2025 = Never a Dull Moment

If your GA4 ChatGPT traffic chart doesn’t look like this, your brand’s visibility in AI search engines is already falling behind. In 2025, AI search optimization, TikTok Shop evolution, and Meta’s volatile ad ecosystem are changing how brands scale online. Here’s what every ecommerce brand, performance marketer, and operator should know this week.

The above image shows ChatGPT referral traffic to our Avenue Z domain. We’ve been prioritizing this and experimenting and it’s paying off. Now onto the newsletter👇

Macroeconomy, tariffs, Meta volatility, AI evolving. This year has been an absolute DOOZY to keep up with. Running a business while trying to stay current on new industry trends & updates this year has been challenging to say the least.

AI this, AI that. What’s a distraction? What’s real? Lots to sift through!

It is absolutely critical to keep up to date on what’s new in the industry, whether it’s tools, platform updates, or even industry trends. Without getting this info in real-time you’ll struggle to keep up with businesses that do. Thanks to AI, it feels that we’re in the middle of a gold rush. Companies are acting with urgency & industry transformation has never been higher.

It’s been a little while since my last official newsletter. I’ve been sucked into the vortex of AI & innovation and haven’t been able to create as much time as I’d have liked.

That being said, here are the most important updates over the past couple months:

• Shopify Editions: Published on May 21st (2025), it was honestly underwhelming. The MAIN update I’d like to callout (by far) is the launch of Storefront MCP Servers. We summarized what MCP Servers are, what it means for brands, and how to check your own MCP Server HERE.

  🎥 I recorded a step-by-step walkthrough video for how to test your own server. This is CRITICAL to ensure AI can read & interact with your shop. If you run a Shopify brand, do this ASAP.

• Consumer Health Trends by Source Medium: This is literally a free resource that our friends at Source Medium launched this past week. Wondering if external forces are impacting your brand? With this free consumer health index, you can easily track consumer strength in 3 capacities: jobs & income, financial stress, and purchasing power. Now you can track macro forces and analyze correlation w/ your own store’s performance.

• Match Rates: One of the biggest reasons media buyers struggle to align ad performance with business profitability? Match rate. Read my piece on this topic and get a handle on it. YES, there are things you can control. This is table stakes in 2025, yet few even have this on their radar.

• AppLovin launched it’s new “self-serve” dashboard on June 3, 2025. Here’s a walkthrough video that previews the new UI. It’s a HUGE upgrade over their last dashboard.

1. Meta, Meta, Meta

Meta has been top of mind for me over the past 2 months (for better or for worse). Here are 2 of top Meta-related discussion points:

✅ Performance Summit Recap

Took place last Wednesday, June 4. I didn’t attend physically, but did tune in virtually. Honestly nothing that I hadn’t already heard previously but most content was around value optimization, the importance of creators & partnership ads in the Meta ads ecosystem, creator marketplace focus, Andromeda & the auction strengthening, creative diversity, incrementality, omni-channel measurement & optimization, and genAI creative.

The most important thing to focus on right now is around Value Optimization.

Meta is broadening its optimization options to more closely tie business goals to algorithm optimization. Historically for ecommerce, the options were limited and most brands had to optimize for highest VOLUME of conversions, not highest VALUE. Some businesses care more about CAC, others care more about ROAS. Those who prioritize CAC should optimize for VOLUME of conversions and those who prioritize ROAS should optimize for VALUE of conversions. Here’s a breakdown of 3 different scenarios that Meta is now addressing in its value optimization initiatives:

Scenario 1. Brand cares about ROAS on purchases (globally avail now)

Advertisers are now able to optimize on VALUE of purchases rather than VOLUME of purchases. Take a look at the formulae below and notice the word value impacts the definition. By now optimizing for value of conversions, you’re able to optimize for ROAS.

CAC = Conversions / Cost

ROAS = Conversions value / Cost

Example: biz who values ROAS with a $500 budget would prefer $1000 in revenue from 10 sales (2x ROAS) RATHER THAN $800 in revenue from 15 sales (1.6x ROAS).

Scenario 2. Brand cares about ROAS on profit (in beta)

Brands will be able to send back profit margin data on SKUs so Meta can optimize for PROFIT on ad spend now and prioritize SKUs with better margins than others in the auction.

Scenario 3. Brand cares about ROAS on non-standard purchase event (expanding globally)

Brands will be able to optimize for ROAS on non-standard purchase events, like new customer purchases.

Marketers and brands need to understand their own businesses and elect to choose the optimization event/window that most closely ties to their key business objectives.

✅ Health and Wellness “Categorization” Update

Over the past few weeks, Meta has silently dug deeper into health & wellness categorizations and started turning on “Core Setup” with no outward communications to impacted brands and no clarity on the ramifications of the different scenarios.

Right now, one of 2 categorizations happen:

“Health & Wellness” - MORE SEVERE
“Health & Wellness - Other” - LESS SEVERE

Typically when a brand is impacted by one of the 2 categories, Core Setup is automatically turned ON (and can’t turn it off).

However, I’ve also seen brands with categorization ON with Core Setup OFF. Highly confusing. When pressed, Meta actually doesn’t even seem to understand what’s going on with this. It seems like there’s a black box Meta H&W team that has 0 communication to the outer world within its own company.

🧠 Read my full breakdown: Meta's Health & Wellness Categorization is Killing Performance HERE.

2. TikTok Shop: The Era of Free Views is OVER

I’ve been vocal about this for the past year or so, yet it’s still been somewhat of a surprise to brands when I bring this up to them. Brands come in to us with expectations of TikTok Shop circa 2023 and I’ve had to bring them back to earth.

Business Insider just published a piece on this last week.

TikTok Shop’s early promise to brands in the US was simple: go viral for free. And for a while, that worked. Sellers of all types of products were raking in millions of organic views—driving sales without spending a dime.

But as of 2025, that free lunch is gone.

According to Business Insider, TikTok has sharply dialed back its algorithmic push for unpaid Shop content. What was once a goldmine of organic traffic is now a pay-to-play marketplace. Multiple insiders have admitted that brands must now buy ads to reach the same level of exposure they once got for free. It’s been clear to me that product-tagged posts (brand or affiliate) have had organic reach NUKED. It’s rare that an organic product-tagged video gets more than 1k organic impressions. This also coincided with the launch of GMV Max’s launch (TikTok Shop’s version of Meta Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns).

It’s a major strategic pivot- and a painful one for small sellers who built their business on TikTok’s early virality. The shift aligns TikTok’s model closer to Amazon, where ads drive visibility and platform profits.

As shipping subsidies vanish and seller perks dry up, it’s clear: TikTok Shop is maturing fast and the free boost/subsidy days are over.

If your TikTok Shop strategy doesn’t include paid media, you’re falling behind. Reach out to us (Avenue Z) if you want help scaling profitably.

This isn’t breaking news and it absolutely does NOT mean that the TikTok Shop scaling days are over. This outcome was always inevitable.

Arbitrage opportunities happen in small windows. This is why it’s important to have your ears to the ground at all times and strike while the iron is hot.

3. Our NEW AI Search Visibility Index (AIVX) Report is Out: Crytpo/Blockchain (June 2025)

We just dropped our third AI Search Visibility Index (AIVX) report. This one focused on Blockchain & Crypto brands.

📊 Top 3 insights:

1. 3 companies earned 50%+ of all AI citations.

2. Schema markup alone doesn’t cut it — structured docs + PR in authority domains matter more.

3. Visibility = Trust = Revenue. LLMs are now gatekeepers.

If you care about how ChatGPT and Perplexity rank and recommend brands, this report is a must-read.

Want to Stay Ahead?

→ Join the AI Visibility waitlist. Next up? Health & Beauty
→ Read previous AIVX reports

Will Meta “Fully Automate” Advertising by 2026?

The Wall Street Journal just put out an article with this bold claim from Meta.

Here’s my take: Resounding NO.

This reminds me of the narrative Meta spewed for over a year around Advantage+ Shopping campaigns taking up 100% of budget. In the past couple months they walked this back and admitted that marketers still needed a level of control with creative testing and should still allocate budgets at the creative level for new tests.

In the WSJ article, it referenced Meta’s end-goal: "A brand could provide a product image and a budget, and Meta's AI would generate the ad, including image, video and text, and then determine user targeting on Instagram and Facebook with budget suggestions" 

Naive statement. A lot more goes into media buying than this.

Don't get me wrong, this would be useful, but still a far cry from "fully automating advertising." I'd use Meta’s AI-generated creatives in their own "Meta AI" creative testing ASC and just let all the Meta AI-created assets fight over a small pool of spend, but not replacing everything else that already exists in the creative process.

That being said, this is a stark reminder for what's at risk and threatened by AI: Execution work

Here’s what's not threatened: strategy & understanding of the tools.

AI is the tool. Humans must learn how to use the tools.

Or they'll get left behind. And replaced by those who understand the tools.

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: FRANCIS MERCIER | SXM FESTIVAL 2025 (FULL SET)

Francis Mercier is easily top 3 for me right now. Listen to this set for good vibes & a natural energy lift. Can’t get enough of his live sets.

You’re reading In The Snow, by Jonathan Snow.
This is where operators, media buyers, and digital execs stay ahead of the curve.

Feel free to reply directly with any thoughts or feedback.