Think you've maxed out your paid advertising? Think again.

In this episode, Miranda Pettinger (365 Holdings/Cuddle Clones) shares how she scaled AppLovin from zero to $80,000/day in just 7 days during Black Friday—and why it's now their highest-spending channel, even surpassing Meta.

Miranda doesn't just share success metrics—she breaks down the exact strategy, creative approach, and measurement framework that made it possible. This is the blueprint for brands ready to diversify beyond Meta and Google.

If you're spending serious money on Meta and hitting scale ceilings, AppLovin might be your most underrated growth opportunity. Miranda proved it's possible to find incremental customers, better ROAS, and massive scale—all while simplifying your account structure.

—

Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

—

Chapters:

(00:00) Introducing Miranda and Cuddle Clones

(07:54) The Journey from Zero to $80,000 a day.

(13:27) Targeting, Media Buying and Creative on AppLovin

(17:03) Understanding AppLovin

(19:38) Analyzing Customer Behavior and Incrementality

(22:59) Fermat: Optimize Shopper Experience with AI

(23:53) Limitations on AppLovin and Final Thoughts

(31:15) Crafting Compelling Ads

(37:24) Analyzing Successful Ad Elements

(42:17) Targeting and Audience Engagement

(46:27) Brand Recall and Interactions

(50:25) Utilizing AI for Ad Optimization

(53:35) Creative Diversity and Longevity

(58:41) Final Thoughts

(01:03:08) Save Money and Connect Your Marketing Channels with Channable

—

Connect With Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

• Connect with Miranda on X: https://x.com/mirandpettinger
• Cuddle Clones: https://cuddleclones.com
• AppLovin: https://www.applovin.com/
• Sponsor Offer | Fermat (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): fermatcommerce.com
• Sponsor Offer | Channable (Mention Ecommerce Evolution): https://channable.com/

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

Transcript:

Miranda Pettinger:

It was blowing that out of the water. It was crushing on every single metric that a marketer looks at. We saw revenue go up, we saw our MER come down, which are all like your north star metrics of like, Hey, this is working. This is going well.

Brett Curry:

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. We're going to take just a minute and tell you a little bit about my agency OMG Commerce. Now we work with some of your favorite eight and nine figure D two C and omnichannel brands. And our specialty is profitable scale. We love taking great brands and amplifying their growth profitably. We've helped a number of brands go from zero on YouTube to spending as much as a million dollars in 90 days while hitting a CAC or CPA target. We've also helped multiple brands launch on Amazon or just add scale to Amazon. We took Boom Beauty from zero to almost $6 million in sales their first 12 months on Amazon. So if you're not satisfied with your current level of growth, if you're looking to diversify channels, maybe you're a little too dependent on meta and you want to add YouTube or you're not pleased with your Amazon growth, then we need to chat.

So visit us@omgcommerce.com, click the Let's Talk button. We'd love to schedule a complimentary strategy session with you. And with that back to the show. Well hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And I am so excited about today's topic. This will be a first, we've never talked about this topic in the history of the podcast. We're diving into AppLovin. How should you be thinking about AppLovin how to use it, can you really scale on it? Will it work for you? Is now the time to scale? And we'll get into all the ins and outs. And so my guest today is Miranda Pinger and she's an OMG client with Cuddle Clones, gotten to know her and Ryan and the team at Cuddle Clones, super smart marketers, amazing products. You'll hear about those in a minute. And get this, she scaled from zero to $80,000 a day on app 11 last holiday, and now it's a staple in their marketing arsenal and going to scale this holiday as well. She's going to tell you how she did it and all the ins and outs. And so with that, Miranda, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. And how's it going?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, thanks for having me. We're almost in the heat of q4. November is knocking on our door somehow.

Brett Curry:

Crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

It's already here. So yeah, it's Black Friday time.

Brett Curry:

It's Black Friday time for sure. And today, who knows when people will actually be watching this, but today was a big day for you. You were the keynote to a big presentation with my buddy Taylor Holiday. So tell us about what you did today because like in presentation mode today.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I've got my presenter's hat on.

Yeah, we were talking about the success of AppLovin and channel diversification, which has been a main topic of this year that I think a lot of people have been talking about. And it's been a key thing that I've been trying to unlock for Cuddle clones. We've added App 11 last year. We've added YouTube and Snapchat this year. So I think a more diversified brand is a healthier brand. So if you're on Amazon, if you're on lots of different places, I think you can reach customers in a much healthier way versus if you're all in on one channel, you're going to have a really hard time when that one channel is having a down day or is struggling to grow.

Brett Curry:

Totally. There's more stability with channel diversification. Usually the channels can feed off of each other at least a little bit. There's not always a ton of channel overlap. We'll actually talk about that as it pertains AppLovin. But yeah, love working with you guys and growing on YouTube. I think get the perfect product for YouTube as well, but more on another episode today is all AppLovin and also what was that event and where can people check out the replays or do you know?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yep, you can find it on the Operator's podcast, you can find them on LinkedIn, on X and on their website and they'll have a recording. So if you want to hear even more in depth from people outside of my voice who've really had success on the platform, and that's kind of where the place to find it,

Brett Curry:

Check it out. I love it. So before we dive into AppLovin, we're going to start with that zero to $80,000 a day scale run that you had last year, which is just phenomenal. But for those that don't know, what is Cuddle clones? What do you offer and why do pet lovers go crazy for your products?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, cuddle Clones has a special place in my heart. Say I have a horse, so I'm all in on the animals. And then I have always grown up with rescue dogs. Amazing. And I have a rescue dog myself. So love animals have always been really drawn to 'em and they hold a special place in my heart. And I love the mutt mixes. I have a Clie cattle dog mix. So

Brett Curry:

Mutts are generally the best, right? They, they're not pretentious, right? Yes, they're generally loyal, they're often cute, their own signature unique looks. So I'm a mud fan as well.

Miranda Pettinger:

So all in on animals. So that's why working with Cuddle clones is so much fun. And so Cuddle clones, what it was founded on was creating custom replic because of your pet. So we have custom stuffed animals of your dog or your cat or your horse or your gerbil. And most often people do buy them when they pass away. So I think too, having a breed, I can't just go out and buy a stuffed animal that looks like my dog because he's unique and everyone's dog is unique. They don't all look the same. So if you go to cuddle clones, you can buy a stuffed animal that looks exactly like your dog. They're all handmade. There's only one of a kind. There's only one of your dog, there's only one cuddle clone of your dog.

Brett Curry:

And these are phenomenal. I just want to underscore when you say custom, and when you say replica of your pet, it's crazy how much this looks like your pet. My business partner Chris Brewer, has a small dog named Bubbles who he adores and Pauls is still living, but you did a clone of bubbles and I'm telling you what, you look at a picture of real bubbles and clone bubbles and you're like, I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure because they're not moving, so I'm not really in the picture. I don't know which is which. It's crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, yeah. They're very lifelike and our team puts so much love and care into every single one they create. And that's clear when you get the product. And I think that's unique when you buy something that's a hundred percent custom online, you might be a little skeptical of like, Hey, I don't know if this is going to turn out. I don't get to preview it. I'm putting in all my information in photos and then getting a product. It's really special brand close to my heart. And in addition to the stuffed animals, we pretty much sell anything you'd like to put your pet's face on as a gift. We also sell on the site. So our other bestseller that we had a lot of success with on AppLovin and we're testing on YouTube now is your pet's face on pajamas. So everyone loves getting Christmas jammies, so make it even more special with your pet face

Brett Curry:

PJ's for grownups, kids and for your pet. So get some PJ's with your pet's face on it and have your pet wear it and you wear it too. It's a super fun combo. And yeah, love what you guys are doing and love how you scaled. You guys are really smart marketers, like I mentioned. And so let's dive in. So this year, YouTube is new, Snapchat is new. Last year app 11 was new. What led you to test app 11? And then walk us through that story of zero to $80,000 a day. Because my guess is that was not your target or your expectation. I'm assuming that exceeded even some of your wildest thoughts on scale there.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I think onboarding any new channel is a lot of work. You have to get a pixel, you need to figure out the ins and out of an ad account, you need to get your ads uploaded. It's a lot of work regardless of

Speaker 3:

Panel.

Miranda Pettinger:

And so heading into Black Friday last year we were a bit behind Target and Meta was underperforming what we had thought it was going to do, and we were kind of like, this is not looking great heading into Black Friday, we should be a little bit more up on revenue. We were crushing all year and then November was getting harder as the CPMs were rising on meta.

Brett Curry:

Was that the main issue you think? It was just the competition in the auction. CPMs rising on meta and that's what kind of put a damper on what was otherwise a great year up to that point.

Miranda Pettinger:

And I think economic factors too, and the users on Meta and Meta's algorithm, I think other people were having similar issues last Q4 with trying to scale past what they had done previously on Meta and previous years and months. That's kind of where we were at mentally last Q4. So that's where Sean Frank from Ridge was tweeting all about AppLovin and dropped Kathy's email into the Twitterverse. And

Brett Curry:

Kathy's from AppLovin.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes. Yeah, Kathy's son, she's awesome if you get to see her give any presentations. And so we emailed her and got onboarded pretty quickly after that, probably a couple days we sent over our assets. At the time the platform was not self-serve, so in order to get into the platform, you had to be spending at least $30,000 a day on meta, and that was your proof that you could get into the platform. They just wanted to keep it small because it wasn't so you couldn't just get in there and work on it yourself yet.

Brett Curry:

Got it.

Miranda Pettinger:

But they helped us with all of our assets and getting things uploaded, and then at the time there was an onboarding credit, so that was also an incentive of, Hey, if this doesn't work, we'll just not spend our own money. So that was helpful too of, okay, we're going to onboard with this credit and if it doesn't work, we'll just turn it off and no harm, no foul.

Brett Curry:

Yep, totally makes sense. I love the setup there. Hey, we're not hitting our goals. We're not hitting our targets. And good entrepreneurs, good marketing teams, you don't accept that, right? You're like, no, we want to hit our goal and exceed our goal. And so what else do we have out there? And also any smart marketer, you're living on D two C, Twitter or D two CX, so kudos to you following smart people like Sean Frank. And so you're like, Hey, let's give this app 11 thing a try. And so what did that look like? So obviously you started Zero because it was brand new. How long did it take to get to $80,000 a day and what did that look like? What was that experience like? I'm assuming it was quite a ride.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes, and so the thing about Cuddle clones is it does most of its revenue in q4, so because it's a great gift, everyone wants to buy it for the holidays. So that's where we're a bit unique compared to an average G two C brand where we have to work really, really fast in a very short window of time because we're also custom, so we can't just Amazon prime you a custom order in a few days. So our shipping cutoffs are much earlier. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Totally. That makes sense. Yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

Because the earlier we have a shorter window, so you have to act very, very quickly in a short period of time and make sure you're hitting all your KPIs on a daily basis. Every day does count when 30 days out of the year you're going to do most of your revenue.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah. Like every day is a few weeks or some days are a month to other times year. And so it totally makes sense. It's nice because you can dial up the urgency for the buyer. So that's real urgency, not manufactured urgency, but it means you can't screw it up every day really matters for driving those new orders. So yeah. Were you just glued to the app 11 dashboard increasing budgets and bids constantly or what was that journey like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, you actually couldn't touch anything at the time. Okay,

Brett Curry:

You got it.

Miranda Pettinger:

There was Nova fiddling of my fingers. So yeah, the team is the one at the time that was managing all of our budgets. So we had a Slack channel with them and they would give recommendations to us, but I genuinely couldn't touch the platform. I couldn't adjust a budget, I couldn't touch anything, which sometimes as a marketer, sometimes it's good to have to ask someone else, Hey, can you do this for me so that you're not the one touching things. So that's kind of how we started with them. And obviously now, but at the time you couldn't touch anything. So they onboarded with our whole ad account, all of our videos, and essentially we had a $10,000 credit, and if I was the one doing that with 10 grand, I'd been like, oh, let's spend 300, maybe 400 a day and then we'll go to a thousand and then maybe we'll go to 2000. In my head, that's probably how I would spend 10 grand for the brand and they spent it over the weekend, so it was like boom, the 10 grand was out the door in a couple days,

Brett Curry:

Let's go man. And so how did that first 10 K perform? Obviously? Well, because you scaled up dramatically after that, but yeah. What kind of CPAs were you seeing in comparison to other platforms? What did that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

It was blowing that out of the water. It was crushing on every single metric that a marketer looks at click through rate

Brett Curry:

Validated by Triple whale. Right? So you're using the pixel from App 11, but you were really validating through Triple Whale.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, yeah. So we had that third party source that you could really trust. We saw revenue go up, we saw our MER come down, which are all your North star metrics of like, Hey, this is working, this is going well,

Brett Curry:

It's working, it's

Miranda Pettinger:

Working. And so we were like, alright, cool. Let's put our own money in this. Now we spent through their $10,000, we have proof of concept. So at that point we were at

Brett Curry:

A quick question here on the volume, because I've got thoughts on this with a few other platforms, YouTube namely. But did they recommend condensing that $10,000 spend into a tight window because the algorithm works better that way and because they feel like you can learn and grow when you spend that much money in that tight of a window? Or was it more about they knew what your goals were and they knew that you had this 30 days to kind of make hay and so they were trying to hit that target?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I think we both were seeing such good results. So early on it was kind of a no-brainer of we just this thing day over day, will it break, will it hold? And that was kind of the crazy part of, to sit there and say, okay, well we spent five grand a day, let's go to 10 grand and then see the 10 grand keep holding steady roas, keep nothing went down that scaled crazy, alright, let's do 30 grand today and then alright, let's do 45, let's do 50. And then it got to the point where within seven days I was telling them, okay, let's spend $80,000 today on Black Friday and let's just go. Because again, we have such a short window where most marketers probably wouldn't go that hard in it, but it's like I've got three weeks here, we got to make as much revenue as possible.

Brett Curry:

Totally. But it made sense because you've got the triple oil click data, so you see click attributed data from these campaigns, you can see your global sales, you can see your MER globally, your in new customer, CPA type of thing. And so you knew you were on it was working and so why not? That's fantastic. So you basically gave them your meta ad account and then they were tweaking some of your top meta creatives for that initial run or what were the creatives like in that first run?

Miranda Pettinger:

So we had some meta creatives, but for our bestseller, the Pajamas, we actually didn't have a ton of video. Most of our winning ads on meta were stills, and that's what had always worked on meta for us. So we didn't invest into a lot of video at the time because Meta didn't usually deliver it or spend as much on it compared to all the stills that we would make of the product. So we actually didn't have a ton of video when we launched and we kind of scraped some together of, okay, well here's a good voiceover and here's some good visuals that we have in the drive. It was very much piecing stuff together on the fly. It wasn't a giant production timeframe. It was working with my creative strategist, Sydney and us being like, okay, this is what we think could work on the platform. Let's make a true ad because we know someone's watching an ad and kind of see what happens. So we really didn't have a Meadow winning video that was active in app love, perfectly honest. Got

Brett Curry:

It crazy. So you pulled it all together for App 11 and I think it'd actually be useful. I know there's been quite a bit of chatter online and on D two C Twitter and stuff about App 11, but for those that don't know, what is App 11? So what kind of ads are you running? Where are these ads showing up? What is App 11 for the uneducated?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so App Eleven's been around for quite a while in the mobile app space. So it's a platform that's existed for a while, but it's new to us e-comm folks because it wasn't open to e-commerce before. So they have all this advertising data on mobile game players and typically if you think about if you've played mobile games on your phone, you would get more ads for mobile games. And so if you're playing Candy Crush, you're going to get an ad for Clash Royale or you're going to get ad word scapes, you're a different ad. And they recently then rolled out this e-comm platform Axon to where now e-comm ad buyers can buy inventory on a mobile game.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's amazing. So these are all video ads. They show up on mobile apps, mobile games, they're nons skippable, so you could exit out of the game, but they're nons skippable, right? So if I'm playing Candy Crush and not the paid version or whatever and the ad pops up, I can either close or watch it basically.

Miranda Pettinger:

And in most cases, you're actually entering into an agreement with the game of, Hey, I want to earn extra coins, I want another try at this round. And so you're kind of entering in this agreement with the platform of saying, Hey, it's

Brett Curry:

A gamification of watching the ad to earn a little something.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, exactly. So you're entering into this agreement with your game of saying, Hey, I will give you my time. I'm going to give you 30 seconds of my time to watch this ad and you're going to give something in my game.

Brett Curry:

I love it.

Miranda Pettinger:

Love it. People go into it knowing I'm watching an ad, I have voluntarily given the click to say, I will watch an ad. People are expecting to see an ad, they're

Brett Curry:

Expecting to see it, there's something in it for them. So they're not resenting the ad maybe like they do in other platforms. And so that's maybe part of why some of these ads are really accepted and responded to. So super, super interesting. Now the platform though, so in the early days when you scale from zero to a hundred or zero to 80 KA day in less than seven days, that was all managed by the app 11 team now itself serve. What does that look like and how important of a part of your marketing mix is App 11 today and even when it's not peak season?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, it's remained between 20 and 30% of our media mix all throughout this year. And at this point I've spent a couple million dollars on the platform and it's continued to help our brand grow this year. And because of the seasonality, I'm really expecting it more growth heading into Q4. And as we sit today in October, it is our largest spending channel. It is currently surpassed meta by a lot for the month of October. Crazy in 2025. It's so crazy. And we've never spent in the month of October ever on app 11. So this is all brand new data and brand new customers for October.

Brett Curry:

That's amazing. Let's talk a little bit about who is the buyer here, because the buzzword obviously in marketing over the last year or two is incrementality, meaning can we get net new customers from this ad endeavor that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise? Or are we just paying for another ad that's going to be inserting itself along the buyer journey for people that we're going to buy anyway? And what's really clear about App 11 is that these are net new buyers. And from your experience, it looks like there's not a lot of crossover between typical AppLovin buyers and meta buyers. Can you talk a little bit about that? Who are these buyers coming from? App Love.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so we actually looking in Triple Whale, we saw there was less than a 5% overlap from our meta customers and our app love, and that was at of 42,000 orders last Q4. So it's a very large data set as well. So out of 42,000 orders, less than a 5% overlap with Meta's customers. And we did find pretty often that the app Levin customers were first click buyers. They would click on the ad, they would go on our website, and they would check out that day because you gave them 30 seconds of information for them to read versus you saw still on Pinterest or Meta, or you just saw a graphic on a Gmail website where you have to go learn more on the site. So your time on site is going to be longer and you may need to have more questions answered versus if you watch a 32nd commercial of the product that tells you everything about it, you're much more ready to buy.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it totally makes sense. And your product is pretty straightforward, at least the pajamas are the cuddle clone. Maybe this wasn't going to have a few more questions and it's more expensive, but do you think part of that where people were clicking and buying one day was because it was holiday or are you seeing that now even when you're not running during, I guess now is almost peak holiday, but when you're running in the off season, is it still kind of that click and buy day one from map 11?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, we do see that a lot. We see probably one of the highest day one ROAS out of all our channels on app 11 I think just because of the time that the customer spends with you. I mean, attention's the new currency. So every app and every social media channel is trying to just capture your attention and that's what you're buying with app Love is attention for a full 30 seconds.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy and attention that someone has agreed ahead of time to give you. And so again, I think there's less resistance and probably less resentment as well, which has got to work in the advertiser's favor. I would think. This episode of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast is brought to you by Vermont. Vermont is the AI native commerce platform that optimizes shopping experiences leading to best in class shopper engagement and conversion, leveraging proprietary data tools and its adaptive commerce graph for MOT delivers hyper-personalized experiences to both human and agentic shoppers that adapt in real time to behavioral and performance insights. Trusted by industry leaders like Backcountry, Bissell and Glossier, as well as premier agency partners for MO platform blends, advanced analytics and optimization tools like heat maps, strategy engines and conversational data insights to tailor every touchpoint. Check it out for yourself at Vermont commerce F-E-R-M-A-T commerce.com.

So let's do this. I want to spend quite a bit of time on the creative side because as with any ad channel, creative is the biggest lever. Creative is what's really going to move the needle, that's where you're going to win or lose. But let's talk about targeting and media buying for a minute. Longtime media buyer did TV back in the day, of course now Google, YouTube and Beyond and stuff. And so I do like to tinker on occasion and pick audiences and all these things. Yeah, no, I know you, you guys geek out about that as well, but what is possible, what is not possible on app 11?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so there is no targeting, there's no toys and rules to tinker with, which

Brett Curry:

Partially makes me very nervous, but I obviously know Sean Frank really well and several others and seeing your success, I'm like, okay, I get it that the algorithm's smart but still makes me a little bit nervous.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I think the most important part is your ad creative doing the targeting, which we've talked about. Everyone's talked about with meta, leave it broad. That's been a topic for the past five years of don't put target demos on your meta account, leave it broad, let the ads do the targeting. I think that's kind of the brave new world that we're going to live in as advertisers of making really good creative that an algorithm can pick up of who to serve it to. I mean, I think all the social platforms, platforms have cracked that with organic content and viral reels, viral tiktoks, they knew who to show it to based on a few times. So the same thing's going to happen with advertising

Brett Curry:

Makes a lot of sense. And so basically the levers you have to pull mostly creative, we'll talk about that in a minute, but you've got your budget, it's your daily budget, you've got bid and that's pretty much it. And how do the bids and budgets work?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so you'll set either for e-comm, you've got cost per purchase or you've got a target roas. So whatever works for your business, you can try both. I've tested both. I have success with both and whatever works for your business. And then you're going to set a goal. So whether that's your target goal is to hit a 300% ROAS or a 100%, whatever that is, you're going to input your goal there or your cost per purchase goal and the algorithm's going

Brett Curry:

To do you start with that goal. So when you first launch with App 11, do you recommend having a goal or you recommend having a little more open where they're just like, Hey, get me as many conversions as you can.

Miranda Pettinger:

I would recommend having a goal that's closest to your business objectives. The algorithm's pretty smart to know to put you in the auctions that it thinks it can win on.

So that's what I've discovered is putting the truest business goal that you can into the auction and that way it can go out and find your ideal customer at a target that makes sense for you. The other options you have for targeting are either day zero roas or day seven. So if you want more data, usually I would recommend using day seven because it's going to just the system more data. I use seven day on meta as well. So that's just kind of what I found the most successful for our brand. But you can do whatever fits your business objectives, but usually day seven is feeding it the most data as possible.

Brett Curry:

Makes sense. And I think just like any platform, the more conversion data you feed it feed the better the algorithm is going to get. And if you have the seven day window, you can rest with some confidence that there's going to be a lot of day one or day zero conversions. Those will be captured obviously in that seven day window. So yeah, that totally makes sense. And so then what kind of data can you see from this then? Are you seeing things like CPM and CTR and CPCs and things like that? Is it calculating those and showing those to you, or what does the reporting look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, you'll see the same things you see in meta, I think what makes it different or again, your interactives, your end cards, those are things separate from your video, but you'll still see your click through rates, your CPMs, what you're paying, and then you can also still see day zero, day seven, day 28 row and platforms similar to how you can measure in meta, especially if you don't have a North Beam or a triple whale to pull out those attribution windows longer than seven days.

Brett Curry:

Got it, got it. Makes sense. And then are you actively going in and pausing creatives, adding new creatives or mostly are you letting the algorithm do its thing and basically if there's a creative that's not working, it's going to take that to zero on its own. What does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

I think it all depends on the journey you're on with app 11 and where you're at. I think you should pause ads after a certain period of time if they aren't working for your business, especially if you have a lot of them in there. If you've only got 30 or so, I would just let them all, leave them all on, let them learn. But we got to the point where we had a couple hundred in each campaign and then it got to the point where it was like, okay, we have a lot of data, we're feeding the system, let's try and concentrate this more. So at that point we did go in and turn off ads that didn't perform over a 60 day window. So we gave it a lot of time to see if like, Hey, is this going to be successful? Then we did turn some ads off, but I think you're perfectly safe to leave them on for a long period of time, especially as you're starting.

Brett Curry:

Cool, that's great. And then are you doing one consolidated campaign per product line? So maybe you guys did one for clones, one for PJ's, or are you doing separate campaigns maybe by avatar or customer persona? What does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

We have just one campaign per product type. So PJ's have their own campaign clones do. That's how I run everything on Google and Snapchat and Meta just to keep those personas of that product in one place. The conversion rate is the same and the A OB is the same per product. So I wouldn't recommend mixing products, but I think keeping them in their own campaigns, this is fine. You can have a hundred ads on one product and be healthy.

Brett Curry:

Got it, got it. And the algorithm is going to decide, okay, I know who going to like this ad and who's watching, who's responding to it, things like that,

Miranda Pettinger:

And they won't spend on an ad that's not successful either. I think that's something important to note that it's not going to pick up an ad and spend a lot of money on it at a bad ros, which I think sometimes you'll see happen in meta if it's not successful and it's not hitting targets, it's not going to spend very much on it, so it's going to drop to the bottom. So I would not worry about that happening because I think people worry about the meta of like, oh, it picked up this ad and it's spending crazy money and it's a 0.2 roas. I don't dunno what Meta's doing with it. That won't happen with Apple and I have not seen that happen. And again, that's with a couple hundred creative we've tested, I have never seen that happen.

Brett Curry:

Got it. Totally makes sense. Okay, so let's get into the creative side of things. This is where the magic really happens. So these are all video ads, they're all vertical, correct? So we're not running landscape ads, these are all nine by 16 or four by five or one by one, correct? Or are they all nine by 16?

Miranda Pettinger:

They all need to be nine by 16. Yeah, no scores.

Brett Curry:

Got it. So all nine by 16. Talk a little bit about how long are these ads, what are the requirements of the platform and where are you finding the most success? At what ad length are you finding wins?

Miranda Pettinger:

You can upload up to 60 seconds. I would recommend doing at least 30 at the low end. You can upload shorter than that, but we usually see a lot more success having longer ads. People go in there expecting to watch a longer ad. So I think if you only showed them 15 or 16 seconds, you're just not utilizing the platform enough and the time that you have with the customer.

Brett Curry:

And I think just to draw a quick parallel to YouTube, we spent millions a month on YouTube and we see the same thing. You can run fifteens and people like them and maybe they get less frustrated or something like that, but usually people don't respond, they don't click or they don't convert. And so yeah, I love that 30 to 60 seconds and just test within that window, but you got a captive audience they've agreed to watch and so tell them enough to get them excited to overcome objections, to get them to click and to take action. So that makes a ton of sense. Now are you running polished ads? Are these like UGC mashups? Do these look like a meta ad look more like a TV ad? Talk about the style of ad.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, I would say it's kind of right in the middle of those things. So we've got millions of followers on TikTok and on Instagram and Facebook and those viral entertaining videos that everyone's like, oh, just plug it into meta, it's going to work. That actually doesn't work great on the platform. Someone's going in there expecting to see an ad. So I think you can still be entertaining and you should still be entertaining as a brand, but I don't think you need to be super polished. And I also don't think you should run something that's pure entertainment driven because someone's expecting to see an ad and I think you're not utilizing your time with the customer if you aren't giving them information about the product and following a story arc about your product.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's such good advice and I think you could draw a few parallels to TV just more from a call to action standpoint or a structure this like an ad versus an organic post that you just want to go viral on TikTok or something where if you look at, and I come from the TV world, if you run a TV ad that's just entertaining or just fun, people may watch it and people may remember it, but they're not going to take action on it, they're not going to make a purchase. And so you need to structure that ad where you are telling people where to go, what to do, getting them hyped up to buy, you got to ask for the sale, things like that. And so totally makes sense. Make this a commercial, not just a fun viral video. So what are some of the components then if you look at your winning ads versus ads that did not win, what are some of the components or what are some of the things that the winning ads have in common?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, the winning ads definitely flow more like an advertisement than an entertaining video that you would see on social media. So I think that's something to keep in mind and I think the more you can overcome objection ahead of time for the customer when you are telling a story to them is the most important. So some of our winning videos have, we sell long pajamas, we sell short pajamas, we sell pajamas for your kids and your dogs. So those questions are already out of your head of, oh, well can I get this for my kids? So they have kids sizes already have overcome that objection.

Would highly recommend taking all your meta comments and questions and putting them in an ad because we would get those all the time. How can you overcome them before that? They even have to go looking for it. So I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind when you're running ads there. And also just give them all of the features and benefits. If you're selling a supplement, what are the health benefits that you'll see? What is the before and after state? What is the problem you're trying to solve? And then give them the solution with your product. So I think

Speaker 3:

That

Miranda Pettinger:

Can go very DR style and you are wanting to get a response and a reaction from these people. So how can you tell your story in that short window to where there's nothing left they have to question except putting their credit card in.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. Yeah, it's one of those things where questions left unanswered objections left unaddressed will cost someone to not take action, they're not going to click and they're not going to do what you want them to do. And so yeah, what are the FAQs, what are the top features and benefits, address those and then ask for the clicks. Are you guys kind of following one of the YouTube formulas that we use as hook product demo social proof, which we weave some objection busting in there and then call to action and there's some different layers and different things we do there as well, but would that kind of be the flow for AppLovin as well? Right. We still want to think about even though we get a captive audience, we still want to think about the hook, still need the product demo there still need some objection busting and social proof and they need a clear call to action. Any tweaks or nuances you would share there?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, I would just say that the hook is important but it is not going to make or break. I think about a YouTube ad if you don't capture their attention in five seconds,

Brett Curry:

Your host, yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

Audio, but same thing with meta. If you don't capture your attention in 0.2 seconds, you're scrolling. So I

Speaker 3:

Think

Miranda Pettinger:

That's the point where you don't have to do, I think meta, you have to get a little crazy with your hooks to get someone to stop scrolling and yeah,

Brett Curry:

That thumb stop rate is huge for YouTube, the skip rate is huge or the view rate is huge, but here is it maybe more that the hook is about getting someone in the right frame of mind and getting them thinking about your product or prepping them for selling rather than thumb stop or view rate.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. And some of our winning ads is our pajamas in a state that kind of looks like a fireplace, so you kind of get that cozy energy from it and

Speaker 3:

Totally you're

Miranda Pettinger:

Like, oh, this is cozy, this is warm, this is the emotion that comes with pajamas, which is important. Same thing if you're selling a problem solution. If you're selling something for performance, what is the feeling you're going to have with that product to start the ad?

Brett Curry:

I love that. Yeah. What emotion do you need to evoke for this? It's like love and adoration for your pet and it's just good family vibes and stuff like that. As we lean into holiday, the fireplace and stuff kind of feels like Christmas morning. It all just feels right. So it's like getting someone in the right frame of mind, love that so little nuance on the hook, you're prepping them to sell them, you're not so much worried about thumb stop rate or view rate. So that's really cool. What other elements in the ad itself, and I want to talk about things like in card and the DPAs and stuff that are part of this. So I think a lot of people don't dunno about, so we'll talk about that in a minute, but other elements of the video ad itself that are critical to have,

Miranda Pettinger:

It's really important to have an offer in your video. Obviously we know offers are important in e-commerce, give someone a reason to buy, but I think we've even tested not having offers and ads to see what's going to change and usually the click-through rate drops by at least 2% statistically.

Brett Curry:

Whoa. So when you say offer, you're saying specifically save this much, get this deal, we've got this sale or this promotion going on. So you're talking about that kind of offer.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yes, for sure. So what's the offer? And it's easy too to switch out if you don't have an offer in the video and you want to have it in an end card or an interactive, you could change those out every weekend if you've got a different offer every weekend. So that's also a unique thing where you don't have to go shoot a whole new video or edit into Premiere and edit a video.

Brett Curry:

That's great. That's great. Okay, cool. So let's actually talk about that. So every video ad then has an in card and an interactive after it. So talk about what are those and how do those work?

Miranda Pettinger:

So you'll have images that you can upload and then you'll also have interactives and the system will feed through in testing different things. So images, you could take your top stills from meta and reincorporate them as your end card. You can take product images of no context at all, just product image and you could also just go very off or heavy on your end card of like, Hey, black Friday sale going on now save 50% bogo, whatever that is. You can also put into that image the interactive end cards are different. So those are more of, it says interactive, so you can scroll on them. Some of them are quizzes. You could run a quiz and someone can click on it. So you're trying to get the user engaged with the ad. I'm sure if you've played a mobile game, you've played one where it's like, hey, drag this over here in the ad so that you're touching it and that makes you more likely to engage with it. So these are the same way with e-comm where you can ask a quiz. You can also make them scrollable so there's somewhere you can input a bunch of images and then the user can scroll through them so they're actually touching the ad and interacting with it.

Brett Curry:

So great. And there's also something psychological about if you are interacting with the ad, clicking on things or hovering over things, you're more likely to take action and purchase. And so what I'm going to do, I'm actually going to share my screen and we will walk through one of your ads. I'm going to mute it. I know this is only going to be most valuable for people that are watching the YouTube video, but I'm going to have you give a commentary here and I'll chime in as well, Miranda as we go. But this is one of your current winning ads and you can see if you're watching this, we got, what is this word? Scape is the game that someone is playing here and so of course they're trying to level up or whatever got this bonus gift and then here's the ad, and now we're seeing a closeup of the pajamas with a cute furry dog on there and then someone holding their pet. There's that family room with the family. Kind of taking a look here, how did you select these? So these videos that they're showing us rapid fire, it's showing clips of different styles of pajamas, pajamas on people, pajamas that are folded and kind of on the bed type of thing. How did you select the video clips for this?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, we wanted to have a variety and I think when you have UGC content, mixing it with a voiceover we have is really effective of keeping attention and then also showing different use cases of the product. So we don't just have a 20-year-old influencer wearing pajamas. We have the

Speaker 3:

Whole

Miranda Pettinger:

Family around the tree. We have kids, we have the dogs. There's a lot of content around the tree in this ad at Christmas time to kind of evoke that feeling of

Brett Curry:

Totally

Miranda Pettinger:

Having Christmas pajamas,

Brett Curry:

Just giving family all that.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so those are kind of the reasoning behind having lots of different clips, showing it on the bed really close up so it's not just on a model. So okay, when you open your package, what is it going to look like? I think too if you shop for apparel and in person in a store, it's folded. It's not on your bed, it's on a display and you're touching it and feeling it. You can't do that with e-commerce. So it's like how can you evoke the same feeling of going into a store, picking up apparel, feeling it, touching it and opening it visually in an ad so that you can get that same feeling that you would get going to the mall?

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good and we run a lot of mashups for a lot of different brands from popcorn to accessories to skincare, and we did this back in the day with native, we would always try to find a lot of diversity with the UGC just like you're talking about because you want the person, whoever you're trying to get to buy to either see themselves in the ad or to see the person they're buying the gift for in the ad. So you've got some clips here that are just kids, two kids sitting on the fireplace with the stockings behind them or sitting on the hearth or whatever. You've got a couple of people that are just slightly older by themselves. You've got some people in their twenties, you got some young families that include mom and dad, everybody's wearing PJs. So you've got some real diversity there where someone's going to watch this one. It's fast paced so you're not tempted to look around the room or check your watch or something like that you're watching, but then you're also going to see yourself or your loved one in this ad, which is really, really important.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely. I think the most successful ads we've had on AppLovin two include a lot of different use cases too of buy it for your grandkids, buy it for your significant other, buy it for your best friend trying to evoke maybe if they don't like it themselves, but I know someone with a dog who I need to get a gift for and then if we mention it, that recall is there. So I think that's important too. If you are trying to not hit a niche audience and you want to go really broad, you have to go broaden your ad too. So if you just have a 20-year-old creator talking about why she bought them for herself, you're going to find 20 year olds who want to buy it for themselves and that's great, but if you want to get it out to everyone and everyone who sees it to buy and for that ad to grow in that pocket, you have to go broader in your ad. Same way that you would go broader in your targeting if you were to touch all the controls.

Brett Curry:

Totally. And there's a reason if you watch direct response ads or even mini infomercials where someone will give all the use cases and you may be tempted to say, well it's obvious it's pajamas, you can buy it for anybody, why do I have to list it? But sometimes you seem to be really obvious, people are not thinking deeply about your product and so saying buy it for your kid or for your grandkid or for your niece or your nephew or whatever, you kind just need to make the right suggestions because people, we can't assume that people will be thinking about that on their own

Miranda Pettinger:

And you see an ad, you may not like it yourself. I mean there's a lot of things here. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Totally.

Miranda Pettinger:

Especially in the holidays, I'll see an ad for something, I'm like, I don't like that, but I'm like, oh, but my husband might like that but

Brett Curry:

I got to buy a gift for Exactly. But

Miranda Pettinger:

If you don't call it out, I'm probably not going to subconsciously think that unless someone was like, Hey, buy this for your significant other. Buy this for someone else other than yourself, especially if you are trying to target people outside of what they would buy for themselves.

Brett Curry:

Love it. How holidays love it. So then as we're going here, there's a shop now button at the bottom that's always there and then you show this 60% off deals. You talk about, hey, the best ads have offers. There was a hooray audio that goes on with that. So you've tested these ads with and without the 60% off or with other discounts or whatever and this has been your winner.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely having an offer and especially if you are a brand that advertises in Q4 and you are something that people gift to others, I think the urgency of like, hey, this is a deal you should get right now, it's for the holidays, limited time offer. Another thing we do a lot is like, hey, you need to get it in time for Christmas, especially it being a custom product, you don't have until prime day, two day Amazon it to your house on December 22nd that you have to get these ahead of time. So I think too, if you have a product with longer lead times leaning into that urgency of like, Hey, you have to order this now because otherwise you just don't have it for Christmas, no matter if you want it or not on this the 22nd of December, you

Brett Curry:

So offer plus some urgency, bonus points if it's points, points, urgency, that just is totally legit. It makes sense here. So now we're looking at cuddle clones logo, white background shop now button at the bottom. This is the end card. Is that what we're looking at right now?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, you're not quite at the end card yet. This is just the video, but we're trying to really put that brand name in as you're watching the ad. I think too, if you think about if you're watching a reel or if you're watching a TikTok, you're going to see the brand name as the title there or if you run a white listing ad it'll be partnered with, so the brand name's always on an ad on a social platform. Most cases you'll see the brand name and the logo somewhere. So we like to insert it into the video somewhere or mention it verbally so that even if you don't make it to the end card, you heard the brand name or you saw it visually and our logo is actually purple, but we added the red because it's Christmas. Again,

Brett Curry:

Bringing,

Miranda Pettinger:

Continuing to bring all of that holiday recognition into it

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. And I know one of the things you mentioned when we were prepping is that real comments, there's a lot of people that just clicked on bought, but there's also really a common journey where someone saw it on AppLovin and then searched on Google. So that's where you really have to make the brand name clear. You don't want them just to get the idea and go search for something else. You want them searching for you afterwards on Google.

Miranda Pettinger:

That is the second highest customer journey is either AppLovin to purchase or app AppLovin to Google to purchase. So

Speaker 3:

Crazy.

Miranda Pettinger:

Again, super important that brand recall. And if you don't have the brand recall, they're like, what was that thing? Was it pajamas with my dog on it? You better be targeting all of those broad keywords as well.

Brett Curry:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So

Miranda Pettinger:

You didn't advertise to them and then they went to your competitor.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, which happens a lot. Yeah, you're just giving someone an idea and helping out a competitor. Congrats. So now this I believe is an Incar arrest. You got low at top custom pet face pajamas as the headline. Then we got these are shorts, PJ's, closeup of the cute dog's face, actual picture of the dog there, get some highlights of some features and stuff there. So this is the end card that we're looking at.

Miranda Pettinger:

So here's an interactive end card. If you play it, it's going to go through different color variants.

Speaker 3:

Oh, nice,

Miranda Pettinger:

Nice. So it's very interactive animation style. Again, there's different variety where you can scroll with your thumb across several photos. You can ask them a quiz at the end. So there's different ways to interact with them through that end card that I think is very different than most ads you'll see on any other platform.

Brett Curry:

Totally. So we had the interaction where there's different styles of PJs popping up there. Now we've we're looking at something that looks more like a feed ad or a collection of Google shopping ads type of thing. A DPA, this is a progression or this is a separate, this is a different in card that you could test.

Miranda Pettinger:

This is the DPA A at the very end. So if you toggle this on in your settings, this will always appear on all of your ads. So that's kind of where the customer can interact with your feed directly from Shopify. So this is where you can then show the products or show the customer what products you have to offer.

Brett Curry:

Have you tested this with and without price? So right now we're seeing sweatshirts, mugs, all that has your pet's face on at PJ's of course. Have you tested that with and without the price listed?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, at this point we have not tested with the price listed. I'm not sure if that's an option yet in their offerings.

Brett Curry:

I kind of like this, I actually not showing the price here. This is something we test a lot on YouTube. You can make your YouTube ad shoppable and you can insert your feed into YouTube ads. And I've found that actually sometimes that kills your conversion rate if you're showing the price of something too soon before they're really sold, before they've interacted with your product enough, it can actually be a detriment. And so I think it's kind of cool that there is no price there. So we'll keep playing this here and then basically, okay, then basically you're just showing the progression then someone clicking through to the website.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yep.

Brett Curry:

Great, great. Love it. So talk about this, I know now in every platform obviously utilizes AI in some form or fashion, but now you can upload lots of different elements and then Apple Oven is going to piece those together and test those and find winning combinations. What are the variables that the AI is combining to try to build winning ads for you?

Miranda Pettinger:

So I think something important to follow in their best practices. So if you're making a creative set, you can upload up to 10 videos, up to 10 interactives and up to 10 images. And then your DPA is always going to be connected if you have turned on. So that's

Brett Curry:

All part of a creative set, a that ad group type thing.

Miranda Pettinger:

So those are newer, those didn't exist earlier in the platform, so that's a newer feature. But what I found and what they suggest is best practice is doing a couple videos and then as many interactives as possible, as many images as possible. So best practice I found is do two to three videos and in a set and then you do 10 interactives. 10 images. And in their media library, which is unique compared to meta, you can see the performance of that end card or image as a standalone versus how it performs with nice. So if you have the same end card in four campaigns, you can measure just the performance of the end card, regardless of where it lives. Very

Speaker 3:

Cool.

Miranda Pettinger:

So that's something that's important. And two, testing your end cards in your images. You can look at the performance. So if you have say two that have a lower click through rate, pull those out and try to test more and keep, how high can you get your click clickthrough rate and test through those. I think that's the most important part of someone deciding to click forward. So can you show the offer? Can you show the features in the end card? We have one brand that I've worked with of two, can you show as many products as possible on the end card? So we're showing all the colors of the PJ's. Can you show all the variants that you have so that someone's like, oh, well I don't like pink, but I really like blue.

Speaker 3:

If

Miranda Pettinger:

They see that you have for blue, they're more likely to click or say you have shoes and I don't want sandals, but I saw that you have sneakers. I like sneakers. And then they'll click through. So kind of just thinking through what can you show them about your product before they click to make them really want to go through to the widest amount of people.

Brett Curry:

Totally makes sense. And then do you have a setup where if someone clicks on the in card, that's maybe taking them to a different page versus if they're clicking in the DPA that's going directly to that specific product detail page? Or what does that look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

You'll just pick one landing page per creative set. So if that's your PD DP, but if someone does go to the DPA, they can click on a product that maybe was not in the ad. So that's where your DPA is going to be a little bit different. So if someone sees all of our pajamas that we offered where there are our standard line, but we also have sweatpants that is included in that dpa, someone might click on the sweatpants and then they're going to end up on the sweatpants pdp. So that'll be a little bit different. But in the grand scheme of things, most times when you do have the DPA connected, it has a much higher conversion rate than if you did not.

Brett Curry:

Very cool. So let's talk about how many creatives do you need to get started, and then I want to talk a little bit about creative fatigue, and then I want to talk about creative diversity in a second as well. But how many creatives do you need to get started?

Miranda Pettinger:

You just need one really. I mean, you can add more. I'd suggest more, but I mean, Q4 last year we spent a million dollars and we probably had less than 30 creatives in the platform. So

Speaker 3:

Great.

Miranda Pettinger:

I really don't think you need hundreds. I think you need probably five great ads and then continue to test and make more and see what works for you and your brand on the platform. But no, you don't need a lot to get started.

Brett Curry:

Cool. And then in terms of longevity or creative fatigue or these wearing out after a week or two, are these more YouTube and TV where maybe you've got a winner that can run for months or a year plus? What does the fatigue look like?

Miranda Pettinger:

Much more like YouTube. We have a winning ad that's been running since November 21st, 2024. That's always at the top.

Speaker 3:

I love it. Yeah, it's

Miranda Pettinger:

A great ad. So yeah, if you have got a really good winner like YouTube, you can run it for a very long time and it'll continue to reach new people and continue to perform, continue to test. Don't just get one winner in there

Speaker 3:

Totally and

Miranda Pettinger:

Done with it, but you definitely don't need to continue refreshing them every single week with 30 new ones. I feel like Andromeda and Metas starting to gear towards, so definitely not as high as a fatigue as meta. Definitely more like YouTube.

Brett Curry:

Love that. And then let's talk a little bit about creative diversity. And I know that's kind of the name of the game as everybody's talking about Andromedan meta and things. It's like, I wouldn't say iteration is dead, but this idea of subtle variations where it's like we have 15 or 30 or a hundred versions of basically the same ad, but just with slightly different hooks and so different endings and things like that. I know now on Meta Meta's going to treat those all one ad. And so now it's saying take bigger swings, make the creatives quite different On YouTube, we're still finding some wins if it's kind of the same core video, but very different hooks that can work really well. And so we're still iterating. We're kind of trying to do both iterate and take big swings. But what are you finding in app Loven? As far as creative diversity goes?

Miranda Pettinger:

We've definitely tested different things. We found more success with iterations at this point. We have a couple core winners. We've sliced and diced 'em different ways. We've made some short, we've made some long, we've called out different things than others. And then also doing the same of big swings as something that's totally, totally different. Maybe using a different creative agency, using a different influencer. So that's where I think you should do both, and I think you should do it at a quality level. I would not just make creative for creative's sake, that's all different and you spent five minutes on it, you should really be thinking about these ads and your customer and making a good informational ad, not entertainment and not something that was thrown together really quickly. And with poor intent, you should think really deeply on it of what you want to make and what you want to portray. It doesn't have to be high production though. I mean all that content you saw is UGC. We've spent millions on the platform. We have a very small in-house creative team, scrappy team, so you don't need to be a multimillion dollar brand with a videographer and a camera to have success here.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. And then the logo looks really professional. The end card, the DPA that's got all those product images look really great and look professional. But yeah, the video looks like UGC, but that makes it look authentic and trustworthy and fun and doesn't make it feel like just a standard ad. So yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. What we're doing on the YouTube side is something similar where we're looking at, hey, what are our winning hooks and measured by view rate and what do they have in common and what do the losers have in common? And then the ads that have the best click-through rate, what do they have in common and what are we doing in terms of the product demo and what are we doing in terms of the offer? And then what is the highest conversion rate?

And we're just kind of looking at the similarities and over time we're able to iterate and able to say like, Hey, we saw for this baseball ad, it was like this product line just didn't really work. Or for this skincare ad, it was the founder on camera saying these things. It just worked consistently over and over again. And so then you're able to take lessons, take that next iteration and maybe take a big swing, but take a big swing that's informed by data. I know I probably want to mention these things and maybe I'll just take a big swing in terms of saying it in a different way.

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, definitely.

Brett Curry:

So yeah,

Miranda Pettinger:

I think you can have a good mix of quality content, but it can be UGC and it definitely doesn't need to be a TV commercial. So I think that's where it's very similar to YouTube in those ways where you want to seem authentic, but you also want to portray a story to the customer at the same time. Yeah,

Brett Curry:

Yeah, portray the story. You got to hit all the points of overcoming objections and strong call to action, all those things which are really, really important. Great. Any other mentions or callouts as far as creative goes? Anything we didn't talk about that's important from a creative standpoint?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, I think we touched on everything. I would just say to think about the way that these customers interact with the platform. When you're adding creative, you can 100% add your meta creatives in here. And depending on how the style of them is, they may perform really, really well. But if they're purely entertainment, you're probably not going to have a lot of success right out of the gate. And you should probably make some creatives that are closer to a YouTube ad or a commercial compared to something that's just either eye catching hook or an entertaining video.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. Maybe one last thing here before we wrap up and talk about how people can learn more about you and also buy some amazing pet centered gifts for the holidays. Talking again about lack of overlap between App 11 and social. I think you had mentioned that there's a true classic tease case study where meta was mainly selling to women buying for their significant other app love and was more men buying for themselves or maybe have that. Yeah. But yeah, was it the inverse of that?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, so I think you can reach new audiences, especially on app love, and I think everyone also talks about the older demos are always really successful. You can find those on app love. You can also find 20 year olds who like to play scape. So I think regardless of your brand, you should give it a shot. And I think there is a wide variety of demos on here that you can reach, just like Meta

Brett Curry:

Makes a ton of sense. I think the time is right. You need to diversify if you've got video content and can pull together something that will fit for app 11. It just makes a ton of sense. So first off, Miranda, if someone is like, all right, I got to check out these cuddle clones and see what these are all about and I need to check out the PJs, how can they learn more about you?

Miranda Pettinger:

Go to cuddle clones.com. You have to order before December 10th if you really will. These at Christmas

Speaker 3:

Now,

Miranda Pettinger:

Click now. Yeah, make sure you go get them well ahead of time. They can all be made to order for you.

Brett Curry:

And I would venture to say, and I've got several pet lovers in my house, this will be their favorite gift. You get this for somebody, it's going to be the gift they talk about and share with other people, and you'll get to see them wear it for years to come. And then what about you, Miranda? So I know you are active on X and you're speaking at operators events and things like that. How can someone connect with you or follow you?

Miranda Pettinger:

Yeah, follow me on X on Twitter, Miranda Tinger. Just look me up. I'm sure I can tag it at the bottom here. I'll send it over to you, Brett. That'd be great. Just an advertising nerd. And I like communicating with everyone online. I live in Ohio. There's not many media buyers in Ohio over here, so it's nice to connect with other marketers that work in DC because I don't quite live in an area where that's a hotbed.

Brett Curry:

Totally. That's same. I'm in Missourian, so it's like most of my friends who are e-commerce nerds or media nerds are on the coast or somewhere else. So yeah, love that connection. Awesome. Any other asks, requests, anything else coming up that you want to mention to the audience?

Miranda Pettinger:

No, but I hope everyone has a good Black Friday. It's going to be a wild, wild west I think this year. And if you can diversify and have success like we did, I ended up packing PJ's in the warehouse. I'll ask you for after everything I sold, so I'd love to do that again.

Brett Curry:

It's like, congrats Miranda, you made app love and work as a thank you. You get to go pack orders in the warehouse. Oh yeah, that's fun. I can think of the way worse things to do for sure. So love that. And hey, if channel diversification is on your Christmas list or beyond, actually probably based on when you're going to hear this, reach out to us at OMG Commerce. We'd love to talk to you about opening up opportunities on YouTube or on Amazon or Meta or things like that. And so would love to chat there. Miranda, thank you so much for the time. This has been phenomenal. I'm all hyped and pumped up to go run some AppLovin ads.

Miranda Pettinger:

Sounds good. Hope everyone else is too.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to hear from you. If you found this episode to be helpful, share it with someone else that you think might enjoy it. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by ChatAble, the number one feed management and advertising platform for savvy e-commerce marketers. Over 11,000 brands and agencies, including OMG Commerce, use channel's powerful automation engine to sanitize, optimize, and advertise product data across the world's biggest channels like Google, Amazon, and many more. So save money, save time by switching to channel's, full service platform, and get world-class support. Plus month-to-month pricing as an e-commerce evolution, listener ChatAble is giving you a free feed audit for a channel of your choice, learn how you can improve your feed score and increase visibility of your products. Sign up for free@chatable.com. Mention e-commerce Evolution to get started. No strings attached.

‍

‍