YouTube ads veteran Brett Curry (OMG Commerce) and TikTok Shop expert Jordan West (Social Commerce Club) went back and forth live on what's actually moving the needle for D2C brands right now — and some of their takes are going to sting. Most brands are still treating Google spend as a given, measuring YouTube with click-based attribution that was never built for it, and ignoring a TikTok Shop launch strategy that flips the creator dynamic entirely.

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Inside the episode:

• The YouTube Shorts formula that's working in 2026 — why Brett reversed his position, and the 4 things a video must have (including minimum length) before you waste money testing it
• The Blitz methodology explained — how Social Commerce Club seeds hundreds of creators in a 24–48 hour window to manufacture momentum and make big creators come to you instead of the other way around
• Why Jordan thinks most Google spend is a non-incremental tax — and the channel hierarchy he'd use for every D2C brand over $10M
• The TikTok Shop–to–Shopify halo effect — the data Jordan's team is seeing that almost nobody is talking about yet
• "My brand is too premium for TikTok Shop" — Jordan's reframe on why that objection is almost always wrong, and what to ask instead

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

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Chapters:

[0:00] Introduction: Brett Curry & Jordan West Swap Podcasts

[1:09] Why YouTube CPMs Are the Most Underpriced in the Industry

[5:00] What's Working on YouTube Shorts: The Framework for Winning Creative

[7:57] TikTok Shop Deep Dive: Jordan's Obsession with Demand Generation

[10:01] Like, Know, and Trust: Why YouTube Is the Ultimate Brand-Building Platform

[11:28] Ad Break: OMG Commerce Omnichannel Growth

[12:37] The Blitz Methodology: How Social Commerce Club Concentrates Creator Signal

[16:46] Moments vs. Blitzes Explained: Definitions and How They Drive Momentum

[19:42] How Far Can Brands Actually Scale on YouTube?

[21:53] Why MTA Tools Underreport YouTube: The Case for Incrementality Testing

[22:58] The Problem with Multi-Touch Attribution: Jordan's New Halo Tracking Concept

[25:17] Incrementality Explained with a Retail Store Analogy

[28:43] Rapid Fire YouTube Questions: Mashup Creatives and Repurposing Creator Content

[30:53] YouTube Targeting Strategy: Why You Still Need to Feed the Algorithm Signal

[32:22] Which Brands Should Be on YouTube But Aren't?

[33:09] Hot Take: The Right Ad Spend Hierarchy for D2C Brands

[34:43] YouTube vs. Meta by Product Type: Apparel, Problem-Solution, and Omnichannel

[37:15] If TV Works, YouTube Should Work: The CTV and Linear TV Connection

[38:10] Is Your Brand Too Premium for TikTok Shop? Jordan's Answer

[39:42] Why TikTok Shop Is a Fundamentally Different Beast Than TikTok Ads

[41:05] Wrap-Up: Where to Find Brett and Jordan

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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: 

• Jordan's LinkedIn: /jordan-west-marketer/ ‍

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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

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Transcript:

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Brett Curry (00:08):

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. Today's episode is different. This is me and my buddy Jordan West from Social Commerce Club and also the host of the unofficial TikTok shop podcast. We are interviewing each other. It's like the old podcast swap if you've heard of that, if you're a podcaster, but we just decide to interview each other. And so it's part TikTok shops, what's working now, what are some misconceptions, what you need to be doing to make that thing work. And then it's part YouTube. Some of the things that are new, some of the beliefs that I've had about YouTube that I've had an about face on where Jordan grills me with some YouTube questions and I answered them right here. So this is like a fireside chat where we're both interviewing each other. I hope you find it valuable.

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(00:59):

I hope you find it as fun to listen to as it was to record. And with that, let's get into it. TikTok shops and YouTube, what's working right

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Jordan West (01:09):

Now. Hey guys, do I ever have an exciting episode of the unofficial TikTok shop podcast? Formerly Secrets of Scaling your eCommerce brand. It's on this feed here and it's incredible how many people are listening to this podcast. This is a third time, third or fourth maybe even time person on this pod. We are actually doing a combined pod today. We're doing a combined pod. Brett Curry and I. Brett from OMG Commerce. He is the absolute expert in the space when it comes to YouTube advertising, which I am obsessed with anything top of funnel that actually generates demand. Brett, we are going to be answering all of the burning, the five big things right now that are actually working on YouTube right now. And I really do think between YouTube and TikTok Shop, those are the big things. And then we're going to be going back and forth on what is working on TikTok Shop and YouTube advertising all at the same time, how it is working together to actually blow brands up.

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(02:08):

I've had so many conversations with brand owners lately that I am pulling my hair out. I don't know if you guys can tell. I mean, I'm starting to bald here. It's because- You still looking good

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Brett Curry (02:16):

Though, dude. You have way less gray than me. And so you're looking really good, distinguished all those things young

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Jordan West (02:24):

At heart. I did. So just everyone knows, I went on a bit of a health kick over since like 2023- ish and I realized I lost 60 pounds. 60 pounds. That will make you look and feel younger. Yeah, I had no idea. I was 250, I'm 190 now. So just everyone knows. And

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Brett Curry (02:42):

Also for those that don't know, because you can't tell on a podcast, you and I just got to hang out together in Southern California. You're freaking tall. I'm a pretty tall guy. I'm 6'3", shoes on or whatever. You're taller than me. And so I was like, whoa, Jordan West, you are taller in person than you are on a podcast. So there you go. 190 at your height. That's thin.

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Jordan West (03:01):

It's bean pull. It's bean pull territory guys is what it's getting to. So let's dive in, Brett. It's 2026. We're recording this early March 2026. What is working for brands on YouTube ads? Because I actually, and I want to preface this here with, if I could, and I actually tried to last year, I would go so hard on YouTube specifically. So I actually had a partnership with Agentio on doing YouTube ad reads specifically. Interesting.

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Brett Curry (03:35):

Okay.

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Jordan West (03:36):

Okay. Yes. And we wanted to go super hard. Unfortunately, it was just one of those things where just kind of like too many things going on. We were TikTok shop. I think it's still part of social commerce, this like buying ad reads within YouTube. You know why? Yeah. Because I think YouTube CPMs are the most underpriced CPMs in the entire industry in the world. And it's not even close.

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Brett Curry (03:58):

Yeah, totally. And underpriced CPMs but also with really high engagement. So CPMs are sometimes what you pay for them. I was talking to Olivia Corey from house the other day and

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Jordan West (04:10):

She

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Brett Curry (04:10):

Was talking about like with CTV, the CPM you pay, you often get what you pay for. And they've seen that in the incrementality reads that sometimes those 30 or $40 CPMs you get on connected TV or certain streaming platforms are worth it. And sometimes the dollar, $2 CPMs you can get on some remnant inventory, cable buys, they're not even worth that. They're just absolute cards.

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Jordan West (04:32):

So like Google display is a great example, right?

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Brett Curry (04:34):

Yeah.

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Jordan West (04:36):

No one's thinking that's a great deal. Totally.

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Brett Curry (04:38):

Totally. Yeah. But like YouTube, yeah, it's both low cost CPM, highly engaged audience. People are watching. Those impressions often lead to 15, 30, 35 seconds of watch time per impression. Crazy. So when you factor that with

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Jordan West (04:55):

A low

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Brett Curry (04:56):

CPM. Also, but like preface, I am so glad we're doing this joint episode where we get to go back and forth. So maybe TikTok shop is your jam and you're really wanting to go deep on that, or maybe you're thinking about YouTube. Well, we've got both right here, right now on this pod, which is super exciting. And so the first thing I'm going to share, the first tip, what's working right now totally ties to TikTok shop. And that is there was a time, Jordan, when I was not very bullish on YouTube shorts. In fact, I thought it was just okay and just okay for remarketing.

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Jordan West (05:31):

Lasttime you were on, you said this. You did say

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Brett Curry (05:34):

This. I remember. I did say that last time. I stand corrected. I am now taking the opposite position. Also though, I will say, and this backs me up, backs up my original point. One of House Analytics original YouTube studies, they were also like, "Eh, shorts. We can't tell if it's incremental." But now they've changed their tune as have I. And so here's what we're seeing working on shorts. If you take your top performing social ads, I'm going to give you a framework for what that social ad needs to look like.

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Jordan West (06:05):

Okay.

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Brett Curry (06:05):

That

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Jordan West (06:06):

Top

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Brett Curry (06:06):

Performing social video ad can actually run on YouTube shorts with good performance, incremental performance, some of the direct metrics we look at, like click-through rate and some conversion and stuff like that. And I know that a lot of people, their best organic content actually comes from TikTok shop creators or TikTok creators. And so the quick formula though, here's what that video has to have Jordan Fort to work on YouTube shorts. It has to be longer than 30 seconds. I've never still ever seen an ad under 30 seconds scale that's also driving some kind of meaningful conversion metric of some kind.

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Jordan West (06:46):

And this is scaling on. Com, correct? We're talking about direct.com

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Brett Curry (06:51):

Scaling. Yes. But I still believe that the biggest benefit of YouTube is beyond just the dot com. So it's dot com, it's Amazon. Totally agree. I wish we could disagree, but- The core metric is still we're looking at.com sales. So got to be 30 seconds. It has to have a voiceover. So we're talking not just a scroll stop, not just some kind of a grabber there. It needs to either have someone speaking

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Jordan West (07:16):

On camera. Has to have a voiceover.

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Brett Curry (07:18):

Has to have a voiceover.

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Jordan West (07:19):

Someone

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Brett Curry (07:19):

Speaking on camera, looking in the camera or a voiceover after the fact, either one is fine. It needs to have some kind of product demo. Most of the videos have that, so that's cool. And then it does need to have a call to action. So if it has those things and it's ripping on Meta, Instagram reels, things like that, and it's working on TikTok shop, my guess is it will work on YouTube shorts for you. So yeah, that's a new perspective for me. I used to be low YouTube shorts stock price was low in my mind. It is elevated substantially.

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Jordan West (07:57):

I want to double down here. I'm the TikTok shop guy, right? Yeah.

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(08:03):

You know I wasn't always. I just love marketing. I love marketing. I love psychology. I love this idea. So it's really interesting actually where I live. So I live in this little city. It's about 40,000 people and I have decided, I don't think I've told anyone on this podcast, but I decided to just start making content and I'm really good at making content. And I was like, huh, I've got a team that already does a ton of YouTube editing for me. I'm going to see how fast it takes to go from zero in the city to like, know and trust to the point that I could do or I could get any position. I could become mayor, I could become MP, I could become whatever. Dude,

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Brett Curry (08:41):

You should totally become mayor.

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Jordan West (08:43):

I've decided, I was actually thinking about it, but it's this October and I was like, I've got too many. We're building something, this rocket ship. I'm like, I'm not like Elon. I can't do all of the things all at once.

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Brett Curry (08:54):

You would likely hate most of it, but it'd be so cool to say you're the mayor of the town you live in.

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Jordan West (09:01):

And then be like, now I'm going to hand it off. So I am friends with the mayor now, him and I talk all the time and I give him all my ideas. So it has taken me about 10 videos to go from zero in the town to I would say 50% of people being like, "Hey Jordan, I watch your videos on the street." Crazy. Now the reason being I believe that social media, the point of social media and YouTube is the perfect example of this. Sorry, YouTube is not the perfect example. YouTube is the thing, right? Brett and I, by the way, I mean, how many years have you had your

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Brett Curry (09:38):

Podcast? Geez, since like 2017 or something, I did a podcast with another guy, another agency owner before that. So I've been podcasting for ages.

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Jordan West (09:46):

Same, same, right? I mean, I watched this great video on Rogan last night and just like about Rogan and it's like 2009. Of course, the guy has gotten his 10,000 hours over and over and over, right? Oh, absolutely.

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Brett Curry (10:00):

Yeah. Yeah.

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Jordan West (10:01):

And so again, I think I'm 2017, 2018, somewhere in there. I remember the very first episode I ever had, I interviewed the previous owner of the Vancouver Knucks. I was somehow able to get him. And it's like, why did I have him on? I don't know. But I've been doing this for a long time and I'll tell you the point of social media for your brand and for your personal brand, for your brand in general is to get to like, know, and trust. And that is it. That's the point. So you get to like, know and trust and then if you can have a CTA even better, right? Even better to have a CTA there with your product, that's it. And YouTube allows you to do that. That's why I love, I'm so bullish on YouTube forever. I can't picture a platform I actually like more as a content creator than YouTube.

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Brett Curry (10:55):

Yeah, I agree. And the other thing about that is, and I know you have kids as do I, but like you look at even what young people are doing. So I look at my nine-year-old son, Benjamin. I look at my dad who's 74. They both spend a lot of time on YouTube. We try to limit Benjamin's time on YouTube. But when we give him free reign, he's going to YouTube to watch his favorite creators.

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Jordan West (11:15):

Same with

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Brett Curry (11:16):

My kids. It's like that's that. Yeah, very bullish on YouTube for sure. Okay. So that's my first tip what's working right now. What's say you, Jordan, on the TikTok shop side of things.

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(11:28):

Hey, thanks again for tuning in. This episode's brought to you by OMG Commerce. That's my agency. Hey, we're specialists at creating omnichannel growth for brands profitably. Now the greatest brands we know are no longer just D2C. Yes, they're masters of D2C, but they're also growing and scaling on marketplaces and in retail stores. And we understand the complexities of how to grow in all of those channels from a campaign strategy, a creative strategy, and a measurement strategy. In fact, we recently won a Google Agency Excellence Award for helping Arctic coolers grow their retail sales in Walmart using YouTube. We've helped add almost eight figures in growth on Amazon for brands and we've even helped a brand go from nine to 10 figures. And so we want to help you grow. So if you're not satisfied with your growth in any of those channels or you're looking to unlock new growth, we should probably chat.

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(12:27):

Visit us at omgcommerce.com, click that Let's Talk button. We love to schedule a strategy session with you. With that, back to the show.

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Jordan West (12:37):

Well, I'm going to bring in, so glad you asked, Brett, I'm going to bring in a marketing principle here and this marketing principle is really, really important and it's just a general principle. So if you are running a company, if you're doing anything to do with messaging, there is one thing you must constantly do and be thinking about. And that is taking signal, sorry, taking noise and creating signal, right? Stop doing all of these disparate things and create signal, right? I talked about this on a previous podcast that I was on today. The sun is incredible, right? Imagine all of the heat, but if you took the sun and concentrated it, that is like a laser beam. I know it's a different technology, but just stick with me here, right? That could cut through anything if you took that energy and focused it somewhere. And so on TikTok Shop, let me explain to you this methodology and why I'm so obsessed with this.

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(13:34):

We have two different methodologies that we use at Social Commerce Club. Well, we've got a lot of them, but here's two that I'm going to talk to you about. Moment marketing, number one. Number two is the blitz. So the blitz, let me explain to you the blitz. So the whole idea with the TikTok shop blitz is that you concentrate all of the noise that is happening with your brand in a defined amount of time that then creates momentum, right? It's really interesting. Did you listen to, it's only been a day since it was out, but Taylor Holiday had this three hour long diatribe podcast on open residency.

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Brett Curry (14:12):

I did not. I saw it. I saw the clips and the intro and stuff. I do plan to listen, but I've not listened yet. It was funny. I saw Cody Plofker from Jones Real Beauty posted on Twitter today. He's like, "Why would I listen to three hours of Taylor Holiday telling me I'm wrong when he tells me directly every day?" And so it was a funny clip, but yeah, I am looking forward to checking that out.

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Jordan West (14:37):

It is 100% worthwhile. We made it required listening at the agency to understand because the way that Taylor and I look at all of this stuff is the exact same. And what he's talking about is that brands are not creating enough signal in times that it is not like a non-Black Friday event where you create your own signal in your own moment. So last year I decided to take on some consulting clients for a variety of reasons I decided to do this.

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Brett Curry (15:09):

You like their CMO type of thing or TikTok shops specific consulting?

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Jordan West (15:14):

No, no, no, no. Just one day every two weeks for an hour.

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Brett Curry (15:20):

Ask me anything type thing.

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Jordan West (15:21):

Yeah, exactly. You needed

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Brett Curry (15:23):

More to do.

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Jordan West (15:24):

I needed more to do. I had a problem I was trying to solve personally and I was like, "Oh, I got an idea." I charge insane amounts of money for it by the hour. I actually am not doing it anymore because I've decided I'm like, "I'm just not going to sell my time anymore." That was a fun time of life doing that. But it was really fun because what I would do is these weren't massive brands, right? Those would go to the agency, but it was just like a couple of smaller brands and I helped them grow massive, massive amounts. And what we did is we just used this exact same principle. We just used this idea of moments and blitzes to be able to concentrate all of the signal. And what it did is it created this incredible flywheel that just kept going. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is the key." And we did this when I owned eight different brands, right?

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(16:12):

I knew how to do this and yet I hadn't really solidified it. And so on TikTok Shop, super, super important. At Social Commerce Club, this is what we do. One of our giant KPIs that we're talking about is how many blitzes we have done in a week. Guys, we work with a lot of brands and a lot of massive, massive brands, and we do a lot of blitzes. And I will tell you, the majority of them all hit in a huge way, a huge way. So

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Brett Curry (16:37):

Unpack this a little bit more then. So what is a moment and what is a blitz? I'm definitely getting pictures in my mind, but I want to make sure I'm clear on this. So can you define both of those really quickly?

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Jordan West (16:46):

Yeah. So a blitz is where we generally, mostly this is going to be for a new launch on the platform. So it's going to be the first time that a brand has launched on the platform. We're going to perform a blitz. And so what we do is we actually offline sample hundreds of samples. Now for us at Social Commerce Club, we have one of the most incredible creator communities. I hardly even talk about the creator community anymore just because I don't know, other people have creator communities and I'm like, "But we have hundreds of the top creators on TikTok Shop in our community. And so we actually will often seed out to them first if it makes sense for them to work with the brand." But what we do is we offline seed to them so that we can pick the date, the exact date and time of when we want them to post their videos.

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(17:35):

And then within the 24 to 48 hour window, we say, "Hey, we want you to post five to 10 videos." It's wild the amount of videos. We'll get thousands of videos within 24 hours. Then we pour money into GMV Max. GMV Max now takes all of those codes and pours money into them and it's like you're everywhere. So what ends up happening is these giant creators see it on their TikTok. They're scrolling through. They're like, "Who is this brand?" And then they apply for it. I want to create content for this

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Brett Curry (18:03):

Brand potentially. Yeah.

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Jordan West (18:04):

Yeah. Then they apply to work with us and it's with our brands and we're like, sweet. That is how you turn the tables from being the brand that's like, "Please come and work with me. " So many brands will come to me and like, "Ah, how do we get creators?" It's like, dude, go to the dance and put off the don't talk to me vibe.That's how you do it. But if you're desperate, if you're the desperate person at the dance, nobody's going to dance with you.

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Brett Curry (18:32):

Yeah. That's amazing. I love it. And what this is also doing, there's an old saying, you see something once, you probably forget it, you see something twice, you've seen it, you see something three times, you're like, "This is everywhere." So now if I'm either a customer or a consumer and I see three or four videos about your brand on TikTok, you're everywhere. This is a movement, this is a trend. I've got to either buy it or I've got to get on board if I'm a creator and start working with you like it. I like the idea

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Jordan West (19:00):

Of

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Brett Curry (19:00):

Blitz.

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Jordan West (19:02):

So that is the Blitz methodology moment marketing is then taking specific moments afterwards and working around that particular moment in a Blitz methodology. And so we use moments all the time where we'll just start pinning moments in and TikTok Shop is amazing because they'll often have paid discounts that they're doing that you don't even have to pay for if your shop score is high enough where you get to be a part of their moments. So like all the time, just be a part of these moments, but then create your own moments. Those moments could also be like big launches on the platform.That's the thing. Let me get back to YouTube though, Brett. Yeah,

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Brett Curry (19:40):

Yeah.

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Jordan West (19:42):

On YouTube right now, where exactly is the scalability that you're seeing there? How far can brands actually scale on YouTube? Is this more of like a tertiary channel or like you've gone all in on YouTube for quite a while. Is it actually a channel that brands can and should scale? Because if it's just about dotcom, I don't see it. I just don't see how they do it.

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Brett Curry (20:09):

Yeah, it's a great question. So I do believe it's most powerful when you're multi-channel or omnichannel. So you go beyond the. Com and now you're on Amazon or the marketplaces and then you're in retail store. That is when YouTube is extremely powerful because it's not so much a click-based medium. You will get clicks, you will get conversions, especially if you're doing demand gen conversion focused campaigns and that can be on shorts and on in stream and stuff like that. But still a lot of people never click on a YouTube. It's got half the click-through rate as Meta less depending on if you're running a lot on TV screens and things like that. And so I do believe multi-channel distribution is critical, but-

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Jordan West (20:52):

Which every brand over 10 million should be doing.

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Brett Curry (20:55):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, almost every brand over 10 million is. Com and Amazon or dot com and retail. I know very few that are A figure brands that are just. Com, although there are some. But I do believe, yes, the easiest way to scale is still Meta and Google. I believe that. It's just easier to scale on Meta and Google. Once you're at a point where you feel like, "Hey, I can't predictably grow more with Meta or with Google or where you just feel like you're ready for a little more complexity," then YouTube does offer a ton of scale opportunity, almost unlimited scale opportunity, but it is more challenging to measure. So I think if you're going to lean into YouTube, you also need to lean into things like incrementality testing, either in platform or house or I know North People's launching an incrementality tool and so other people are as well, but where you're looking at, is this causing a lift in sales that I would not have gotten otherwise that's beyond just the click data?

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(21:53):

And Jordan, you can't just lean in on your MTA. You can't say like, "Well, I've got Northbeam or Triple Whale like the standard MTA." It underreports YouTube as well because it's still click based.

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(22:05):

MTAs,

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Jordan West (22:06):

I'm just going to just jump in here for a second, Brett. Yeah, sure. I truly believe that the worst thing that happened to e-commerce was multi-touch attribution tools. And look- It's a bold

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(22:21):

Tape. And this is coming from somebody who, number one, was Triple Whale's biggest affiliate at the beginning. No one ever gives me credit for that, so I got to give my own myself credit for it. I used to get these checks from Triple Whale that were just wild. And I don't believe in it. I just don't believe in it, which is funny because I actually bought an MTA tool recently that I am relaunching as a halo tracking tool because I believe in omnichannel halo tracking. Again, I believe in omnichannel. Let's go back to TikTok shop here for a second.

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Brett Curry (22:58):

Isn't like Halo tracking though, would that be more like an MMM or something?Bause MTA is still ...

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Jordan West (23:03):

So you have over here, this is for my editor, okay? You have over here multi-touch attribution, right? This is more on this side of like, "Hey, we believe that every purchase is made by clicks, right? Maybe a robot does that. Certainly no human that I know does that. " Most of it involves some sort of word of mouth, some sort of talk to your spouse, something in the midst of all of that, right? Yep, yep. It's not like you're Facebook and then over here straight onto Google. That's just not how it works. But then on the other side, we have MMMs, mixed media modeling. And those are big models and really expensive. I have yet to meet an MMM tool that makes sense for the majority of brands sub a hundred million. Lots of them have come to me for sponsorship deals or affiliate deals.

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(23:51):

And I'm like,

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(23:52):

I don't know, who can I sell you to? Who can I recommend this to that it makes sense to? And so I am coming in and creating a whole new category of tool called Halo, right in the middle that is using the data that you already have without the need to geo holdout and actually measuring Halo. And it's wild. We are about to launch it. I actually have a meeting right after this again to fully say it's good to go. It is wild what we're seeing guys. And number two, the most wild thing that everyone has no idea about is the insane halo from TikTok shop to Shopify. That is what we're finding out. Everybody talks

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Brett Curry (24:36):

About TikTok Shop to Amazon, but you're saying TikTok Shop to Shopify.

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Jordan West (24:40):

To Shopify, we're like, "What? How are we finding out this data?"This data is crazy. And it's funny because a lot of the smartest people that I know have built these things on Google Sheets anyway. They've built this out and I'm like, "Wait, you're a massive brand that's killed." He's like, "Yeah, check out how I deal with any..." Nobody ever calls that attribution. It's not an attribution because that's not how people shop to try to attribute something back to that. But I think about every purchase that my kids have wanted to make or made in the last forever and it has come back to YouTube.

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Brett Curry (25:17):

Interesting. YouTube and TikTok shops. Yeah, man. And I want to give maybe just a quick analogy, Jordan. This is getting a little outside of TikTok shop and YouTube, but I think it frames this discussion quite nicely. Okay. Let's say that you and I, we own together three retail stores, physical stores selling, let's sell hockey gear because you mentioned hockey earlier and the US did beat Canada and hockey. I'm not a hockey guy, but I did that. Didn't

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Jordan West (25:44):

Even pay attention. Didn't even pay attention. I don't know if you remember when Mark Carney made that speech recently on the global stage, but that was the last that I've cared about the States. So let's continue on. It's

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Brett Curry (25:56):

So funny. So we own three sporting good stores, okay? We run a big sale, like a week-long sale. In each of the three stores, we put up posters, signs saying clearance, big sale, whatever. Then also in all three markets of our stores, we run TV, Meta, YouTube. Now, if we were to look at just an MTA or just attribution, we could say 100% of those sales were driven by the signs in the store. Do you know why? Because everybody that bought saw the signs. Attribution is like the signs we get 100%. That's silly. But then what we do with-

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Jordan West (26:38):

That is Google branded search, by the way, everyone.

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Brett Curry (26:41):

That's branded search, right? Or something just like, sure, it was there, but that's not why somebody searched. If we looked at incrementality, then we'd start testing and say, "Hey, in this market, we're going to not run Meta and we're going to see how that store stacks up with the other stores." And then we'll run that for a little while and then we'll maybe pull all the posters out of one store, but keep everything else the same. How did the sales there compare to the other stores? This is like an oversimplification, but you kind of get the idea, I think, where you're like, we're running tests and experiments to say, what is actually driving sales and what isn't? That's incrementality. And then MMM is maybe just, it's a litle bit different, right? It's using complex math to see correlations and stuff like that. But yeah, I think that's the level we're all getting to where it's like, I don't think just standard attribution is actually cutting it.

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(27:31):

I need to go a little bit deeper.

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Jordan West (27:34):

Totally. And I'm so excited to show people this halo effect that we have created, which is essentially a ripple effect across multiple platforms and days starting in one spot. Almost like again, I'm such a, not politically, but as a person and Elon fan to the core. And when you look at how he makes decisions and how he thinks about things, it's like with the boring company, he's like, "Well, what already digs well?" A mole. A mole digs well. So why don't we create our machines that are like a mole? So it starts here and then goes down and that worked because nature already figured it out.

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Brett Curry (28:17):

Right,

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Jordan West (28:17):

Right,

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Brett Curry (28:17):

Right. So smart. So smart. Yeah.

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Jordan West (28:19):

And so we're constantly thinking about that when we're building software and building these things. It's like you normally get your best ideas from people outside of your industry and ideas outside of your industry and going for a hike and whatever it is and you're like, "Ah, that's the thing. Okay. I figured it out. "

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Brett Curry (28:33):

Love it. I love it. That's awesome. All right, man, should we go kind of rapid fire? Is it my turn to talk at YouTube or it's your turn to talk? What's the next thing that works?

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Jordan West (28:43):

We've gone back and forth.This is so fun, by the way guys. If you have stuck around until now, you will know I am having a frigging blast with Brett on this. I love this stuff. Okay. I'm going to rapid fire to you first. I got three quick questions for you. Yeah, please. What is one thing that brands are not doing on YouTube that they should be doing today?

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Brett Curry (29:04):

That's great. So this goes back to creative a litle bit and this will tie into TikTok shop as well. So one of the things they're not doing that they should be doing is taking their best creator content like we just talked about. Some of those, if they meet the criteria I said before, run those just like they are. In YouTube, they'll run mostly on shorts. They'll do quite well, at least some of them. The other thing though is we build mashups, right? So take your top performing creator content,

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(29:31):

UGC, things like that, and you mash it up and string it together to form a narrative. This can be in like a split screen UGC where if it's a 16 by nine, you got half the screen is the creator, the actual customer, the other half is the product or the product in action and you are just taking the top soundbites, the top clips, weaving them together to tell a story or pull together a narrative. And this is probably my favorite Favorite creative to launch with that plus your top social content is the best. Probably the mashup is going to win for you amongst a lot of other different creatives.

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Jordan West (30:12):

TikTok shop people take that advice too, by the way.

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Brett Curry (30:15):

Totally. Yeah.

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Jordan West (30:16):

Free content to use to mash up.

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Brett Curry (30:20):

So think about, okay, this is my top one benefit. I'm going to have four people talk about that benefit. These are my top two benefits. I'm going to have that. Or this is my top benefit. This is the top reason someone doesn't buy. I'm going to have someone talk about that. This is what it's like when you actually try the product. I'm going to have someone talk about that. So you're weaving together this narrative. It does need to be kind of minute to three minutes when you pull it all together. It's got to be fast paced. It's got to be moving. It's got to be fun. It's got to be engaging, but that's one of the best pieces of content. So that's number one. Did you ask me for three?

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Jordan West (30:53):

No, I'm giving you three here. Great. Okay. Why do brands get wrong when it comes to targeting on the platform?

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Brett Curry (31:00):

Yeah. So one of the things is that the targeting still does matter on YouTube. So I know all my friends and the people on my team that run Meta, it's, hey, mostly open targeting. It's going to know and it's going to decide and the creative is the targeting. With YouTube, we still almost always do better when we feed the algorithm signal. So we need to give the algorithm signal of either these are the types of websites that our customers visit. This is our customer data. I think you always got to do that. Google will build lookalikes. It's funny, lookalikes I know are not a new concept at all. They're still new-ish or new-ish in a good way. They used to kind of suck on Google. Now they're pretty good. So lookalikes. And then I like building audiences based on Google search behavior. So people that are searching for hockey gear and other things like that.

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(31:49):

Let's build an audience of those people. So we're feeding that to Google as a signal with our audience targeting. That's almost always what we do and it gets the campaign off to the races. And so I think you need to do that. You still want to kind of limit your demos if you're just targeting women to do that, just men and men and age is still important because it will kind of lean into what it'll just explore, explore. And I think it doesn't learn as fast as Meta. So guide the algorithms, still

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Jordan West (32:19):

Think

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Brett Curry (32:20):

Through your targeting.

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Jordan West (32:22):

What's one brand that you can think of that's not running YouTube ads at scale that should?

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Brett Curry (32:28):

Well, so this is interesting because on occasion I'll hear about, oh, this brand is spending millions on YouTube. And I didn't know that and I don't see them because I'm not in their market and they're not targeting me. But my take is this, almost any brand that can absorb an 80 to $100 cost per conversion for a customer. So it's either a larger ticket item or it's a consumable or something like that. They should be on YouTube. But is there a specific brand? Man, that is a great, great question.

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Jordan West (33:05):

Hot take in the meantime. Please do.

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Brett Curry (33:07):

Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to hear hot take.

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Jordan West (33:09):

Here's my hot take. I personally think that the hierarchy of spend on platform for D2C brands should be Meta, TikTok shop, YouTube, before anything else on Google. I think that if you want to, I think that most spend on Google is not incremental whatsoever, that you are paying a tax on Google. That's what I think.

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Brett Curry (33:32):

I've heard that from a

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Jordan West (33:32):

Few other people. I might shop anything on Amazon until you have mass competitors and just let all the spillover happen on Amazon.

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Brett Curry (33:39):

Interesting. I think there's some exceptions. So we've done quite a bit of work in the automotive space and that is one area where you kind of look at like, hey, is your brand or your product, is it more demand capture? Meaning you're just people either looking or they're not, and if they're looking, you want to grab them. If they're not looking, you're probably not going to convince them. Or is it demand generation? Meaning not that many people are looking, but if people saw it, they would want it.

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Jordan West (34:07):

And those are the kind of brands I'm talking about.

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Brett Curry (34:09):

Yeah. So those kind of brands, right? Because automotive, we're maybe like 70, 80%, not 80% ST high, but we're like 60 to 70% Google shopping or Google shopping inside of PMax or whatever just because, hey, if somebody wants a new set of brake pads,

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Jordan West (34:27):

Talk

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Brett Curry (34:27):

Them into it. But yeah.

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Jordan West (34:29):

Totally. Yeah. Totally. Very different kinds of brands that we're talking about here. For me, the brands that come to us are always these, it'll be apparel brands. Nobody is necessarily ... They're asking their friends for recommendations, that sort of thing.

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Brett Curry (34:43):

Yeah.

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(34:45):

And the other thing I would think here, so I think probably most of the time, you're right, most of our D2C brands, Meta is number one. Sometimes Google is number two and I think it depends again on a few factors, whether that should be number two, whether it should be further down. I think for just making some generality, some hot takes here, if I was an apparel brand, I think I would use your hierarchy exactly. I think Meta is way better at apparel. I think TikTok shops is way better at apparel than YouTube. If it was something more problem solution oriented, I would maybe bump YouTube up a litle bit higher. It also probably depends on what are you, do you have the right content? Are you good at creating the right content for YouTube? That's going to be a big unlock or not. I was talking to Olivia Corey recently.

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(35:33):

She's on my podcast. She's from house for those that don't know. And she was like, "Hey, when we were at Netflix, YouTube was our biggest..." Because we were just religiously running incrementality tests. YouTube for us outperformed Meta. I

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Jordan West (35:48):

Think

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Brett Curry (35:48):

Though, if I'm built basics or I'm true classic teas or something like that, Meta's going to win almost every time and probably TikTok shops

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Jordan West (35:56):

As well. And probably TikTok shop too, because it's a very easy click to purchase. I think that's the idea is you're compressing this click to purchase versus on YouTube it's a great place to put something for consideration. The amount of ads, again, that my kids see that they eventually convinced me to buy is crazy. And then we'll buy the thing and then they'll say the ad and they'll pretend like they're doing the ad. I'm like, YouTube is scary guys. It's very scary. And yet I still prefer it over short form. I don't think it's killing their minds the way short form is. I don't know if I've given you this analogy. I feel like a cigarette executive in the 80s a lot of times where I'm like, we know that this is killing kids. In fact, I just bought the book, The Amazing Generation, which is like the kids' version of the anxious generation for every single grade five, six, and seven teacher and convinced our school district, again, make content and then you can be influential.

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(36:50):

I convinced them that they should read this book to every single kid that age. Actually, I offered to buy it for every kid and he's like, "Let me do you one better." He's like, "I'm going to make it mandatory for every single teacher to teach this.

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Brett Curry (37:01):

" Look at you, man. Look at you. That

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Jordan West (37:04):

Amazing. Again, a cigarette executive in the 80s. We're driving billions of views on TikTok. I'm like, it's Brainrod. It's Brainroods.

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Brett Curry (37:15):

I'll close with this and then we're going to turn back to TikTok Shop. Any brand that's finding success on connected TV or linear TV, if you're not winning on YouTube, it's because you're not doing it right. There is such a good correlation connection of if TV works, YouTube should work because now half of all views, more than half of all views of YouTube are on TV. And so there's a lot of correlation there. You maybe can't take your ads on a one-to-one basis and take them from CTV to YouTube, but they're probably pretty close. And so any brand that's ripping on TV, you should be leaning into YouTube. If you're not, you're doing something wrong. So there you go. Yeah.

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Jordan West (38:02):

Awesome. Awesome. That's great. You, Brett, if you don't mind, you can close this one question because I am late for a meeting.

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Brett Curry (38:10):

Okay. So help me with this because this is something I hear from some brands. I do hear others that are kind of taking the opposite view now, but I hear a lot of people say, "Hey, my brand is too premium for TikTok shop. My price point is too high. My buyer's too sophisticated for TikTok shops." I think it's probably crazy because I think everybody's on TikTok, but what is your answer to that perspective?

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Jordan West (38:37):

So I think that there are products that are actually too expensive for TikTok shop right now. There are not brands that are too expensive. If you do not yet have a product that could go on TikTok shop, you need to think about how you can merchandise a product on TikTok shop. People spend, again, cigarette executive, people are spending too much time on TikTok and you're not going to change them. So you might as well take advantage of it as a brand because they're spending like 90 minutes a day, like 200 million Americans.

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Brett Curry (39:09):

Wild. It's wild.

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Jordan West (39:11):

It is absolutely ... It is where all of the attention- Where the attention

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Brett Curry (39:17):

Is. Yeah.

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Jordan West (39:17):

Yeah. Honestly, it's basically there in YouTube for the most part.That's where people are spending the majority of their time. It's like either like this or like this on their phones. And so very, very important that you figure out a way that you can go on to TikTok shop. Do you not just do TikTok

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Brett Curry (39:37):

Ads? Could you not just use TikTok ads or you

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Jordan West (39:39):

Believe

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Brett Curry (39:40):

TikTok shop is a serious unlock? Yeah.

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Jordan West (39:42):

No. TikTok, no, Brett. No, no, no, no, no. TikTok shop is a beast of its own. Now the reason why TikTok Shop works so incredibly well is because it is finally the platform that has aligned incentives with creators with brands all at the same time so that you get this beautiful harmony versus you just paying the slot machine. And we all know TikTok ads. The content engine. Yeah.

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Brett Curry (40:09):

Yeah.

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Jordan West (40:09):

Right? They haven't worked too D2C. Now not saying that they're not part of the Halo. I really actually believe that regular TikTok ads are, but it's TikTok shop that is this incredible unlock and every day you have potential virality from people who are posting about your product because they're going to get paid when they post about your product. Sorry, not just to post, but to actually make money. So then they make creative that tries to sell your product and then suddenly you have like 10 trillion ways that you can sell your product and you have all these new catchphrases that creative people have come up with. You're crowdsourcing your entire R&D department and your marketing department. And then you're telling you- And then your content engineer becomes your

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Brett Curry (40:47):

Content engine. Yeah. It's so many

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Jordan West (40:50):

Benefits. Guys, guys, the brands that don't make it on TikTok shop and that don't understand this channel, it's just because you need a paradigm shift. I was going to say it's because you're stupid, but that's not nice.

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Brett Curry (41:05):

The product that will work on TikTok shops.That's what you need. I love that. That's such good advice. Dude, this has been fun. We could keep going. We could do this for another hour, hour and a half. I know you got to bounce. Super fun dude. I'm jazzed

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Jordan West (41:16):

About

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Brett Curry (41:16):

TikTok shops.

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Jordan West (41:17):

Three or four weeks of back and forth of me being like last minute. "Brandon, I'm so sorry." Yeah.

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Brett Curry (41:23):

I did it first though.

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Jordan West (41:25):

Where can people who are listening on the unofficial TikTok shop podcast, if they're interested in YouTube ads, where can they find what you guys at OMG Commerce are doing and what you're up to?

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Brett Curry (41:36):

Totally. OMGCcommerce.com. Check it out. Also follow me on LinkedIn or on X/Twitter. I'm @BrettCurry there post content. I just spoke at the Google YouTube offices in LA, posted some content there. I got some videos coming out there. So check those out on social, but yeah, would love to connect with you. And for those listening to the e-commerce evolution podcast, how can they connect with Social Commerce Club and what you're doing with your pod?

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Jordan West (42:03):

So we are like crazy at Social Commerce Club hiring right now. We are looking for the best of the best. I'd love to say for social commerce strategists, but there just aren't enough out there yet. And so if you are low ego, high agency and work with competitive speed and you are looking for a home to try to learn what is the next version of Facebook ads, come to Social Commerce Club. We are hiring like absolute crazy. We have a very, I would say this culture that is like really, a really high performing culture that isn't psychotic.

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Brett Curry (42:42):

I

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Jordan West (42:42):

Love that. Yeah. But it's for A player high performers and that is who we're looking for right now. High performance.

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Brett Curry (42:47):

Brands for fun. Yeah.

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Jordan West (42:49):

Yeah. Brands get in line. Go to socialcommerceclub.com, get in line. And we're the only platinum agency that we know of in North America. And so we perform at an incredibly high level and we'd love to potentially work with your brand, but lots of times it's not a fit. We're looking for good people right now.

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Brett Curry (43:10):

Yeah. Love it, man. And yeah, people ask me all the time like, "What's your recommendation for TikTok shop agency?" And it is a list of on and that's you guys. And so yeah, man, hey, I appreciate you. It's super fun. I think people are going to get a lot of value out of this and let's do it again sometime.

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Jordan West (43:26):

Sounds good. See you, man. See

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Brett Curry (43:27):

You, buddy. That'll do it for this week's episode. Hey, if you're serious about profitable scale for your brand, we would love to chat. Over the last 15 years we work with some amazing brands like Native, Boom Beauty, Arctic, Organify, Crumble Cookie, True Earth, and many, many more. We want to help you unlock new channels, find profitable scale, have better creative, better campaign, better measurement strategies, and ultimately hope you have more fun and grow in all of your relevant channels. So take a look at omgcommerce.com and we can't wait to help you scale profitably.

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