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Good morning!
In today’s newsletter,
How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads
Can AI chatbots truly see images?
AOV is a terrible metric to use for setting your free shipping threshold.
Running Meta ads on a small budget? Stop micro-managing your campaigns.
Execute out-of-home campaigns as easily as digital ads with AdQuick
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How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads
The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.
AI chatbots
Can AI chatbots truly see images?
Chris Green put it to the test.
He created two nearly identical pages hosted on GitHub Pages.
One contained only standard text and a product image. The other was identical in text but included a price offer in the image—an offer not found anywhere in the HTML.
Both pages were given to Gemini and ChatGPT. Chris asked each model what could be seen on the page and specifically inquired whether they could "see" or "read" the image.
The results? Even when explicitly asked, both models stated they could not "see" the images.
What does this mean? If AI chatbots are primarily summarizing text extracted from HTML and not processing or using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on images, any critical information embedded solely in pixels might as well be invisible to them.
Actionable Steps:
Ensure that any key information, such as prices or promotions, is included in text-based HTML and not hidden solely in images.
Consider adding alt text and image captions to provide context and ensure your content is fully accessible to AI models.
Credit: Aleyda Solís
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Conversion
AOV is a terrible metric to use for setting your free shipping threshold.
Here’s why: Many brands base their free shipping threshold on Average Order Value (AOV), but AOV is usually the mean (the average). And the mean isn’t always the best number to use.
The mean can be distorted by things like:
High-value customers who spend a lot
Bulk purchases that increase the total value
Seasonal sales or spikes
So, if you set your free shipping threshold at, say, £100, based on an AOV of £83, you’re making a decision based on the average. But the truth is, the most common order is likely only £44 — nowhere near £100.
This isn’t a good strategy.
The modal value (the most common amount spent) is a better indicator of what your customers typically spend. The mean, on the other hand, gets skewed by a few big orders and doesn’t reflect what most customers do.
Don’t just drop your threshold right away, though. That’s not the right answer either.
The real question is:
For orders below the threshold, how much are they actually missing by?
For orders above the threshold, how much more are they spending than necessary?
And, how many customers are close enough to the threshold that adjusting it would influence their behavior?
Actionable Steps:
Look at your modal order value: Don’t just focus on the AOV (average). The modal value tells you what most customers spend.
Analyze your cart data: See how close most orders are to your free shipping threshold and adjust accordingly.
Pair it with upsells: Lowering the threshold and adding upsells can help influence customers to spend more without giving away free shipping to everyone.
Credit: Will Laurenson
Paid acquisition
Running Meta ads on a small budget? Stop micro-managing your campaigns.
Constant budget tweaks. Swapping creatives every 2 days. Adjusting targeting every time results dip.
On a small budget, you can't afford to keep making these changes.
Here’s why:
Every time you launch or make a meaningful change, Meta enters the learning phase. During this phase, Meta is testing:
Who to show your ads to
Placements
Frequency
Timing
Which creative to prioritize
Performance will be volatile.
Some days, the results are up. Some days, they're down. And that’s normal.
But with a small budget:
Fewer conversions leads to
A longer learning phase, which means...
More changes = constant resets
And that leaves the system stuck in a volatile state because it never gets a chance to stabilize.
Actionable steps:
Set an optimization schedule
Make changes only every 7-10 days (adjust based on conversion volume). Consistency helps the system learn faster.Don’t decide from noise
Use a statistical significance calculator before killing ads. You can easily find a free one online. Don’t act on short-term fluctuations.Work around the campaign, not in it
Analyze data. Plan tests. Build new creatives. But don’t touch live settings every 48 hours.
Credit: Ben Heath
Real-World Ads, Simple to Run
With AdQuick, executing Out Of Home campaigns is as easy as running digital ads. Plan, deploy, and measure your real-world advertising effortlessly—so your team can scale campaigns and maximize impact without the headaches.
Have questions or feedback? You can write to kaushal@dtcdailynews.com