Sublime Conversions

Head of Conversions @ Sublime Conversions

US Army

Infantry Soldier

Investor | $2.3M+ sold | I fund and manage DFY sales campaigns for high ticket offers. Building & investing in a portfolio of service-based brands.

There are 3 ways to grow your business:

1. Bring in more customers (get more people to buy).
2. Increase order size (get people to spend more when they buy). 
3. Improve customer lifetime value (get people to buy more often or buy more things). 

I help businesses do all three without using ads, webinars, sales letters or anything like that. Plus, you don't pay a dime until we've FOUND the money and put it in your account.

It doesn't get much better than that ;)

Nick Browne

Founder & CEO surge.agency l Founder Nord Media | Growth Marketing for 6-9 figure eCommerce brands. Sharing things I learn along the way.

A little more about me for all of my current & soon to be followers 🤝

This is where I impress you right!? First off - thank you for visiting my profile, following me and joining me through this wild experience while I try to figure shit out.

It’s absolutely crazy to me how many different people have followed me over the last year and have engaged with my content + reached out to build friendships. I love connecting with new people and learning their stories.

You may not know me officially yet but – maybe you’ve seen me around or you heard about me.
So now… a little more about me 🤷‍♂️

👋 I’m Kody - a barely “C” student who struggled throughout high-school and college but managed to scrape by after 6 long years in college. I could never figure out what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be when I grew up (still haven’t lol).

I stumbled into the realm of marketing around 8 or 9 years ago and have been figuring out what I like and what I’m good at. I’ve worked as a marketing specialist, retention manager, growth marketer, growth manager, head of growth and now agency / brand owner.

During my “free” time I enjoy going to the movies, playing video games or hanging with my wife (Ali) & dog (Goose).

A little about my career and my accomplishments 👇

Years 1 & 2: Marketing specialist (Very basic stuff)

Years 3 & 4: Retention Manager - Generated over $400M in email revenue and ran a team of 30 🤯

Years 4 & 5: Growth Marketer / Growth Manager (Directly Managed $15M in ad-spend and grew 2 brands roughly 400% year over year)

Year 6 → Now: Head of Growth → Agency Owner → Brand Owner (Have in total directly managed over $200M in ad-spend, generated $650M+ in email revenue and have grown 7 brands into 9 figures, 17 into 8 figures)

+ many more into 6/7 figures annually. Was all of this where I thought I would be? Absolutely not… not even close lol… I always say I was able to combine a lot of luck with a lot of hard work and work ethic to achieve the results you see today.

So why am I sharing so much now? I’ve come to enjoy sharing my learnings and helping others who want to grow their business, start a brand, agency or improve their career.

Back in October 2023 I decided to start focusing on building a personal brand on Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram and in January 2024 this all compounded and built Nord Media.

Subscribe here 👉  http://nordmedia.com/newsletter

Kody N.

Brands will spend $50 to get a customer to checkout and then show them a blank thank-you page.

Make it make sense.

That page has a near 100% view rate. Higher than:

👉Your homepage
👉Your landing pages
👉Every ad you've ever run

It's also the highest-intent moment in your entire funnel. Payment's committed, trust is at its peak, and decision fatigue is gone.

And you're wasting it on a receipt.

That's exactly why I've been using Aftersell by Rokt

One-click upsells at this moment convert at dramatically higher rates because there's ZERO friction.

No pop-ups or aggressive tactics… just the right offer at the right time.

These are a few brands already running this and their results: 

👉Jones Road Beauty hit 11,803% monthly ROI from Rokt Thanks monetization alone
👉True Classic averages +$35 per upsell
👉40,000+ Shopify brands are already running this including HexClad, Kitsch, Ridge, Cozy Earth just to name a few.

They're getting ahead because they extract more value from every customer they already paid to acquire.

That’s why I'm a #proudpartner with Aftersell by Rokt because this is one of the easiest revenue wins I've seen in ecom.

Their team is offering a free audit to directly break your funnel and identify the best upsell opportunities and will provide projected revenue based on your site specifically. Book a call today https://bit.ly/4rkMNCk

Kody Nordquist

Founder of Nord Media | Performance Marketing Agency for 7 & 8-figure eCom brands

Meta dropped their Q4 earnings a few weeks ago, and most operators are completely missing the most important takeaways.

- $59.89B revenue (+24% YoY), 
- ad impressions up 18%, 
- price per ad up 6%. 

Here's what changed:

GEM (Meta's new LLM-scale ad engine) is live and delivering:

→ +5% conversions on Instagram
→ +3% conversions on Facebook Feed

GEM is changing how Meta delivers ads, and that means creative is doing the heavy lifting that targeting used to do.

The January 15 targeting deadline also killed legacy interest targeting for good. Advantage+ is now the default for 65% of U.S. advertisers.

Translation: The algorithm decides who sees your ads now. You need to work within that. AI optimization is offsetting cost with conversion lift.

Your competitive advantage for 2026 won’t be targeting sophistication, it'll be creative velocity and message-market fit. That means:

1. Creative testing volume matters more than ever. GEM learns faster with more inputs. Feed it.

2. Consolidate into Advantage+ campaigns. Fighting the algorithm is expensive and a fruitless task. Let it work.

3. Message precision > audience precision. Your hook, angle, and offer do the targeting now.

The brands still manually building interest stacks are just wasting money on outdated legacy tactics. Instead, you need to feed GEM high-volume creative and let the system find your customers.

Meta's infrastructure shifted. Your strategy needs to catch up.

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Social Media Marketing Certification Course

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Digital Marketing 

HubSpot Marketing Software

Growth Marketing Agency for 7 & 8-figure eCom brands. Focused on driving profitable growth at scale with proven systems and strategies. Currently managing $5M+ in monthly ad-spend for brands.

Nord Media is a growth agency that helps 7-9 figure eCom brands scale.

Founder & Head of Growth

Fuel Your Brand with Ready-to-Launch Creative Templates.

Partner (Acquired)

Surge Marketing is a full-service Growth Marketing Agency.

Founder (Acquired)

Key Responsibilities:

Campaign Strategy and Execution: Develop and execute paid media strategies to drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, and retention. Utilize data-driven insights to optimize campaigns and maximize ROI.

Channel Management: Oversee advertising campaigns across platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other relevant channels. Monitor performance and adjust strategies to meet objectives.

Budget Management: Manage advertising budgets effectively to achieve desired outcomes while maintaining cost-efficiency. Track and report on campaign performance, providing insights for continuous improvement.

Audience Targeting: Utilize advanced targeting capabilities to reach relevant audiences and drive engagement. Implement A/B testing strategies to optimize ad creative, messaging, and targeting parameters.

Partnership Collaboration: Collaborate with internal teams and external partners to align paid media efforts with overall marketing initiatives. Coordinate with creative teams to develop compelling ad content that resonates with our target audience.

Performance Analysis and Reporting: Analyze campaign performance metrics, including CTR, CPA, ROAS, and conversion rates. Generate regular reports to communicate insights and make data-driven recommendations for future campaigns.

Achievements:

Increased year over year subscription growth by 400%.
Improved campaign efficiency through rigorous A/B testing and optimization strategies, leading to a 65% reduction in cost per acquisition.
Implemented geo-targeting tactics that resulted in business developmental learnings that drove incremental lift in key states for growth and new business avenues.

Paid Media Manager

Effectively manage ($5M+ Annual) Digital Advertising budget across multiple paid media and SEM channels
Drive an effective ROAS and MER to enable rapid business growth while maintaining profitability
Grow business revenue by 120% YoY while also increasing profitability
Developed daily/quarterly metric growth reporting standards, rolling up directly to CEO 
Created brand strategy advertising tactics and deployment 
Develop and implement Digital Advertising campaigns to increase brand awareness, website traffic and drive sales
Lead content team to develop, test and improve content structure and funnels to guide customers from acquisition to conversion
Implement Lean Management and standards of work for self and teams to improve efficiency
Develop Email and SMS marketing efforts and scaled program 3000-->50,000 active subscribers in first 3 months
Improve Email & SMS marketing strategy and create unique subscriber growth and experiences
Develop a customer data-driven marketing funnel across all digital marketing avenues
Develop story-driven marketing campaigns to convey the brand and values effectively
Track and measure the performance of all digital marketing channels and propose optimization initiatives to maximize marketing ROAS
Create new marketing channels to test creative and adaptive marketing techniques

Director of Growth

Grew Enthusiast Enterprises Communications division from 3 people with $12.8M in annual revenue to 19 people and nearly $120M in annual revenue.
Oversaw the Email Strategy, SMS Marketing, Social Media, Marketing Automation & Copywriting teams with a growth expectation of 50% Y/Y.
Developed a calendar of content for all channels focused on product development and growth.
Oversaw the creation and distribution of campaign strategy aimed at promoting various sales and branding initiatives for the organization.
Created a strong insight customer use and feedback of products via NPS surveys and post-purchase follow-up.
Developed strategic planning between Social Media, Digital Advertising, Graphic Design and Communications to unify our brand messaging and improve customer perception of our brand & products.
Integrated product marketing strategies and created optimized marketing initiatives with integrated A/B testing and relevant KPI tracking.  
Improved the customer life cycle and retention by providing value to the customer through unique content and closing all gaps where a customer may become lost during their purchase process.
Created and managed revenue targets and budget expenses to ensure profitability growth.

Growth Marketing Manager

Developed digital marketing strategy by studying economic indicators, tracking changes in supply and demand, identifying customers and their current and future needs, and monitoring the competition.
Planned and executed on all web, SEO/SEM, database marketing, email, SMS, social media, and display advertising campaigns.
Developed and maintained a social media presence in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. 
Identified short-term and long-range issues that must be addressed and developed a plan of action around these.
Measured and report performance of all digital marketing campaigns and assesses against goals (ROI and KPIs).
Optimized performance of campaigns and initiatives by utilizing analytical toolkits to identify underperforming areas.
Developed A/B test structure to optimize flow and conversion of the customer journey.
Collaborates with internal teams & external to enhance LTV of customers and identify gaps on a customer's lifecycle
Utilizes strong analytical ability to evaluate end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels and customer touch points.
Identified critical conversion points and drop off points and optimizes user funnels.

The absolute WORST thing in paid media right now is that everyone is hell-bent on selling you "THE way" to run Meta ads.

"THE correct structure"
"THE bidding strategy"
 "THE creative testing framework"

... But the same structure that prints money for a $10M supplement brand will completely tank a $2M fashion brand. 

Even our own playbooks don't work for every account we touch. 

The spend level is different. 

The audience is different. 

The product economics are different.

Stop looking for the "right way" from someone else’s rigid framework. 

What you really need is to test relentlessly, and build a system that works for YOUR brand.

You will NEVER get to $100M if you’re running influencer marketing like this:

Flat-fee upfront payments
Operating out of spreadsheets
Revenue & attribution guesswork
Manual recruitment, seeding, onboarding

This approach bottlenecks your creator partnerships, revenue, and growth.

That’s why the fastest-growing brands like Comfrt, Grüns, G Fuel, True Classic, BREZ, and Solawave are running creator programs with real infrastructure behind them.
Rather than scraping by with spreadsheets and hope.

They use:

✅ Affiliates (pay for performance, not promises)
✅ Auto-gifting, recruiting, and creator management
✅ Unifying influencers across DTC and TikTok Shops
✅ Automatic attribution tracking and one-click cash payouts
✅ Safelinks to protect codes from leaking on Honey/RetailMeNot

… and as a result, they generate +$200M in affiliate revenue. 

If you want a full guide on how to get this set up for your brand in less than 10 minutes, comment “INFLUENCER” and I’ll send you an A➔Z playbook for scaling your creator partnerships the right way.

#socialsnowballpartner #ad

Meta quietly rolled out two new breakdowns in Ads Manager. 

1. First time vs. repeat purchase conversion data. 

2. Visibility into how much of your performance is being driven by their AI.

It’s worth pulling, but not worth trusting blindly.

We've seen it historically: 

- Numbers that are inflated

- Conversions that are over-attributed

- Returning customers counted as ad-driven purchases that were going to happen anyway

Your ROAS might look great, but your actual profitability tells the true story.

Growing up, I watched my parents stress out over affording groceries, skipping car repairs, and never taking vacations. It was just out of the question.

Now that I am where I am and I have disposable income, the best part isn't the fancy stuff.

It's knowing I can:
- Eat healthy food without checking prices 
- Fix my car when it breaks 
- Cover emergencies without panicking 
- Travel without worrying about paying the rent too

I don't need Lambos, Rolexes, and designer everything.

I just want to be comfortable without worrying about the small things.

No flash, all stability and security. That’s real success to me.

3 reels a week and 10 variations of the same concept is not a creative strategy that will save you from rising CPMs. 

Andromeda processes 10,000x more ad variants in parallel than Meta's old system. 

It has more creative combinations to test than ever before, which means it rewards variety above everything else. 

When all your ads feel like cousins of the same concept, Andromeda picks one and quietly ignores the rest, which leads to high CPMs and low reach. 

On the dashboard, it looks like a performance dip, but the algorithm is simply exhausted because of a lack of creative diversity.

Reels is where this hits hardest, because:

- Users spend over 50% of their Instagram time watching reels

- GEM is prioritizing it as the primary top-of-funnel channel

- Meta is surfacing 25% more same-day Reels content than Q3 2025

- Andromeda is allocating its delivery, which means it's where creative diversity either compounds your reach or kills it.

And inside Reels, the first three seconds decide everything. 

Target 60%+ hold rate, lead with a face, pair a visual interrupt with audio, and caption everything because most people scroll without sound. 

If you can't stop the scroll in three seconds, the rest of the creative is irrelevant because Andromeda won't show it long enough to matter.

From there, build three lanes in your creative library:

- Raw UGC hooks for cold traffic. 

- Polished demos for the audience in the consideration stage. 

- Social proof stacks for conversion.

Rotate monthly winners into Flexible Ads and let Andromeda match the right format to the right user at the right stage.

The metric that tells you if your creative diversity is actually working is CPMr which is cost per 1,000 unique people reached. 

Keep it under $20. When it climbs, instead of adjusting bids, introduce new concepts.

Feed Andromeda a variety of creative concepts, and it’ll reward you with reach.

TikTok Shop is projected to hit $20B in 2026, but I’ll die on the hill that 90% of brands using it shouldn’t be.

I’m not saying it’s a bad platform. For the right brands, TikTok Shop crushes.

But when the majority of brands are jumping in because they feel pressured, you’ve got a problem. Unless you’re doing sub $10M/year in revenue, you shouldn't be putting ANY focus into TikTok Shop.

Ideally, I wouldn't expand into TikTok Shop until $50M/year in revenue. Get there first by focusing on Meta and Google. Then use TikTok to amplify that success.

TikTok Shop can expand on what you're already doing well, but it's not going to take you from $0 to $100M.

Sure, there are exceptions: Frostbuddy grew 100% on TikTok Shop, but that's 1% of brands. 

To win on TikTok Shop, you need:

→ Good margins
→ A strong product
→ To actually know what you're doing

Too often, I see people jumping in who don't even have 1 of these going yet, let alone all 3. 

You need to realize that TikTok is pulling back seller incentives, and profitability is harder than it looks.

Stop chasing platforms because you see them everywhere on socials.

Test TikTok Shop when it's right for you.

Not because you feel like you have to.

TikTok Shop Projected To Hit 20B In 2026

Brands are badly neglecting their retention rate while burning millions on acquisition.

Here's the math that should terrify you:
- Average ecom retention = 30%
- Traditional retail retention = 63%

You're losing 70-75% of your customer base every single year, but the buyers that come back are generating 44% of your revenue despite being just 21% of your customer base.

You need to understand that:

→ A 5% retention improvement = a 25-95% profitability increase
→ Retained customers spend 67% more than new ones
→ Purchase probability is 60-70% (repeat) vs 5-20% (new)
→ Top performers push above 40% repeat customer rate vs 28.2% average

The post-purchase window is where most brands completely fall apart. They nail the acquisition, ship the product, then ghost the customer until the next campaign blast. THAT’S where the leak is.

I've watched too many brands stall out because they treated every customer like a one-time transaction instead of building an actual business. 

2026 needs to be the year retention stops being something we'll “get to later”.

Stop pouring money into cold traffic while ignoring the customers who already trust you. You need to fix the bucket before you pour more water in.

Brands Will Spend 6 Figures On Meta Ads In 2026 But Wont Spend A Single Hour Fixing Why Customers Dont Come Back

Your ad account looks fine:
- ROAS is holding 
- CPMs are manageable 
- Conversions are flowing

But your spreadsheet is screaming.

As of February 2026, the average US tariff rate sits at 17% on all imports.

For DTC brands sourcing from China (which is 50% of you), tariffs hit 54% before the November 2025 truce brought partial relief. 

Most products are still getting hit with 55%+ when you stack Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs.

Here's what that actually means: 

49% of DTC brands report tariffs significantly increased their landed product costs. 

An $80 product from China now carries $35+ in tariffs. 

Your COGS just jumped 20-30%, but your ROAS target didn't move.

That's the problem.

Triple Whale tracked the impact in real time: median ROAS fell from 1.84 to 1.22 between March 31 and April 17, 2025, a 33.7% drop that directly corresponded with the April 2 tariff announcement.

Median AOV dropped from $57.94 to $48.62 as consumers got price-conscious. 

CPA crept up from $21.89 to $21.95.

Most operators missed what actually broke: ROAS measures revenue, not profit.

If your product had 50% margins, you needed 2:1 ROAS to break even. Tariffs compress those margins to 35%? Your break-even ROAS just jumped to 2.86:1. 

TLDR: You've been scaling into losses while staring at green metrics in Ads Manager. Here’s the math you actually need to be running:

Break-Even ROAS = 1 / Net Margin (after COGS, shipping, fulfillment, processing, and tariffs).

Example: $30 product cost, $80 sale price, $10 shipping, $5 processing = $35 margin (43.75%). 

Break-even ROAS = 2.29. Add a 25% tariff ($7.50): margin drops to $27.50 (34.4%). New break-even ROAS = 2.91.

That's a 27% increase in the ROAS you need just to not lose money.

So what does all of this mean day to day? Don't just raise prices. 87% of merchants already did that, which compressed conversion rates across the board.

Instead:

- A/B test price points per SKU to find elasticity ceilings
- Bundle higher-margin products with tariff-exposed ones
- Revisit supplier pricing. Stronger USD creates leverage
- Test alternative sourcing (India, Mexico, Bangladesh) through short sprints

Most of all, shift your budget towards retention. Loyal customers convert at 60-70%, vs 5-20% for new prospects.

The spreadsheet broke before your ad account did, so you need to fix your unit economics before you touch your media plan.

That's how you’ll survive Q2.

Ran the numbers across our brands that currently use credit cards. They’re looking at a few million dollars a year in lost points and cash back.

Combined.

And it's not just the cash back that hurts.

Credit cards gave brands float. 30+ days before the bill hits. That window used to let brands collect revenue before paying Meta.

Now money leaves the moment the ad runs.

So when rethinking how to handle this:

→ Recalculate your contribution margin WITHOUT the cash back offset 
→ Rebuild your cash flow model assuming no float 
→ If you had 3% baked into your backend costs to offset spend, that number just went to zero

A lot of brands have been quietly using cash back to prop up margins they couldn't otherwise hit.

That's over now.

No alternative text description for this image

January 15th, 2026 was Meta's deadline for detailed targeting changes. Ad sets using old interest targeting options stopped delivering.

Brands with legacy campaigns got completely blindsided because they didn't audit their accounts.

If you're wondering what to do now, I’m about to give you the full breakdown (bookmark this to save your 2026 campaigns)

WHAT CHANGED:

Meta consolidated and removed hundreds of detailed targeting options, killed the ability to use detailed targeting exclusions, and legacy campaigns created before June 2025 stopped running on January 15th if they weren't updated.

They’ve made their position clear: It’s going to be broad targeting and AI optimization, or nothing.

WHAT MOST BRANDS DID WRONG:

- They waited until their campaigns stopped delivering to react. 

- They tried to replicate hyper-specific audience setups with quick workarounds. 

- Most of all, they blamed Meta's AI for poor performance while feeding it garbage data.

WHAT'S ACTUALLY WORKING NOW:

- Broad targeting, with clean exclusions. (Shopify customers, Klaviyo lists, double pixel purchase data)

- Letting Meta's AI find converters within broad audiences instead of forcing narrow interest stacks.

- Heavy investment in creative testing because your ads now do the targeting work.

- Strong first-party data feeding Lookalike audiences and Custom Audiences.

- Campaign structures built around conversion objectives, not demographic segments.

The reality is, trying to fight Meta's automation will always be a losing battle. 

But "let Meta do everything" without strong creative, clean data, and proper campaign structure is a recipe for wasted spend.

The brands crushing it right now are the ones who adapted months ago are running broad, feeding the algorithm quality conversion data, and testing creative at scale.

The shift to automation is here, and if you don’t adapt, you’ll quickly wind up eating everyone else’s dust.

If you haven’t been paying attention to the ESP space yet, now’s the time to start. 

December 2025, Yotpo shut down its email/SMS product entirely. 

Now, I just heard about Sendlane getting acquired by Privy.

Let me tell you, I used to work with Sendlane heavily (so did a LOT of people in this space). 

But I transitioned clients to other solutions a while back, Omnisend
 being one of the platforms we shifted to.

Watching this play out now... I’m glad I did. 

You have to remember that loud marketing doesn’t keep a platform alive.

Sendland was ALL flash with big promises and aggressive positioning. But when it came to actually delivering for merchants day in and day out?

Omnisend kept quietly building.

No noise or drama, just pure results like:

→ 150K+ brands trusting them
→ 4.8/5 on Shopify
→ Growing while everyone else is shutting down or being bought

If you’re sitting with a platform that just got acquired or shut down, Omnisend handles the entire migration for paid accounts (for free). 

Don’t wait until you’re forced into a rushed migration with zero control.

This is why I’m a #proudpartner with Omnisend because solid performance beats flashy hype.

Move now before you’re forced to later: https://lnkd.in/g6B_NEWK

Use code NORD30 for 30% off.

omnisend.com

Recommended by Kody Nordquist

Omnisend

AI search is becoming a real discovery channel for ecommerce.

Most brands have no idea how they show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, or other LLM-generated answers, or if they show up at all.

Triple Whale just launched a free AI Visibility tool that shows you exactly how your brand appears in AI search, built directly into the same platform you already use to track performance.

I’ve never seen this kind of clarity on what’s happening, and where you stand as a brand.

If you’re running an eCom brand in 2026, this is worth paying attention to:

https://lnkd.in/g__CWgeH

#triplewhalepartner

triplewhale.com

AI Search Brand

Triple Whale

If your value lives in media buying mechanics, Meta is already building your replacement.

Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that Meta is testing a system where a brand will enter a product URL and a budget, and the platform will build an entire campaign out of it. 

It’ll generate the creative, select the audience, allocate spend, and optimize delivery all on its own. 

That tells you where this is going:

- 4M advertisers are already using Meta’s AI creative tools.

- Advantage+ is driving around $60B in annualized revenue.

- Legacy controls are being phased out.

- And Flexible Ads are live right now.

You can upload 10 creatives into one container, and the system decides what each user sees.

Now layer reality on top of it: 

- Chinese import tariffs are sitting as high as 54% in the current cycle. 

- Ecom brands are raising prices to protect margins. 

- COGS are climbing. 

- Cash flow pressure is increasing. 

- Scaling decisions now carry more financial weight than they did 2 years ago.

As execution is becoming automated and margins are tightening, your value is shifting upward.

If your contribution is ONLY building campaigns and adjusting bids, you’ve become replaceable.

But if your contribution is protecting margin and guiding risk, you’ve become even more essential for a brand's growth.

You’re the layer of judgment automation can’t replicate.

The operators who’ll stay valuable in the upcoming years are the ones who own:

- Break-even ROAS and contribution margin

- Offer structure and pricing strategy

- Signal quality and data integrity

- Creative direction and concept differentiation

- Budget decisions under financial pressure

The platform is absorbing the mechanics. Your leverage now lives in judgment, economics, and strategic control.

Apple shipped the iPhone 17 on September 19th, 2025.

By November, they had iPhone 18 leaks DOMINATING tech headlines.

This is the launch strategy most DTC brands are too scared to run.

Most brands sit on new products for months because they're afraid of hurting current ROAS. But by worrying so much about cannibalization, you lose the attention window that drives bigger launches.

You can wait until everything is "ready": 

- Landing page is perfect
- Email flows are dialed in
- Creative is tested 6 ways

But you’ll just kill your own momentum.

Apple does the opposite. 

They turn product launches into major cultural moments by building anticipation before the product even exists for consumers.

- Leaks become marketing
- Speculation becomes engagement
- FOMO becomes an entire business model.

Start building momentum that compounds across launches. 

THAT’S how you turn product releases into major events that people actually care about.

2026 is here, and we're already over a month into Q1. 

Meta's pushing more and more automation, targeting options are gone, Threads ads just rolled out globally, and creative is doing more of the heavy lifting than ever.

What does that mean? The strategies that worked 6 months ago aren’t what's working now. 

What's driving major results for us right now, you ask?

TESTING STRUCTURE:

ABO (Evergreen) campaigns, launching new creative concepts per ad set: 3-5 ads per concept.

We start at a reasonable budget and scale. Once an ad set hits our daily spend threshold, it graduates into the scaling campaign.

Critical part: We're NOT turning these off in the ABO. They keep running.

Audience: Broad open with exclusions (Shopify list, Klaviyo customer list, double pixel purchase data).

SCALING STRUCTURE:

We're running 4 ASC+ campaigns simultaneously:

→ ASC+ Lowest Cost
→ ASC+ CPA
→ ASC+ Max Value
→ ASC+ ROAS

Yes, we're running creatives across all 4. Yes, they run at the same time. No, there's no overlap or creative fatigue risk, even at $5-7M/month in spend.

Each campaign aligns with a product category and expected AOV based on the products featured. Same audience approach: Broad open with the same exclusions.

We're also using Flex Ads to scale our winning creatives, launching new winning ads into Flex every month.

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS

Automation isn't about giving up control, it's about structuring campaigns so that the algorithm has clean data to optimize against. 

Broad targeting works when you've excluded the noise (existing customers, pixel duplicates).

Running multiple ASC+ bid strategies in parallel doesn't create cannibalization when each campaign serves a different conversion objective.

Creative testing stays continuous in ABO. Winners graduate to ASC+ scaling pods. Flex Ads amplify what's already proven.

The playbook isn’t airtight: it evolves every quarter. What worked in Q4 2025 isn't what's working in Q1 2026.

If you’re not on the ground and staying on top of this, you’ve already fallen behind.

Your 3:1 ROAS looks great on the dashboard, but your P&L tells a different story.

I've watched brands celebrate hitting ROAS targets even as their bank accounts BLEED out. 

What ROAS measures is revenue, not profit.

It’s different in every situation. 

EX - A product with 50% margins needs 2:1 ROAS just to break even. 

25% margins? You need 4:1 minimum.

In 2026, the metrics that actually matter are:

Contribution Margin (target: 30-40%)
→ Revenue minus COGS and variable costs

CAC Payback Period (target: 3-6 months)
→ How fast you recover acquisition cost

LTV:CAC Ratio (benchmark: 3:1)
→ Lifetime value vs acquisition cost

MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
→ Total revenue ÷ total marketing spend

Break-Even ROAS
→ The number you NEED, not the one you want

The shift from marketing-led growth to finance-led growth is here. I've seen too many brands scale to 7-8 figures on vanity metrics, then realize they built a revenue machine that doesn't generate profit.

Stop fixating on ROAS alone. Your CFO will thank you.

Some of the best brands and brightest owners I know are struggling right now with growth.

A lot of the best / biggest brands are showing stagnant year over year growth and are focusing more on profitability.

Don’t feel bad if you’re not “growing” this year. It’s a much more difficult environment for a lot of people and staying flat with improved profitability is “growth”.

Focus on what really matters - put more dollars into your pocket. Right-size your business.

Meta did a global rollout of Threads ads on January 26th. 

That’s 400 MILLION users open to advertisements.

What most people haven’t realized yet is that Threads placement is already ON by default for Advantage+ campaigns. You're likely already on Threads, whether you meant to be or not.

So, should we be testing this or ignoring it?

We've been running Threads as an add-on to existing campaigns for the past few weeks.

The data so far is: 

- Lower CPM 
- No drastic CVR shifts
- More eyeballs on your brand, at a cheaper cost

To be clear, this doesn’t call for a creative strategy overhaul. 

Everyone's asking "what's the creative strategy for a text-first platform?", but that’s the wrong question.

Your strategy stays the same: 

- Engaging content at scale
- Educating your audience
- Converting customers

A new platform shift doesn't change the fundamentals.

WHO SHOULD TEST THIS: 

For brands spending $10K+/month on Meta → worth adding as an intentional test. Monitor CPM trends and watch for any CVR drops. 

For brands under $5K/month → Focus on proven placements while others explore and validate the new channel.

The opportunity window here is about being strategic. There’s no rush to be first. Early adopter advantage only matters if the fundamentals work.

Right now, Threads is a CPM play. Cheaper reach, and hopefully without drastic conversion shifts.

Test it as an add-on, but don’t rebuild your entire strategy around it. 

And definitely don't ignore the fact that Meta already opted you in without asking.

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taplio

The Battle

Nick Browne

Kody N.

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kody N.'s LinkedIn Performance

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