Wednesday Digestible - What you can learn from political ads

Hey folks,

Thanks for stopping by for another quick bite to chew on.

Well, election season is finally coming to an end.

Big exhale. 

Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, it will be nice not to have to worry about the impact of political advertising on CPMs anymore. 

Instead, you need to worry about your final push towards Black Friday - which probably means rising CPMs. But at least this time they will be tied to increased shopping behavior and buyer intent. 

Today we share a couple of snacks and a meal around what you can learn from political ads (seriously) and where else you can think about spending your ad dollars. 

Today:

• Snack 1 - Political ad structure lesson

• Snack 2 - A new, growing ad channel

• Meal - A CMO and CFO talk about brand marketing

Before we get going - 

What if we could add $20,000 to your bottom line right now with just one recommendation?

This isn’t a hypothetical. It actually happened. 

The first time we mentioned Chargeflow, a founder we know with major chargeback challenges signed up. 

His batting average for chargeback wins at the time? 30% 😢 

7 months later?

• From 30% to an +80% win rate 📈 

• +$20k in previously lost revenue recovered 💵

We love simple wins like this. 

Tools that solve a major headache and save you five figures are no-brainers. We also love sharing these wins when we find them. 

Since we added Chargeflow to our stack, our chargeback win rate has skyrocketed by 300%. 

(And our misery when it comes to battling them has dropped to 0.)

If you’re fighting chargebacks and losing, Chargeflow is your secret weapon. 

Sign up with this link and use our exclusive code OBVI10K to get $10,000 in free chargeback management.

Get in before BFCM! Offer ends November 30th. 

What you can learn from attack ads

Okay, not attack ads specifically, but if you’re in the US you’ve probably seen a lot of political advertising in general recently. 

Presidential campaigns spend billions on TV and social these days. As David notes, they often have a tried and true hook/payoff formula that is simple, but effective. 

They aren’t selling stuff on Shopify, but there’s a lot in common with good direct response messaging when it comes to these kinds of political spots.

And you can be sure they work because:

1. They are all over the place

2. A ton of money is being spent on them

Think of a recent, memorable political ad you saw. 

Was it clear…

→ Who they were targeting? ✅ 

→ What the main issue was? ✅

→ What emotional triggers they were leveraging? ✅

Even though we don’t know the ad you’re thinking of, it’s almost a guarantee it ticked all of those boxes. 

You don’t have to get into cynical mudslinging or overly manipulative tactics with your ads, of course. 

But the best DR messaging and framing can also follow the political formula → 

• Hook your target audience with a key issue in the first 5 seconds. 

• Spend the next 15-30 seconds doubling down on that issue through emotional triggers. 

• Finish up by presenting your product as the solution. 

Bingo, you’re ready to build a winning ad. Or run for office. 

Ever heard of AppLovin?

If you haven’t, you probably will soon. 

Ad dollars from major players are starting to flow into online mobile gaming. 

This is primarily through platforms like AppLovin, which has access to 1.4 billion active users across CTV and mobile apps. 

As Zach hints at here, this could become the next, major digital ad platform for DTC and e-commerce. 

We’ve already started to hear success stories from some bigger brands in our network who have dipped their toe in the water.

Right now, this seems to be in the wheelhouse of bigger 8 and 9-figure companies. 

So if you’re still fighting to get over $10+ million annually, it’s best that you focus on your primary channels and product development. 

But we know a lot of scaling and mature brands who are hungry to diversify their spend (mostly away from Meta) and looking for viable new places to put their budget.

At Obvi, we still love Meta and most of our spend still goes there. 

But we are definitely keeping our eyes on options like this. 

New reach, new audiences, and a diversified portfolio of ad options are not bad things, especially as you reach maturity on your main channels.  

Should you be spending on brand marketing?

We kinda love this conversational format from Preston of Chubbies shorts. 

He uses this method to present his argument in favor of brand marketing. Even, in this case, on a social ad that is getting a lot of engagement but no sales. 

The hypothetical conversation represents a real internal struggle at most DTC brands - the desire to grow, but the need to do it efficiently.  

Even if you don’t have a CFO yet - even if you’re just a founder or a small team - trying to strike that balance is a never-ending source of frustration and anxiety. 

As a result, your marketing focus usually shifts to things you can easily measure. That means - digital ads and campaigns with clear attribution. 

“This ad drove X sales at this spend over this time period.” 

Now you can calculate a CPA. You can ladder that up to a profit margin. And you can try to get more ads like that. 

We’re not saying that’s wrong. We do that. You should know your numbers and you should worry about efficiency.

But Preseton widens the aperture a bit. 

A singular focus on marketing efficiency can cost you over time. 

Because more than just the sales you can measure over a 7-day window matter when it comes to sustainable growth.

Especially at scale, you want to avoid continuously squeezing your core audience and existing customers for revenue, since they tend to be the cheapest to (re-)acquire.  

As you grow, you want to find ways to get more people searching for your brand, landing on your website organically, or looking for you on the shelves at retail. 

The more of your revenue that comes from those behaviors, the stronger your brand is, and the less reliant you’ll be on direct response ads with rising CACs.  

Reminder → we interviewed Preston and Tom from Chubbies about brand building recently. 

In case you missed it…

→ Our deep dive into marketing measurement and attribution. 

Like we said…YES we still spend on a lot Meta and YES efficiency does matter.

We go through how we manage both in this post. 

→ The 10 commandments of DTC finance. 

Here are 10 pillars to help build your financial management, based on how we’ve done it at Obvi. 

A simple, but vital guide if you’re struggling to get your books in order.

→ Want to see Ash audit a Meta account live?

Grab a seat at our free Webinar with Proxima’s Alex Song tomorrow. 

→ Finally, check out Ash’s special podcast episode with Ned MacPherson of Power Digital on how to discount LESS on Black Friday 🤔🤯 

It’s a pretty quick chat but packed with huge value (in our humble opinion).

All the best,

Ron and Ash