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Now, let's get into this week's edition.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Is Your Hero Product Wasting Your Ad Budget?
💠 Custom Audiences Are Coming to ChatGPT Ads
💠 Mid-Day Squares: The Human Side of Brand Building PODCAST
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Every brand eventually ends up with a handful of hero products.

Over time, those products naturally receive most of the advertising budget.

But, how do you know you're investing the right amount in each one?

That's a question most brands never stop to ask.

We call this the Product Budget Allocation Audit.

It's a simple exercise that can help you identify products that may be receiving more budget than they deserve, while uncovering others that have room to grow.

List your hero products.

For each product, build a simple spreadsheet with one row per month.

I'd recommend looking at year-to-date, plus the same period last year for comparison.

For each month, include:

Now pull the data from Meta and Shopify, and complete the spreadsheet.

Don't overcomplicate it.

The goal isn't perfect attribution.

It's to identify patterns over time.

Before jumping to conclusions, add context.

Keep in mind things like:

Now start looking for patterns.

Ask yourself:

Again, you're not trying to prove causation.

You're looking for directional insights that can help you make better budget decisions.

Write down your findings.

Then use them to rethink your campaign structure and budget allocation.

Sometimes you'll discover you're overspending on products that were likely going to sell anyway.

Other times you'll realize some products deserve a much bigger share of your advertising budget.

That's why I call this Business-first Media Buying.

Before asking, "How can I improve ROAS?", ask yourself:

"Is this where my next advertising dollar should go?"

It's a very different question.

If you're running a 7 or 8-figure brand and want help running a Product Budget Allocation Audit, reply to this email or book a call with me.

We've used this framework with a number of brands to uncover opportunities that would've never shown up inside the ad account alone.

Over the past few months, we've audited more than 50 7- and 8-figure brands.

Most weren't struggling to grow.
They were struggling to grow efficiently.

Revenue was there.
Profit wasn't.

And the same patterns kept showing up:

The problem?

Many brands enter Q3 thinking they need more traffic, more campaigns, or more creative.

What they actually need is a stronger foundation.

Because once Q4 arrives, there's very little time to fix what's broken.

The brands that perform best during the second half of the year typically start preparing months before BFCM.

They identify the bottlenecks.

They fix the leaks.

And they build a clear plan for growth.

At BSR, we help brands uncover where revenue and profit are leaking across ads, email, offers, and the customer journey, then build a practical roadmap for the next 90 days.

If you're planning to make a strong push in Q3 and Q4, now is the time to get the foundation right.

OpenAI is testing Custom Audiences.

Just like on Meta and Google, advertisers can now upload customer lists (emails or phone numbers) to include or exclude those users from campaigns.

At first glance, it doesn't sound like a big deal.

But I think it says something much bigger.

A few months ago, ChatGPT Ads relied almost entirely on Context Hints. You'd describe the type of customer you wanted to reach, and the algorithm did the rest.

Now we're starting to see more advertiser controls being added.

First came conversion optimization. (Still gradually rolling out.)

Now Custom Audiences.

To me, this looks less like OpenAI experimenting with random features, and more like them slowly building an advertising platform that feels familiar to anyone coming from Meta or Google.

There are still some pretty big limitations.

For now, audience lists appear to require at least 100,000 identifiers before they can be used, which puts this feature out of reach for most brands. Match rates are also still a big question mark.

But I wouldn't get too caught up in today's limitations.

If you've followed Meta or Google long enough, you've seen this movie before.

New ad platforms almost always launch with the basics, then gradually add more controls, better optimization, and more targeting options over time.

That's why I keep paying attention to every ChatGPT Ads update.

Not because I think brands should move all their budget there tomorrow.

But because every release gives us another clue about where conversational advertising is going.

Are you already running ads on this channel? I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments or by replying to this email.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

Every successful brand starts somewhere.

For Mid-Day Squares, it started in a condo kitchen.

No food industry experience. No budget for shipping. Just three founders committed to showing up every single day.

In this episode of The DTC Insider, I sat down with Jake Karls, Co-Founder & Rainmaker of Mid-Day Squares about the power of consistency, resilience, and building in public.

It's one of my favorite episodes to date.

🎙 Tune in

📰 TikTok launches AI literacy measures [read more]
📰 Instagram will charge for AI access [read more]
📰 Google adds AI creation disclosure for ads [read more]

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

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