The Fastest Way To Better Audiences

🎯 Build lookalikes from real purchases, not broken targeting tools, Media buyer index of the week, and more!

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In this newsletter, you’ll find:

🎯 The Fastest Way To Better Audiences

📊 Ad Costs Rise as YouTube and TikTok Steal Share

🏆 Ad of the Day

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🎯 The Fastest Way To Better Audiences

You don’t need more audiences this Black Friday. You need better ones.

And the fastest, most scalable way to build them is hiding in plain sight: your customers’ receipts.

In a world where Meta targeting feels like throwing darts in fog and auction prices double overnight, zero-party data is no longer a privacy checkbox, it’s a performance edge. A Receipts Wallet turns every verified receipt into a consented signal that feeds your BFCM lookalikes, loyalty offers, and retention flows with real SKU-level context.

And the best part? You can build the whole system in under two weeks, and the upside compounds for months.

🚀 What Changes When You Do This

Forget generic “early access” lists or broad discount blasts.

A Receipts Wallet isn’t just a smarter opt-in form, it’s a dynamic identity engine.

By exchanging credits for verified receipts, you stop guessing who your customers might be and start targeting based on what they’ve actually bought.

The payoff: cleaner data, faster consent, and creative that hits where it matters, recency, category, and intent.

At scale, this creates a living segmentation model that self-updates with every upload. You’re not just improving targeting; you’re building your own first-party DSP inside your Shopify ecosystem.

🧠 How It Works

Week 1: Setup the System

  • Launch a simple landing page: “Turn your receipts into store credit.”
  • Let users upload or forward their receipts via photo or email.
  • Parse only what matters, date, merchant, SKUs, total. Auto-delete the rest.

Week 2: Incentivize + Activate

  • Credit 1–2% on verified receipts (capped at $10/mo).
  • Trigger dynamic offers like “Because you bought X, save on Y.”
  • Build lookalikes and retargeting lists from wallet users with 7-day recency.

The beauty? You’re gathering actionable intelligence at near-zero incremental cost.

📈 Why It Scales Effortlessly

Each receipt = a self-declared signal. Each upload = cheaper media efficiency.

Unlike survey-based zero-party tools, there’s no friction  just a seamless exchange of value. Add rate limits, fraud filters, and auto-hash consent logs, and you’ve got a system that scales cleanly to tens of thousands of users without privacy headaches.

🏁 The Bottom Line

Every brand is fighting for the same audience this BFCM.

The only ones who’ll win are those who own their data while everyone else rents it. You have two weeks. Build the wallet.

Turn receipts into revenue. And walk into 2026 with a cleaner, smarter audience engine that compounds.

📊 Ad Costs Rise as YouTube and TikTok Steal Share

Ad spend dynamics shifted sharply this week, with YouTube and TikTok outperforming on ROAS while Meta and Google saw rising costs. For performance marketers, efficiency gaps are widening across channels, forcing sharper optimization and faster budget pivots.

The Breakdown:

1ïžâƒŁ CPC Trends - YouTube’s +13.24% CPC jump signals growing competition for video inventory, while Snapchat’s -10.31% drop reveals underpriced reach. Rising CPCs on Meta and Google mean marketers must refine creative hooks and bidding precision to sustain profitability. Efficiency now depends on data-led creative testing, not just spend scaling.

2ïžâƒŁ CAC Movement  - Google (+7.24%) and TikTok (+5.59%) saw the steepest CAC spikes. Meta’s +0.77% remains stable, but YouTube’s +4.94% highlights rising acquisition costs in content-heavy funnels. Shifting portions of spend to lower-CAC ecosystems like Microsoft (-4.04%) or Snapchat (-6.51%) can offset short-term volatility.

3ïžâƒŁ ROAS Shifts - YouTube (+10.11%), TikTok (+6.46%), and Snapchat (+5.37%) led platform efficiency, driven by creative engagement and native storytelling. Meta (-1.29%) and Gemini Ads (-4.41%) struggled despite higher CTRs, a sign of performance plateauing. The trend favors short-form, entertainment-driven ecosystems over static placements.

Meta (63.11%) and Google (26.04%) still dominate budgets, but YouTube’s +11.93% share surge shows a decisive reallocation toward video-first platforms. As attention shifts, brands that diversify spend into high-ROAS, low-CAC channels will capture compounding returns. The next growth curve belongs to advertisers who follow user behavior, not legacy media share.

Together with Scaleup Pro

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đŸŽ„ Ad of the Day

What Works:

1. Emotional Hook Through Eye Contact - The dog’s big, curious eyes create instant empathy and trigger a nurturing response that feels personal. It’s less “ad” and more “aww.” Build emotion-first visuals that make the viewer feel responsible for the product’s subject.

2. Soft Urgency That Feels Trustworthy - The orange “15% Off + Free Shipping” pops without breaking the calm tone, urgency with warmth. It invites, not pressures. In emotional categories, let urgency feel like care, not a countdown.

3. Cohesive Color Psychology - Every element, logo, chews, and background, shares the same warm orange hue, creating harmony and recall. When your product color becomes your brand cue, you win instant recognition.

This ad wins by blending empathy, warmth, and design precision, it doesn’t sell a supplement, it sells care. Every element, from the dog’s gaze to the soft orange palette, turns health into an act of love, proving that emotional trust outperforms product talk in pet wellness.

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