizable $100 million brand that reportedly scaled on paid media but now believes “paid is how you win fast; organic and brand is how you win in the future.” They describe brand effects showing up indirectly through organic search, SMS and email signups, and better message open rates; they use illustrative gains of 20% in organic search and 15% in SMS opens while holding conversion rate constant. | Implication: Rebalance measurement away from last-click ROAS alone: define an incrementality and leading-indicator scorecard covering branded search, direct/organic traffic, subscription growth, repeat purchase, email/SMS engagement, and retail pull-through. | Caveat: Brand investment has weaker direct attribution and can become undisciplined spending if the company does not establish directional leading indicators and a clear brand hypothesis.
  • Claim: Live programming makes brand events more valuable than recap-only content because audience participation creates narrative investment that later content can compound. | Evidence: The speakers cite Skims' high-profile live-shopping event involving Kim Kardashian, Snoop Dogg, and Martha Stewart as a catalyst for the format. They also describe BPN's “last man standing” race: live streams covering the beginning and end of each lap reportedly grew from a few hundred viewers to 30,000-40,000 viewers, then increased interest in the eventual documentary. A comparable unnamed athletic event received little attention because it lacked a live component. | Implication: Plan major activations as a before-during-after media system: seed characters and stakes beforehand, create recurring live moments during the event, and use the live footage and unresolved narrative to power clips, recaps, and a longer-form payoff afterward. | Caveat: Going live alone is insufficient; the event needs recognizable stakes, recurring updates, personalities, and production capacity to sustain attention over time.

Detailed Brief

How the proposed creator system changes the operating model

  • Claims: The speakers distinguish content creators from influencers: smaller creators may be skilled at making content before they have accumulated meaningful distribution.; Brands can recruit future breakout talent early while obtaining useful production capacity immediately.; Smaller creator cohorts can be more manageable than established influencers because they are more likely to attend training calls and follow requested content formats.
  • Evidence: They describe Discord communities built for TikTok Shop brands where approximately 115 creators joined Zoom calls to hear required formats and then produced requested content on the designated day.; They mention emerging infrastructure such as Viro, MrBeast clipping agencies, and WAP Content Rewards as signals that creator incentives and coordination tooling are expanding.; BPN is presented as a counterexample to simplistic anti-macro-influencer thinking: it reportedly extracts value from athlete partnerships by creating substantial brand-owned content around their likenesses, rather than buying one post.
  • Caveats: The video does not specify attribution rules, creator contract terms, FTC disclosure practices, or the economics of managing thousands of affiliates.; Macro partnerships can still be rational when a brand secures broad usage rights and converts talent into an ongoing content franchise rather than a single deliverable.
  • Implications: The relevant comparison is not macro versus nano by follower count; it is one-off rented reach versus a rights-enabled, repeatable content asset system.; A creator program's core capability is coordination: community management, standardized briefs, asset collection, rights management, and rapid paid amplification.

Offer architecture and commerce-channel dynamics

  • Claims: The speakers believe consumers on TikTok Shop increasingly trust established official stores and are responding to frictionless discovery plus in-platform purchase.; Their interpretation is that buyers are not necessarily demanding the lowest-priced product; they are demanding an understandable, credible deal at the moment of discovery.; TikTok Shop's advantage over Amazon is that creator content can combine product discovery, social proof, offer presentation, and checkout in one flow rather than requiring a separate search journey populated by competitors.
  • Evidence: They contrast TikTok Shop's product-video-to-purchase path with Amazon, where customers often arrive after discovering a product elsewhere and then encounter sponsored competitor listings during search.; They characterize early social-commerce perceptions as dominated by low-cost “trinkets,” with established brands such as Ninja changing the perceived trust level.
  • Caveats: The discussion assumes TikTok will remain available and retain audience attention; this is an external platform dependency rather than a controllable brand asset.; Artificial reference pricing may create consumer-trust, platform-policy, or regulatory risk if the claimed discount is materially misleading.
  • Implications: Channel-specific offers should be evaluated for both economic contribution and long-term pricing integrity, especially when affiliates repeat promotional claims at scale.; For an investment thesis, high creator-count requirements suggest that marketplaces, affiliate tooling, fulfillment systems, and content-rights infrastructure may be as important as the consumer brand itself.

Notable Concepts & Terms

  • Nano influencers: Creators with fewer than 10,000 followers; the speakers view them as a scalable, lower-cost source of authentic content and distribution.
  • UGC creators: User-generated-content producers who may create effective advertising assets without having conventional influencer-scale audiences.
  • Meta partnership ads: A Meta ad format presented as combining creator-led advertising with the advertiser's pixel and targeting data, distinct from basic account whitelisting.
  • Whitelisting: Running paid ads through a creator's social account identity; the video treats conventional whitelisting as an older adjacent tactic to partnership ads.
  • AOV: Average order value; the TikTok Shop thesis is that the platform can increasingly support products above its historical sub-$60 norm.
  • Tease, tension, conflict, resolution: The short-form storytelling structure the speakers recommend adapting to YouTube's skippable pre-roll, especially within the first five seconds.
  • Before-during-after content system: An event-content model in which anticipation, live participation, and post-event documentary or recap content reinforce one another.
  • Brand marketing as new performance marketing: The claim that brand building improves downstream conversion channels indirectly by increasing affinity, branded demand, and willingness to engage.

Operator Notes / Why Ken Should Care

  • Create a 90-day creator-portfolio pilot with a defined cohort size, standardized brief, creator community channel, usage-rights terms, and a mechanism to amplify organic winners into paid media.
  • Ask the growth team to produce a Meta partnership-ad experiment design that isolates the format's incremental CPA and conversion-rate effect from creator selection and creative differences.
  • Identify one intent-rich YouTube use case and commission a modular creative package: one central story with 10-15 audience- or keyword-specific opening hooks.
  • For any TikTok Shop opportunity, require a channel P&L that includes reference-price integrity, affiliate commission, discount cost, returns, fulfillment, creator seeding, and expected content volume before approving scale.
  • For the next major brand activation, fund a live editorial plan and named owner before approving the event budget; require deliverables across pre-event narrative, live programming, short clips, and post-event long form.
  • Add branded search, direct/organic traffic, email/SMS opt-ins, open rates, repeat rate, and retail velocity to the monthly growth review so brand spending is not evaluated solely against last-click ROAS.

Source/Metadata

  • Title: The 7 Shifts Top Brands Are Quietly Betting On for 2026
  • Transcript words: 8622
  • Duration seconds: 2074
  • Timestamp note: No timestamps or chapters were present in the supplied transcript; the latter portion contains substantial repeated transcript content.
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Full transcript 6555 words · 38 min read
0:00

What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode of Sweat Equity. We got a special venue today where Wander Falling leaves in Austin. It's because it's a very special episode. So most brands are like a cruise ship. They can't steer even though they see the iceberg in front of them, right? They're going into these different things and they're not doing the right initiatives to actually grow their brand. What we want to do for you is help you not be one of them. So we're going to break down the seven macro trends that are influencing performance at big brands in 2026. How long did you practice that intro, and when did you think about the steering?

0:08

Did I nail that? You nailed that. Was that straight? You nailed that. All right. So without further ado, let's get into it. Number one, nano influencers are going to take over.

0:16

Agreed. This is something I've been talking about for the longest. We both work with a lot of brands that do big influencer partnerships. They do not move the needle at all anymore. And what has happened is the cost equation, in my opinion, has switched, right? So if you could pay $5,000 for a single in-feed reel post, we both charge similar numbers for our B2B content. I think that's a little bit different because one lead obviously equals a lot more in revenue. One lead could be a six-figure account.

0:21

Totally. And that's not the case if you're selling a $25 electrolyte pack, right? And so if you're paying $5,000 for an influencer partnership, you're going to have to really get a lot of value out of that. And instead, this nano influencer thing, which I would define as someone under 10,000 followers, is starting to emerge. Charles. Yeah. Charles got the nano. Yeah, he's nano. He's got nano many things. Micro nano.

0:36

Yeah. We'll leave it there. But no, it is actually something that's... Charles is a great example of someone who shares fitness content online. And so if I'm a fitness brand, he's been getting his weight in. His chin is way down. Yeah. Physique looking good. Great. And so now it's like, if you're an apparel brand, if you're a footwear brand, theoretically, if you sent him some PR and that was really all you had to do to get the post, you don't got to pay him. He's just going to tag it on his story or maybe make an in-feed post and post about it. As long as you can get 500 to 1,000 dollars a month, my bet for 2026 is that's going to outperform paying one singular influencer $5,000 for a single post.

0:42

Couldn't agree more. So there's a few ways I want to think about this. Number one, if you have a bunch of, when I say average nano influencers, what I mean is they are good at making content, but let's say they haven't been making content for as long as the macro influencer. They're content creators. They're not influencers. Yes. There's a difference, right? Every influencer was a nano influencer at some point.

0:54

True. You know what I mean? So remember that you could have the next quote-unquote influencer. Now, the other thing is, when we look at that and then we say, "Hey, if I can get these people who are skilled and I want to bet on who's going to hit a home run, and I only get one pitch with the large influencer versus I get a hundred pitches with the nano influencers, who do you think I'm going to take?" I might hit multiple home runs here. A hundred. You know what I'm saying? I might have a grand slam. Who knows what's going to happen here?

1:09

Now, one prediction I have from the macro influencer side is if you look at BPN as an example and you look at their brand page, their brand page actually has one of the highest engagements from a brand side that I've seen. Why? They're not just going and saying, "Hey, Fonz, Lucy, we need one post from you." They're creating an ample amount of content on the back end of that influencer, and those creators, athletes, are actually a large part of their strategy. They're content creators first in their strategy. And so therefore, I sign Fonz, I sign Lucy, I sign Jake, et cetera, based off their likeness. I'm able to garner millions and millions of impressions. I'm able to garner a ton of ad creative, right? I'm able to really leverage the reason you sign them in the first place.

1:15

Right. But from exactly what you're talking about, would I bet the 5k or the 10k on one singular post that's probably going to get, let's say, 100,000 views at most? No. I'm betting on a hundred people that, if they each average 5,000 views, one of them will get a million.

1:20

Yes. One of them's going to get a million. And it'll be a crazy, authentic peer-to-peer video rather than, "Oh, they just paid an influencer for that." So on several different fronts, this is why I think it makes sense. Number one is obviously the investment. It's going to be more cost effective. Number two is your ability to actually organize these people. When you're working with nano influencers, sometimes they're grateful to be there. A lot of the time you work with a real influencer, they're going to be someone who wants to do the content their way. They're going to be difficult to get on a meeting. There's a lot of different friction points in working with them. But if you have, I just think about these Discord communities we've built for some of these brands on TikTok Shop. They show up to meetings, bro. We'll have a Zoom call and we'll have 115 people on there listening to the required content formats and then producing those on the day that we asked them to do it, which is an absolute superpower for people. So it's like, number one, you're able to organize them and also train them and guide them to get the output that you want, which is incredibly powerful because probably every brand listening to this podcast has had some sort of bad experience with an influencer video that came out not the way they wanted it. And so with a nano influencer thing, it's so much lower stakes that, of course, you're going to get some bad eggs, right? There's plenty of videos that are not going to be great. You're going to get that regardless if it's a nano influencer or a macro influencer, but which one's going to cost way less to have a mistake? So it's really twofold. Number one, the investment thesis has kind of flipped. And then number two, I think the tools and the service businesses, you think about Viro, Mr. Beast Clipping Agency, we've obviously seen WAP Content Rewards. There are other apps that are starting to emerge. I think all of these things are going to contribute to this being a massive, massive earning potential situation for regular content creators, and then also that brands are going to adopt it a lot.

1:25

Couldn't agree more. What's on your second list?

1:31

Number two is meta partnership ads. So this is going to get a little more in the weeds, performance marketing style. But we work directly with the meta Israel team, so on their key account side. And some inside baseball for you guys is that meta is heavily pushing this partnership ads thing. So they've kind of opened up their entire new creator portal, if you will, where it's a lot easier now to use to whitelist, right? So it's like I would run an ad for C4 from Alex Garcia's page. That is different than this partnership ad thing. And it's different because of the backend data that's being used. So when you do a partnership ad with Alex Garcia, now it's going to tap into your pixel, your data, all these different things, and use that to influence the targeting. And for whatever reason, whether it's voodoo, black magic, or whether it's just a better tool, meta is saying that this is causing brands to get a 30% better CPA. So generally speaking, are you seeing that on the backend?

1:37

It's been super effective for us. I think we're running it with non-big influencers. So we're running it with a bunch of an army of nano influencers. It's basically like we're running partnership ads with all the UGC creators that we're doing it with. And I think whitelisting from UGC accounts has been around for a while, but what I'm saying is this is a separate ad unit

1:44

And it's different because of the backend data that's being used. So when you do a partnership ad with Alex Garcia, now it's going to tap into your pixel, your data, all these different things, and use that to influence the targeting. And for whatever reason, whether it's voodoo, black magic, or whether it's just a better tool, Meta is saying that this is causing brands to get a 30% better CPA. So generally speaking, are you seeing that on the backend?

1:49

It's been super effective for us. I think we're running it with non-big influencers. So we're running it with an army of nano influencers. We're running partnership ads with all the UGC creators that we're doing it with. And I think whitelisting from UGC accounts has been around for a while, but what I'm saying is this is a separate ad unit for brands to start adopting heavily. And I think this is in part because we're seeing this macro trend of people believe mainstream things less, whether that's the news, whether that's the data they're seeing. Everything's being questioned at the forefront. And that's why an ad from a brand doesn't hit the same as a TikTok Shop affiliate video. Right. When you see an everyday person talking about a brand and a product that helps them solve a personal issue, it seems more believable. So I think partnership ads is Meta's response to the TikTok Shop revolution, and it's going to be really interesting.

1:53

Does everyone have access to it, or is it something that they're rolling out slowly to bigger accounts? I think any ad account has access to it. If you don't, let me know if you're a Sweat Equity listener. I'll put you on some of the ad account. But I think it's been rolled out to everybody. Yeah. I'm personally glad I don't have to be in Meta anymore. Yeah. I mean, just because on our end, we're not running any of the ads. Everything that works organically is then getting put in the ad account. I get to hand that off. Yeah. Just because, man, Meta is a monster of a headache, as you know. I'm addicted to spending money in all aspects of life. I can't help myself. Same.

2:28

So, dude, throwing, throwing, throwing, throwing. Clothes is my weakness. I was trying to put all my clothes away this week, and there's three large bundles. I just don't know where it's going to go. Yeah. I'm talking about large, large bundles that are just stacked. I'm like, I have no idea where this is going to go right now. You're not ready to say bye. But I'm not saying bye because it's shit I wear actively, but it's by right now. No, it's like, I'm just going to keep it in this bundle. And then when I'm getting dressed, I have to go put it in the dryer to get some wrinkles out. You're saying you just don't got the space.

3:00

I don't have the space on the clothes side. If you know me, that is the one area I spend money. Totally. Clothes for sure. Clothes and shoes. Yeah. No, I'm with you. We had some expensive dinners out in Miami, and that was a guilty pleasure for sure. Led to your dinner guy. Charles was telling me. I didn't know that, that you'll spend a lot on a dinner. I'll go three-hour dinner with anybody. Yeah. It's like that in golf. I find those to be golf. I understand the best places to go meet somebody, dine, share experience. I kind of like them bringing it out. Yeah. That part's interesting. There's something about your childhood.

3:48

I don't know. There's something about your childhood. Yeah. Maybe we'll unpack that on a future episode. So, okay. Oh my God. Moving on. Number three. So number three, and this one I'm actually super bullish on because no one's doing it right, and I'll back this up with why I think it's important. YouTube ads. Literally never talked about. Why does no one care about YouTube ads? I feel there are two people that talk about it. There's a head of growth from, ironically, BPN that talks about it nonstop. I mean, for them, it makes so much sense, right? All of their top athletes have large YouTube followings. So good.

4:17

Right. 70 to 100, probably in the hundreds of thousands. You have Jake Dearden and Lucy Fonz. I know all of them. Yeah. A hundred to a milli. Yeah. And then you have Nick was 1.7. That's a big untapped channel that most don't crack. No one cracks it because no one puts in. Everything is a product of the investment that you put into a channel. That is my biggest central belief. If you put money and time into something, you'll just crack it, 100%. It's just like anything. And then JRB, Jones Road Beauty does. Right. They do. They do a good job on it. I had a call with bro about TikTok Shop. With Cody? Yeah. How'd it go? Nice guy. He's good. Yeah. He's a nice guy.

5:26

With podcasts, shadow marketing operators. I'll give it to him. But YouTube ads is going to be huge. And the reason why is because obviously what we just discussed, there are two brands crushing it. You would never be like, oh, there's only two brands crushing Meta. There's only two brands crushing TikTok Shop. There's hundreds, thousands of brands. A lot of people are doing a good job on YouTube, but it's obviously not as widespread. So I think there's a lot of blue ocean opportunity to come in and be elite.

5:31

Because it's so creator-dominant. It's not brand-dominant. I can literally count on both hands the brands that I think are actually doing a good job. It's like Canyon and these are more in health wellness, but Canyon, Solomon, BPN, Represent-ish because they don't publish as much as they probably should. But you're talking organic. I'm talking paid media.

5:42

No, no. But those brands, Canyon does do a lot on YouTube. Solomon, I'm not sure if they do a lot on YouTube, but I know Canyon does because they have an organic piece of content that they do that's like Dream Bike Build. It's literally like a movie where they put together a bike, and that gets millions of views every time. And then they retarget on the back end. But I don't think people know as well how good you can target on YouTube. It's insane. If somebody searches Wander House in Austin, you could target them with a video of this exact house, as an example. Right. You can get so insanely targeted with that. A hundred percent. So that was going to be my next point.

6:06

No, no, no. It's perfect. It's a perfect segue because YouTube via Google, obviously owned by Google, and YouTube as a data source is insane. They know everything about your watching preferences. Just think about how tailored your YouTube homepage is. There's always something on there that they know you're going to click on. But the other user behavior that's happening right now is YouTube has now flipped Netflix by a good amount for the number one place that people are spending their attention in the United States. Yes.

6:19

The number one streaming source, if you will. And just think about if you had the ability to run pre-roll on Netflix, which I'm sure you can. I think they released an ad unit somehow. But you have the ability to run pre-roll. You just take the crazy hook format that exists in short form and apply it because obviously people can skip after five seconds. So you just need to apply those same hook principles, tease, tension, conflict, resolution, and put it in there.

6:21

YouTube's also one of the interesting places where you can make the hook specific to what you target. Right. So if the meat of the video is similar, but you want to target a specific keyword, then you could include that keyword in the hook. It's one of those places where filming 10 hooks, 15 hooks can make sense because you could get so detailed in your targeting that you can make the first five seconds specific to the video that they're going to watch. Because that's another thing, you would target videos

6:26

an ad unit somehow, but, or you have the ability to run pre-roll. You just take the crazy hook format that exists in short form and apply it because obviously people can skip after five seconds. And so it's, you just need to apply those same hook principles, tease, tension, conflict resolution, and put it in there.

6:33

YouTube's also one of the interesting places where you can make the hook specific to what you target. Right. So if the meat of the video is similar, right, but you want to target a specific keyword, then you could include that keyword in the hook. And so it's one of those places where filming 10 hooks, 15 hooks can make sense because you could get so detailed in your targeting that you can make the first five seconds specific to the video that they're going to watch. Because that's another thing: you would target videos that people are watching, right? I don't think y'all understand how, so if somebody is watching a "how to build out my content calendar" and your content calendar software, you can target the person that's watching that video.

6:39

Or your Notion. Right. And you're saying, we're going to target everyone that has, because it's keyword-based just like Google. So you're going to target everyone that searches for a keyword, content calendar, and then you just advertise a lead magnet.

6:44

Or that content calendar. Some SaaS companies do this. Okay. I think, but the ad creative is terrible. Right. Right. Which is a huge opportunity to take consumer-level, for, because I know who all the ones you're talking about, on the SaaS side. Because I would say I get hit with them at the Monday.com. You know the YouTube Premium? I did. I had my card switched. Oh, okay. Two months ago, and it's what I'm still in. I haven't fully changed my cards on everything. And so I've been experiencing my ad. Most us shit I've ever heard. It's just you and me in a nutshell. Yeah. It's just, I don't want to. Dealing with it for no reason. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I can handle all that in 30 minutes, but it's the annoying minuscule things that you have to do. What's four? Let's keep going.

6:52

I really like three, by the way. High AOV TikTok Shop products. Cool. This is all you. Yeah. TikTok Shop just had an absolutely unbelievable November. And I saw your tweet, LinkedIn, or something. Man, the tweet did nothing, but the LinkedIn went crazy. It's weird. I think the way you tweeted it, I think how YouTube has to change. Yeah. I think it needs to be more lazy, bold in how you would talk in person. You've vanilla-fied it a bit. I'll get spicy on LinkedIn every now and then. But I think Twitter's where you'd move numbers. I've been saying, yeah.

6:57

High AOV TikTok Shop products. So TikTok Shop had eight brands do over 10 million in November, which is unprecedented. The previous record for a month was 12, and they had QVC did 28.5, so that's a new record. It really just feels to me that this platform is maturing, which, if you're a long-term bull on social commerce, makes a lot of sense. Similar to Amazon in the early days, you were only getting trinkets, discounts, whatever, and then it turned into this platform that you were ordering based on how quickly you could get it. It's just your general buying behavior as a consumer. You're used to buying on there. There's a lot of trust. And I do think that is starting to happen on TikTok Shop. And what we're going to see is that high AOV products, SharkNinja is a perfect example, they have been selling their vacuum for 150 bucks, 200 bucks. They're selling a knife set for 300. There's a lot of different things that are being sold right now at a higher AOV, which this is traditionally a lower AOV platform, right? It's typically under 60 bucks.

7:01

I do think this is category-dependent. If you're the most expensive creatine gummy in the world, probably screwed. But what it told me is that customers are not necessarily looking for low AOVs. They're looking for deals, right? And so how do you show a deal that makes sense with your margin profile is probably how you get your high AOV TikTok Shop product to move. SharkNinja had their product on walmart.com, target.com, Amazon, and on all three of those sites it was 229. What they did is they listed it on TikTok Shop for 300, and then they discounted it down to 200. So they showed a unique offer on TikTok, which was $30 cheaper than it was anywhere else, so that affiliates could use the language, "It's a TikTok Shop exclusive deal," but the offer was not actually as steep as described, right? They're saying it was a hundred dollars off, and actually it's 30. It's enough to trip your average Ruth in Ohio. Shout out Ruth, powering this U.S. economy on her back.

7:07

So I think that's going to be a major trend we're going to see, is a lot more brands are going to see SharkNinja and QVC's success and say, we need to pour some money into this channel.

7:13

Do you think consumer behavior is also changing on the channel? Massively. How? Absolutely. I think people are trusting it more. When it first came out, it was all Chinese trinkets, and now it's Ninja. Obviously if it's an official Ninja store with thousands of verified reviews, this stuff is so intuitive, actually, when you start to just say it out loud. It's like, oh, I just saw an extremely compelling TikTok about a product that I want. I can just buy it in the platform with a deal. It's not that crazy, right? Versus where else are you combining discovery with the conversion endpoint? Amazon doesn't have discovery like that. You have to build awareness elsewhere, and then they have to go through the process of clicking into Amazon and then finding the product after searching it. But when they search it, they see Ninja's six competitors on a sponsored ad. And so there's friction in that process, versus if you just see the Ninja product on TikTok Shop with an offer, you can make that impulse buy because the video was good.

7:18

So I think this presents an insane opportunity for both content creators and brands because, as long as you put together that cohesive strategy, then you can pretty much sell it any way. It goes back to the nano influencers. You have your nano influencers dialed, and it's all volume. Every single one of these brands had around 30,000 videos posted in November. Wow. How many creators, probably, to do that? Anywhere from 7 to 16 in the top 10. Wait, 7 to 16, what? 7,000 creators low-end to 16,000 creators on the high end. Okay. So you said 7, and it could have been 700. It could have been 6. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. 7,000. Yeah. Wow. 7,000 creators on the low end. And mostly all on affiliate deals? Yeah. I would, absolutely. Yeah. Maybe 200 on retainers or something. I doubt it.

7:25

I also think it's just part of how the platform's going to mature, right? We've been buying on Instagram for a while now, but we didn't invest. I've gone through the peaks and the valleys with TikTok Shop, and I'm so back on, this is so obvious that it's where it's going. People are only spending more time on there. They're only spending more time on their phones. This rejection of social media has not really happened yet. I don't see it happening in 2026. Sora failed like that. Sora is not taking away any attention from TikTok. IG is not shipping better features to take attention away from TikTok. It's not getting banned. So what is the counter to this not becoming an Amazon-esque buying platform? Yep.

7:33

And if so, what would you be able, what would you do to start on Amazon in 2015 to be early on Amazon? Yeah. Before everyone made it so competitive. So that's kind of my opinion. You just wrote your landing page copy for Noogle, if you care. and I'm so back on just this is so obvious that it's where it's going. It's, it's, people are only spending more time on there. They're only spending more time on their phones. This rejection of social media has not really happened yet. I don't see it happening in 2026. Sora failed. Sora is not taking away any attention from TikTok. IG is not shipping better features to take attention away from TikTok. It's not getting banned. So,

8:12

what is the counter to this not becoming an Amazon-esque buying platform? Yep. And if so, what would you be able, what would you do to start on Amazon in 2015 to be early on Amazon? Yeah. Before everyone made it so competitive. So that's my opinion. You just wrote your landing page copy for Noogle. If you care. For tastemakers or hit factory, shit, y'all. You need to reply to the comments, bro. I do. I think I owe people money, right? I think I might've promised some cash. You promised 25 bucks a person. Which I got you. I got you. If that's you, I got you. So 50 times 25. So you owe, you owe a significant amount of money.

8:52

Is that, is that a rack? It's more. It's more than a rack. 50 times 25? It's more than a rack. It's like 1250. No? 50 times 20. Yeah, it's 1250. Yeah. Stupid. All right. I got y'all. I got y'all. Okay. Number two, or number five. Number five. Number two. I don't know, bro. I'm thrown off. I gotta shell out 1250 now. You know what I'm saying? I gotta sell this. So experiential marketing. Yes. Gotta be something you're doing. Yes. You simply cannot afford to not be in person. I think a lot of people are doing this in a sense of, oh, we'll just show up to the farmer's market.

9:49

Oh, we'll just be present at this event. We'll have a presence at this event. And it's like, if you're Everyday Dose, why do you not have a pop-up coffee shop in Metis Beach? Right? Own the actual experience rather than just having a street team there. Yeah. And a couple of brands did this really well. Good Wipes, I remember, was one that I talked about before. What was their event, bro? Bro. What was their event? So Good Wipes. Put me on. Let me tell you. Let me tell you, because this was actually OD. So at a concert, at some sort of music festival, what's everyone's worst nightmare? You gotta go drop a deuce at the concert, right? You gotta use that port-a-potty.

10:41

Yeah, use the port-a-potty, bro. Right? No one wants to do it. And then you're scared it might get tipped. I've never done it. Praise the Lord. Okay? Never had to go through that experience. Never used a port-a-potty. I've never had to. Never gone number two. You know, number two at a concert. Okay? Okay. Quickly want to move on? Yeah. Just move. You know, I know we're in your ears right now. That's why I'm gonna listen to this. So, Good Wipes, they sponsored port-a-potties at a music festival. And when they sponsored the port-a-potties, they made them super, super bougie. Right? So they made it an incredible first-class experience, all presented by Good Wipes. Right?

11:35

And that's sick. They showed up in a way that was authentic and integrated into the event, but they solved a pain point while also inserting their brand and their value props there. So that's one example. I think Pure Sport did this with their hydration station at a marathon. London Marathon, I think it was. Yeah. And so it's little things like that where you are finding a way to have a brand experience at an event where you're solving a tangible problem for people. This is how I'm even thinking about it. You can't have the best content and then no life for that content to come to life. You know what I'm saying? Like, no other moments where it's...

11:43

Part of having great content is doing things. Yes. Right. It's like the content is now the bridge to then go experience the thing. Bandit put on this amazing, futuristic campaign for the Chicago Marathon. And then they recreated that feeling of the campaign at a pop-up store. Mm-hmm. You know what I'm saying? Everyone had some sick thing where they were going through a wind tunnel. You have to do that. And people are really desperate for these events.

12:00

I do think that people want a reason to go do some things on the weekend that is not just go drink. And so brands, in the same way that we say brands have an opportunity to become TV and run social shows and be an entertainment experience, you also have an opportunity to do something where you are now on someone's agenda. You're giving them a reason to get out the house and something to be excited about, like an event to go to. But don't just show up and pass out products. Make it an integrated experience. Go that next direction.

12:12

What if Everyday Dose or Rise Super Coffee or all of these different brands, Mignana on a Saturday morning has an insane line out the door on their see-home location. Yeah. What if they just did a pop-up right next to Mignana? They're like, don't wait in line. Come here. Yeah. So number six is an overall shift from performance to brand marketing. So this is another investment thing that I think is going to drastically change because I can't tell you. Every brand owner I talk to is like, my medicac is shit, right? And it's very simple. You have a funnel. You have squeezed the bottom of the... You squeezed the bottom of the toothpaste bottle out as much as you can.

12:53

And there's nothing left in that bottle, right? Naturally, you would have to fill the top of it. That is brand marketing in a nutshell. And people are not directing dollars to it whatsoever. So I think... They're starting to. And it's funny because you listen to Sean from Ridge saying, if the number one thing that you should invest in right now is organic and brand market... I don't know if you saw that. I didn't know. Yeah. And then the amount of brands that... I had a conversation today. A hundred-million-dollar brand. You would know them. Most everyone here would know them. They've scaled and survived off paid.

13:45

And they're like, paid is how you win fast. Organic and brand is how you win in the future. Yeah. And the people that do care... And it was just like, back then, you could win very easily and fast on... If you had a good product and you put out good ads, you could win, bro. You could scale very, very fast. How do you not get around the fact of, look, we just went from 1 million to 5 million, 5 million to 10 million? It's like, of course you're going to do that. A hundred percent. But now we're living in an era where people are buying the brands very specifically that they're very aligned with from a brand side. Right?

14:34

And that takes a heavy investment to be like, okay, we have to pour a lot of money into things that we can't measure all the time. You could be investing in organic with the hopes of driving retail. And you don't really know it's working, but you know when it's working. You get what I'm saying? Totally. There is no very clear connection between this and that, even if that is performing significantly better. Right? And so I'm there with you a million percent that the shift from performance to brand marketing is the new performance marketing. Yeah, it is. Because what it's going to do is it's going to influence the overall performance of your

15:28

email, of your SMS campaigns. People are going to want to hear from you. It's that simple. I'm ignoring emails from brands that I don't want to hear from. Yes. And then if you're going to invest in brand marketing and building that relationship with me, I'm probably going to want to open your email. Yes. And so, I mean, I think that is a huge thing that people need to start grounding themselves in is, look, this isn't going to show up with a direct correlation between, you know, it's a 5X ROAS if I invest in brand marketing. Where it is going to show up is what your baseline revenue metrics are, which is organic Right?

16:26

And so I'm there with you a million percent that the shift from performance to brand marketing is the new performance marketing. Yeah, it is. Because what it's going to do is it's going to influence the overall performance of your email, of your SMS campaigns. People are going to want to hear from you. It's that simple. I'm ignoring emails from brands that I don't want to hear from. Yes. And then if you're going to invest in brand marketing and building that relationship with me, I'm probably going to want to open your email. Yes.

17:15

And so I think that is a huge thing that people need to start grounding themselves in is, look, this isn't going to show up with a direct correlation between, you know, it's a 5X ROAS if I invest in brand marketing. Where it is going to show up is what your baseline revenue metrics are, which is organic search, SMS signups, email signups, open rates of those two channels. And from there, it's what does that do if you boost those things by 20%? If you get 20% more organic search hits, if you get 15% better open rates on your SMS, just keep your conversion rate the same. It's got to make a huge difference in your business.

17:44

But at the same time, it's scary because you're just putting money into the abyss, right? And so that is, I feel, the challenge. It is. And the way I described it, because the call is on today, he's like, how would you describe brand marketing? I was like, brand marketing is not having to convince someone to buy something. Right. It really is not. When I love a brand, it is. Thank you. When I love a brand, bro, I don't look at the price. I don't read the copy on the landing page.

18:56

I don't look at the details. I just buy. Right. How much does that have? Huh? How much does that have? No idea. I don't know. I can't tell you any of this. The ALD pants I got on, the jeans, I got no idea. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Right. The brand loyalty and affinity has been built to a level where, cool, if I can afford the thing, I'm going to buy the thing.

20:10

Yeah. And I don't care. And that's fine, but you need to get to that level. ALD has been investing purely in brand before they start investing in paid. Yeah. And when I get hit with paid, I'm like, oh, bet. I didn't know y'all dropped your winter collection. So that's like, let me do that. And they also do the email, right, where it's like, hey, our winter collection just dropped. And I've actually called out. I know you did. You did on Twitter. I called the month.

21:21

I was like, y'all be sending too many emails because I think that's the private equity group being like, let's squeeze the tube. All right. Last one is live shopping. So I'm sure you saw, but Skims just did a massive live shopping experience. Skims miss. Yep. There's always a capstone moment. There's always a moment where someone who has immense visibility takes action in an overall trend. I think Kim K doing this is honestly going to catapult the live shopping stuff forward a lot. Before it was Jeffree Star, Kevin Hart, whatever.

22:12

But her being the brand, the face of the brand, her jumping on and doing a live show with Snoop Dogg, like Martha Stewart, I think, all this crazy stuff. I think we're going to see a huge investment in the live shopping experiences in 2026. And it's going to start converting a lot better. I think we're just going to see a huge investment in live as a whole. Live shopping and brands investing in going live.

22:30

Which is sick, honestly. It's very sick. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Have you seen Justin Bieber's been going live for like five hours a day and stuff? Isn't he like Twitch? It's Twitch? Yeah, it's Twitch. Yeah. And then, when I was talking about BPN in a predictions episode with Tatum, there was last... You don't probably follow BPN like that. But did you see the last man standing race? And did you see all the buzz around it and how crazy it was? Yeah. The reason that happened is because it went live. And literally, they went live for the start of every lap and the end of every lap. And it started at a few hundred people watching. Uh-huh.

23:41

Then by the end of it, there were 30,000, 40,000 people watching the lives because... Build up is crazy. They got to see everything that unfolded in those two days, or day and a half, for that race, which was a crazy story. Which then was the perfect bridge to, holy shit, I can't wait for the full documentary. For all the things I didn't see, to be able to see those things. Yeah. Right? In the documentary. Right. There's a brand that I won't name because we like them, where they then did an athletic competition, very, very similar after, somewhat same race format, crickets. Why? There was no live component where you could give a fuck about the people performing.

24:12

Were they on the same playing field as BPN, would you say? From a revenue perspective, yes. But not from an influencer maybe, or similar? Similar. Yeah. So execution was just not there? No. Yeah. It's like you just didn't feel any, really, I didn't know who these two kids were by then. I'm over here rooting for one of them to win. Yeah. And now I watch the doc and I'm like, I'm a fan, not even because I care about ultra marathon running or marathon, just because of the fact that I saw it happen live, which now connects me to it and increases the interest level to a bar that wouldn't happen via recap content, which is actually a video I filmed while I was here.

25:06

I was like, we're done with recap content. It's live. We're going live. Yeah. The recap content comes from the live, right? It's like you have to have something before, during, after. Yeah. If you don't have before, during, after, then you're literally just selling yourself so short. That's what drives me crazy, is brands will put all this money into this stuff and then just not take advantage of it. You have an opportunity to put 30 pieces of content out there and you did six. Yeah. Why? Just because that W2 marketer on your team just didn't really want to put in the time.

26:19

Can I do more? Can I do more? Yeah. I got to take this medium that's on this chair. All right. If y'all liked that episode, we're going to be breaking down every single one of those trends in a much more in-depth way on a follow-up series. So that was nano influencers, meta partnership ads, YouTube ads, high AOV, TikTok shop products, experiential marketing, brand instead of performance marketing, and last, live shopping. So the next few episodes that we'll be doing deep dive into each one of those things and how you can take advantage of that trend in 2026. So if you liked the video, please like, subscribe, leave a comment.

26:52

It helps us a lot to bring on more content like this, and we'll see y'all next week. All right. Peace. Like, I had a conversation today. A hundred million dollar brand. You would know them. Most everyone here would know them. They just have... They've scaled and survived off paid. And they're like, paid is how you win fast. Organic and brand is how you win in the future. Yeah. And like, the people that do care... And it was just like, back then, you can win very easily and fast on... If you had a good product and you put out good ads, you could win, bro. You could scale very, very fast and like, how do you not get around the fact of,

27:25

look, we just went from 1 million to 5 million, 5 million, 10 million. It's like, of course you're going to do that. A hundred percent. But now we're living in an era where people are buying the brands very specifically that they're very aligned with from a brand side. Right? And that takes a heavy investment to be like, okay, we have to pour a lot of money into things that we can't measure all the time. You know, like you could be investing in organic with the hopes of driving retail. And you don't really know it's working, but you know when it's working. You get what I'm saying? Totally. There is no very clear connection between this and that, even if that is performing

28:01

significantly better. Right? And so I'm there with you a million percent that the shift from performance to brand marketing is the new performance marketing. Yeah, it is. Because what it's going to do is it's going to influence the overall performance of your email, of your SMS campaigns. Like people are going to want to hear from you. It's that simple. Like I'm ignoring emails from brands that I don't want to hear from. Yes. And then if you're going to invest in brand marketing and building that relationship with me, I'm probably going to want to open your email. Yes. And so, I mean, I think that is like a huge thing that people need to start grounding

28:38

themselves in is, look, this isn't going to show up with a direct correlation between, you know, it's a 5X ROAS if I invest in brand marketing. Where it is going to show up is what your baseline revenue metrics are, which is organic search, SMS signups, email signups, open rates of those two channels. And from there, it's like, what does that do if you boost those things by 20%? If you get 20% more organic search hits, if you get 15% better open rates on your SMS, just keep your conversion rate the same. It's got to make a huge, you know, difference in your business. But at the same time, you know, it's kind of scary because you're just putting money into

29:15

the abyss, right? And so like, that is, I feel like kind of the challenge. It is. And the way I described it, because the call is on today, he's like, how would you describe brand marketing? I was like, brand marketing is not having to convince someone to buy something. Right. It really is not. When I love a brand, it is. Thank you. When I love a brand, bro, I don't look at the price. I don't read the copy on the landing page. I don't look at the details. I just buy. Right. How much does that have? Huh? How much does that have? No idea. I don't know. I can't tell you any of this. The ALD pants I got on, the jeans, I got no idea. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Right.

29:50

The brand loyalty and affinity has been built to a level where like, cool, if I could afford the thing, I'm going to buy the thing. Yeah. And I don't care. Like, and that's fine, but you need to get to that level. ALD has been investing purely in brand before they start investing in paid. Yeah. And when I get hit with paid, I'm like, oh, bet. Like, I didn't know y'all dropped your winter collection. So that's like, let me do that. And they also do, they do the email, right? Where it's like, hey, our winter collection just dropped. And I've actually called out. I know you did. You did on Twitter. I called the month.

30:20

I was like, y'all be sending too many emails because I think that's the private equity group being like, let's squeeze the tube. All right. Last one is live shopping. So I'm sure you saw, but Skims just did a massive live shopping experience. Skims miss. Yep. There's always a capstone moment. There's always a moment where someone who has immense visibility takes action in overall trend. I think Kim K doing this is honestly going to catapult the live shopping stuff forward a lot. Before it was Jeffree Star, Kevin Hart, whatever. But her being the brand, the face of the brand, her jumping on and doing a live show with Snoop Dogg,

31:04

like Martha Stewart, I think, like all this crazy stuff. I think we're going to see a huge investment in the live shopping experiences in 2026. And it's going to start converting a lot better. I think we're just going to see a huge investment in life as a whole. Live shopping and branches investing in going live. Which is sick, honestly. It's very sick. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Have you seen Justin Bieber's been going live for like five hours a day and stuff? Isn't he like Twitch? It's Twitch? Yeah, it's Twitch. Yeah. And then, you know, when I was talking about BPN in like a predictions episode with Tatum, you know, there was last...

31:38

You don't probably follow BPN like that. But did you see the last man standing race? And like, did you see all the buzz around it and how crazy it was? Yeah. The reason that happened is because it went live. And it literally, they went live for the start of every lap and the end of every lap. And it started at like a few hundred people watching. Uh-huh. To then by the end of it, there was 30,000, 40,000 people watching the lives because... Build up is crazy. They got to see everything that unfolded in those like two days or like day and a half for that race, which was a crazy story. Which then was the perfect bridge to, holy shit, I can't wait for the full documentary.

32:12

For all the things I didn't see, to be able to see those things. Yeah. Right? In the documentary. Right. There's a brand that I won't name because we like them, kind of, where they then did an athletic competition like very, very similar after, somewhat same race format, crickets. Why? There was no live component where like you could give a fuck about the people performing. Were they on the same playing field as BPN, would you say? From a revenue perspective, yes. But not from a like influencer maybe or similar? Similar. Yeah. So they just, execution was just not there? No. Yeah. You know, it's like you just didn't feel any, really, I didn't know who these two kids

32:51

were by then. I'm like over here rooting like for one of them to win. Yeah. And now I watch the doc and I'm like, I'm a fan, you know, not even because I care about ultra marathon running or marathon, just because of the fact that I saw it happen live, which now like connects me to it and increases the interest level to a bar that wouldn't happen via recap content, which is actually a video I filmed while I was here. I was like, we're done with recap content. Like it's live. We're going live. Yeah. The recap content comes from the live, right? Like the, it's like you have to, you have to have something during, before, during, after. Yeah.

33:28

If you don't have before, during, after, then you're literally just selling yourself so short. That's what drives me crazy is like brands will put all this money into this stuff and then just not take advantage of it. You know, you have an opportunity to put 30 pieces of content out there and you did six. Yeah. Why? Just because, you know, that W2 marketer on your team just didn't really want to put in the time. Can I do more? Can I do more? Yeah. I got to take this medium that's on this chair. All right. If y'all liked that episode, we're going to be breaking down every single one of those trends in a much more in-depth way on a follow-up series.

34:04

So that was nano influencers, meta partnership ads, YouTube ads, high AOV, TikTok shop products, experiential marketing, brand instead of performance marketing, and last live shopping. So the next few episodes that we'll be doing deep dive into each one of those things and how you can take advantage of that trend in 2026. So if you liked the video, please like subscribe, leave a comment. It helps us a lot to bring on more content like this and we'll see y'all next week. All right. Peace.

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