Q1 Coming to a Close?! 🤯

Well, that was fast. Q1 in the books. As we started 2024, one of the most common questions I got was how it would compare to 2023. I predicted it would be more of the same and anticipated a flat year until the Fed officially cut rates (which we’re expecting to take place in June of 2024). It’s felt flat and our paid media spend is roughly flat Q1 2024 vs Q1 2023.

March Madness just wrapped the first 2 rounds. It’s been an odd tournament so far, not much madness. Much predictability. I successfully predicted 13 of the 16 teams that reached the Sweet 16 and all of my Elite 8 teams are still alive. Might be the best start I’ve gotten off to in my 20+ years of filling out a bracket.

Speaking on 2 different Webinars this week. Would love to see you there!

1. Chargeflow’s Shaping The Future of DTC in 2024: Wednesday, March 27 at 12pm EST (I’ll speaking at ~1:30pm). RSVP HERE.

2. PartnerHub’s TikTok Tracks GTM Panel: Wednesday, March 27 at 1pm EST (I’ll be speaking at ~2:30pm EST). RSVP HERE.

1. Nvidia’s CEO Wishes You Pain & Suffering

Last week, Jensen Huang (CEO of Nvidia) made a polarizing remark.

"I hope suffering happens to you," Jensen Huang said to Stanford students.

Kind of a strange wish to a room of ambitious people. But he makes an intriguing point.

Without pain and suffering, there's no resilience.

Without resilience, there's no greatness.

If you want to be great, you need to be able to go through tough times. Journeys to success are never an easy coast.

In 1996, Nvidia nearly went out of business. Jensen Huang had to lay off more than half of his staff. Today, Nvidia is worth $2.4T and is the 3rd most valuable company in the entire world.

Going through a tough time? Remember this lesson.

2. AI Digital Trends in Marketing

SEMRush recently published their 2024 Digital Trends white paper.

Here are the main takeaways:

• AI-related domain traffic spiked 1,000% in 2023 (as expected).

• There was a 49% decline in job postings with keywords like “content writer” and “copywriting.” This is fairly alarming since this is the most widely-adopted use case for AI & LLMs at the moment. I don’t believe AI is “replacing jobs,” but it’s expanding the bandwidth of existing jobs, which in turn reduces the overall number of positions in the workforce.

• AI will begin to penetrate personalization in marketing to improve campaign performance. Example: AI-driven tools can help

  marketers optimize email send times based on users’ location,

  browsing history, purchase trends, and engagement patterns.

• Location-Based Marketing (LBM) is becoming more widely adopted to augment paid media campaigns. Imagine being able to target people who were in a competitor’s brick and mortar store that day? Imagine doing that with a “Us vs Them” creative that shows how your brand is superior. The possibilities are endless.

• The subscription-based DTC economy is expected to have a Compounding Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18% through 2025, reaching a market value of $1.5 trillion by 2025. This highlights consumer preference towards “setting and forgetting” having to order consumable products that are bound to run out.

• 61% of Gen Z prefers consuming UGC vs other forms of content.

• Social Commerce is rising…heavily. Roughly 70% of GenZ are purchasing products directly from social media platforms, compared to roughly 40% of the entire population. Social Commerce revenue is expected to grow more than 100% in the next 4 years.

Is Meta Ad Performance Really Tanking?

LOTS of comments like the one above circulating around the DTC Twitter wire these past few weeks. Let me start off by saying there is a ton of variability from brand to brand. No ad account has the same experience, so I want to stay away from generalized statements.

FIRST - always know how to ingest data. When looking at a potential dip in performance, you must have a view on YoY trends over the given time period you want to look at. Understand how you need to slice and dice the data. If you’re only looking at month to month data, you’re not accounting for seasonality. Don’t forget this. If you need help extracting, transforming, or visualizing data, reach out to us at Avenue Z. We’ve built an incredibly flexible data visualization tool that has been game-changing for our media buying teams (more to come on this).

Overall, Meta performance seems to be fairly normal and expected for us in 2024, especially when comparing to 2023 during the same time frame. March did show a drop in performance from February, but relative to January - February was actually a spike in performance. However, when you drill down to the brand level, performance trends are actually all over the map. Some brands had March as their best month, some February, some January.

The conclusion here is that what you read online should never be taken for gospel. Every brand experiences different things at different moments. It’s always important to stay aware of what’s happening, but don’t take things immediately at face value.

Hope everyone is hanging in there. If you’re facing any difficulties, don’t hesitate to reach out for an extra set of eyes!

What I’m Listening to 🎧

Beats of the Week: Maz 🇧🇷 Live 08/2023 - Ultra Europe (Croatia)

Miami Music Week just wrapped. Saw some of my all time favorites like Rony Seikaly and Black Coffee. But honestly, none compared to Maz. Hailing from Brazil, he’s just breaking into the US scene. I’ve been listening to him for over a year now, but he’s been lighting it up. He just released his new single Corpo e Canção which quickly rose to the #1 Spot on Beatport this week in the Afro House genre. Even got to meet him after the show and snap a picture with him. I’ll be going to any show of his next time he’s in town. Unfortunately not many of his live sets have been uploaded recently, but in the meantime you need to give the one below a listen. Combining ethnic Brazilian music & vocals with afro house beats, his unique style and vibe-setting is like none other.

I welcome all feedback. Good, bad, everything in between.

Hit reply, and let’s hear it! 👂

📧 Share your thoughts or what you want me to cover next!