Avenue Z

Avenue Z is now a @Shopify Platinum Partner! 🙌 Top 1% globally and one of a few in the US with full-funnel capabilities across build, media, and AI-driven growth. Most brands are still stitching this together. We don’t. Read more ⬇️ avenuez.com/press-release/…

Whitney Hart @avenuez_network at Oasis Summit. The way we find answers is evolving fast! 🚀 Billions now turn to ChatGPT, Google AI, and more for instant info—leaving traditional search behind. AI search is reshaping discovery. Are you ready? 🔍🤖 #AIRevolution #FutureOfSearch

Honored to feature @avenuez_network's Whitney Hart at Software Oasis Summit. AI search? It may bring fewer visitors, but quality conversions are game-changing—14.2% vs. 2.8%! 💡 CEOs & CFOs, this is the ROI shift you can’t ignore. 🚀 #AISearch #MarketingInnovation #BusinessGrowth

The cat's out of the bag: IG/FB is rolling out its TikTok Shop clone. Yesterday @mosseri announced it, albeit a bit premature since Meta doesn't even have documentation on how to activate or nuances of the program. Here's what we do know👇 - Creators can add up to 30 products in one Reel - Checkout will NOT be on IG/FB (links will lead to brand's own checkout... aka not like TTS) --- this will make tracking/attribution imperfect but will benefit brands (not creators) - Aff links supported as long as the URL points to a product in a catalog - Brands will be able to scale organic affiliate-tagged content via IG boost or Ads manager at some point this month - Creators will be able to find new affiliate opportunities with Amazon & Shopee directly in IG with additional tools and features coming soon. What we do not know: - if brands can create evergreen "open collabs" directly in Meta like TTS - if Meta will act as middle man for commission payments in any capacity or if it's just enabling affiliate transactions This is a MASSIVE opportunity for brands... especially those who have a headstart on TikTok Shop... very easy to activate your TTS affiliates as IG affiliates to now scale your ".com" growth. Huge win for Meta & Shopify. This will enable significant ad spend & revenue scale. 👀 STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES FROM ME ON THIS Marketing is simply a game of systems. Very fortunate we've been building & optimizing this exact system for the past 4 years through TikTok Shop. If you're a brand that sees the value of investing in your own affiliate/creator community, reach out.

Big news: @avenuez_network just hit Shopify Platinum Partner status. The highest tier attainable. And one of only 5 agencies in the US to hold it with true full-funnel capability under one roof: paid media, design & dev, CRO, and lifecycle marketing. This is what happens when the right team executes at the highest level, day in and day out. Grateful for every client who's trusted us with their growth. You make this possible.

Not enough noise being made about what this Shopify <> ChatGPT Shopping launch means for brands. This is game-changing bc historically, when ChatGPT mentioned brands, it RARELY (<5% of the time) linked back to the brand's website. Aka it was unattributable. Now? ChatGPT embeds the shoppable tile with link direct to the brand's website/PDP nearly every time and is purchasable directly within the ChatGPT app. Aka now it IS attributable. Here's what I'm noticing so far: - Mobile sessions: ChatGPT referral opens up in-app browser; but no UTM referral params present... so sessions will get registered but may not be attributed to ChatGPT (still potentially a blind spot for brands but I imagine ChatGPT will update this to take credit for its referrals...for now its prob bucketed under "direct traffic") - Desktop sessions: ChatGPT referral links to brand's site opens up new tab in browser to complete purchase (UTM referral params are PRESENT) and will be attributed to ChatGPT Now that users can click and immediately purchase from ChatGPT without having to copy and paste brand names in Google to find their website, ChatGPT is one step closer to being an attributable performance channel. Google Spend (Brand & Non-Brand) is now THREATENED! AEO is now more important than ever for ecom brands. DON'T SLEEP!

Just read the Kantar mobile gaming report. What surprised me most: the audience. AppLovin has been rumored to skew to an "older female" audience. In reality, the survey revealed: - 52/48 split Female:Male - 47% of users are < 35 years old Yes, the survey was only 2500 ppl deep, but representative enough to draw conclusions. Other interesting findings: - 70% make most household purchase decisions (vs only 60% in gen pop) - 71% say ads in mobile games are positive experience (I guess they aren't scammy ads after all 🤔) - 38% purchased a product w/in 3 months of seeing a mobile game ad. 71% of them purchased same day - 71% shop online weekly, 77% spend $100+/mo online Overall, mobile gaming audience apparently has higher spending power/autonomy, are more educated, and more employed than the general population. Gamers are fairly representative of the US adult population, not just a niche audience as some previously thought. The mobile gaming saga continues!

Just spent 10 hours straight at KeyBank’s Emerging Technology Summit with institutional investors in big tech. The #1 obsession? Agentic Commerce. The biggest DTC shopping shift in history. My POV and what's on everyone's mind 👇

“This acquisition makes us a complete growth engine in ecommerce.” — @jeffreyZOG We’ve acquired Varfaj, a premier @Shopify Plus design and technology partner. @varfajpartners Founder and CEO David Conforti joins Avenue Z as Chief Growth Officer as we unify ecommerce development, performance media, and AI optimization. Commerce is shifting to agent-led buying. We’re building for it. Read more: avenuez.com/press-release/…

2026 will punish brands stuck in old ways. Marketing has become a game of systematizing tools and signals. Here are my 10 predictions for ecommerce in '26: #1 - AI creative is not just usable… it’s scalable #2 - TikTok Shop GMV growth in the US accelerates #3 - Meta rips TikTok Shop #4 - Top share of wallet gainer: AppLovin (…again) #5 - Traditional UGC influencer model is dead #6 - Snap continues its rise #7 - Meta’s AI agents fuel performance gains #8 - Consumer sentiment rebounds to highest level since 2021 #9 - Organic social becomes a performance channel #10 - Product sampling scales to IRL/events I contextualize each prediction in my newsletter that just dropped. See next tweet for access 👇

There are some bad DTC takes on here, but one of the worst of the past few years was that social commerce is a fad that real brands shouldn't embrace. Well, Meta (yes, Meta) quietly launched on TikTok Shop this past month. Curious move. In the L30 days, they've done $3M in TTS revenue. Nearly all GMV through affiliates. They're now a Top 50 seller on the platform. What's even more interesting...

TikTok Shop affiliate is THE highest leverage DTC activity today. It's been our single biggest unlock in 2025. Here's why you should care: ➡️ Aff content investment is $0. Really just the cost of a free sample. Better money spent than $300 to a micro-influencer who will prob flop anyways (and to whom you need to ship free product to anyways) ➡️ Organic impressions = free $$ (one of our clients: 29M organic impressions L30 days) Lets assume $10 CPM on TikTok This equates to $285k in earned media value 13.5k creators were seeded, $6 cost all-in per sample = $81k investment, $285k EMV... solid. ➡️ Massive Paid Social Content Pipeline at NO COST TikTok aff content has direct 1:1 translation to Meta, AppLovin, Snap & YT Shorts. It's trivial to get over 1k affs posting per month Lets say 50% of the vids are trash & unusable This leaves you with 500+ pcs of paid social ad creative for all of your channels... at no cost. Dare I say DIVERSE ad creative for the Andromeda nerds out there. The great thing about TTS affiliate content is you really don't know what you'll get since affs tend to go off script and get creative. This plays right into the creative diversity buzz that platforms are pushing. We've built out a seamless process to get usage rights & whitelisting access (on Meta) from all of our TTS affiliates and relaunch that content on Meta, AppLovin, Snap, and YT Shorts in bulk. ➡️ Meta Partnership/Whitelisting Ads at NO COST The process we've built has shown that we're able to get 20% of our TikTok Shop affiliates to give us FREE access to their FB/IG pages to run their content as Meta partnership ads. For one client, we've already gotten FREE access to 10k FB/IG pages to run Meta partnership ads from. Good luck trying to reproduce this level of scale with the old micro-influencer model. ➡️ Halo Effect on All Sales Channels TikTok Shop ads (GMV Max) just amplifies the organic affiliate content. Not only are we scaling profitably for clients on TikTok Shop as a sales channel, but Prescient (MMM) has clearly shown halo effects on Amazon, Shopify, and retail sales channels. We've seen halo effects lift performance by 50% when incorporating halos. Indisputably the largest halo driver of any social channel. Thanks to this process we've been able to launch hundreds/thousands of ads per month, per client on Meta and the other channels. Everyone's trying to rewrite the creative volume playbook with genAI creative... but the real diverse creative volume can be generated through affiliates... at no cost. If you're a brand struggling with creative volume, there is no better use of your time and energy than to focus on this exact leverage model.

Happy Q4. And AppLovin (Axon) launch day.

The AppLovin freight train just doesn't stop. Is it flying again today in anticipation of the long-awaited October 1 self-serve ad platform launch? If you're a brand that's been trying to get in, October 1 is still invite-only. Hit me up (DM's open) if you're serious & want to get in. I've got a bunch!

One of the reasons why AppLovin performs so well is simply bc... Average view time of ads is 35 SECONDS. Minimum view time is 10 SECONDS. Thumb Stop Rate = 100% Compared to Meta, TikTok, etc? Minimum view time = 0 SECONDS Thumb Stop Rate = 25-30%? Bc of this, impressions on AppLovin have more value than any other platform. Every impression you pay for is actually building you brand awareness.. and conversion. I'm convinced many of the ppl brands continuously serve ads to on Meta, TikTok etc that just scroll past the ad and never consume it might actually be interested in your products, but they aren't giving ads the time of day on those platforms. When served that ad on AppLovin, they realize that they're actually interested in the products and go on to purchase it bc of that captivating, unskippable impression. On October 1, AppLovin will open up the ecommerce ads closed beta to invite only access. I have some referral codes left if you're interested in activating there. DMs are open if you're interested!

If you have 2 CAPI solutions active simultaneously, you're destroying ad performance ⚠️ At the end of this post, I'll show you an example of this. Duplicate CAPI setups happen so frequently these days bc many SAAS tools now offer server-sided tracking: - Blotout, Elevar, Popsixl - Shopify <> Meta CAPI - Triple Whale & Northbeam - Angler ... the list goes on! Typically a brand is signed up for more than one of the above concurrently (for diff reasons) & ends up turning on CAPI integration for each rather than select ONE (and ONLY one). This often goes undiagnosed by brands and marketers. It makes performance look BETTER in-platform since conversions are duplicated. In reality? Business performance & 3P measurement tank. It's a hidden parasite. Most marketers don't even know how to diagnose when this is happening to their brand. So, how do you know if you have more than one CAPI firing? 👇 Whenever you see a significant gap between browser and server events, you likely have two CAPIs firing. When this happens, you have the same event getting sent back to Meta from 2 diff sources which instantly crushes your Event Match Quality (EMQ) score. Bc these SAAS companies don't communicate, events aren't properly deduplicated. So what's the actual impact of a lower EMQ score? In the image below, you'll see an example where a 2nd CAPI was activated on July 17. Immediately following this, EMQ tanked below a 6/10. Each event was impacted similarly, but for illustrative purposes below I only included the "View Content" event. Immediately following the EMQ decline, Triple Whale ROAS tanked at the same rate (platform-reported ROAS erroneously perceived to improve bc of the duplicate events). On July 23 we identified the duplicate CAPI & shut it off. EMQ (and thus TW ROAS) immediately rebounded, as expected. This is why we start every audit with the basics: EVENTS MANAGER. Garbage in, garbage out. Without event health in place, you're feeding AI/ML trash. Your performance will be limited. Events manager is not a sexy place to spend your time. But you MUST master it and have a pulse on EMQ at ALL TIMES. It's usually the place where all the hidden issues live.

In our latest AIO report, we revealed which media sources were most influential on AI search rankings. 😳 One publisher was cited in a whopping 26% of all beauty-related search queries. The top 5 most influential media sources consisted of 2 publishers, 2 social media platforms, and 1 marketplace. Can you guess which ones?