March Madness in Ecommerce: Diving Deep into Meta and Mothers Day

[00:00:00] Taylor Holiday: Welcome to the March issue of the state of the e commerce industry report, where we are going to be taking a deep dive into the performance across our industry for the month of March. As always, I'm joined by the heads of the data conglomerate here. Each of them are going to introduce themselves. So we're going to dive in to what has been a wild month.

In the ecommerce industry, and we're excited to share with you as much of the data as we can. We're going to give you teasers, of course, because we want you to go check out the next issue, which goes live Monday April the 15th at dtcindex.com. Make sure you are signed up and it will be in your inbox immediately.

And also we now have PDF versions of all the historical issues when you sign up. So you'll be getting access to everything there. But let's get started by introducing the members of the DTC index to my right. Mr. Steven recook, Steve, who are you and what data are you providing for us today?

[00:00:55] Steven Rekuc: Thanks, Taylor. I'm Steve Rekuc analytics manager at Common Thread Collective. I'm looking at the survey data that we get from NoCommerce as part of the DTCCI calculation. And I also have our own data set from Statlas.io. That's a great data set over 300, around 300 companies nowhere near as big as Yarden's that he has over at Verus.

[00:01:17] Taylor Holiday: Well, on that note, Mr. Yarden Shaked, who are you and what are you representing today? Cause you're going to play an important role for us here today.

[00:01:25] Yarden Shaked: Hey, yeah I'm, I'm, CEO of a company called Veros. Basically what we do is we provide ecommerce businesses with benchmarking and market trends so they can see how they stack up compared to their direct competitive set and how things are trending. If they had an increase in spike if they had a spike in cost, you know, what does it do to them or was it due to the market?

And understanding that and actioning off it. We have 6, 000 brands on Veros and 6 billion of ad spend. So, you know, first party anonymized and aggregated data and you know, the macro trends from this is what we're gonna be talking about today.

[00:02:03] Taylor Holiday: Awesome. And finally the Denver nuggets mascot, Mr. Jeremiah Prummer.

[00:02:09] Jeremiah Prummer: yes, I do like the nuggets as we were discussing earlier, maybe the only person on DTC Twitter except for Eric Farmer, who also like the nuggets. So I am CEO of no commerce. We work with about 4, 000 brands or almost 4, 000 brands who. Run surveys on our platform. And as part of that, we have different experiences in our platform where brands can participate in aggregate data sets.

And so we're looking at a couple of different things here as we have been over the past couple of months, we're looking at gifting moments and what the trends are and what the data tells us about, about what's coming up. And so, mother's day and father's day are both coming up very soon. So we're going to be breaking down mother's day specifically this month.

Looking at some of the exact timings that we saw from last year and hopefully give you some resources to help you really hit that holiday hard and do well with that. As well, we're going to look into a little bit of data that we collected from a set of customers looking at the impact of ratings and reviews on purchase behavior.

[00:03:09] Taylor Holiday: Awesome. So I just want to outline one of the ways that we work as a group is. Every Wednesday before the publication of our issue, we all provide our data and we have a consistent set of information and metrics that we look at. And so before we have any dialogue or narrative, we begin from what is true, what happened from the information from each of our sources, and then begin to analyze that.

And we have a dialogue together, a pre-production meeting across all of us where we look at the numbers and we try to sort out the trend or narrative that's emerging from the data. And this is really important, the movement of narrative from data first, where we allow ourselves to be as much as we can informed by the information first.

Now, this is hard and we acknowledge this because we are humans. We exist in a world that has a bunch of signal that has already informed us about what people are experiencing throughout the month of March. We ourselves work in businesses that have our own experiences. So we recognize that that's the case.

And I know you as a listener. Also have that bias. As you walk in here, you have a likely an individual brand experience. You have information that you've consumed. Maybe you've come across a Bloomberg article. I don't know something that may inform you about what you believe to be true with that in mind.

I'm going to read, I'm going to give you a little teaser about information that I want you to, to just process as we head into this episode. So looking at various aggregate data for the month of March platform one, and I'm not going to reveal which it is. CPM plus 6 percent year over year spend plus 41 percent year over year ROAS down 3 percent year over year platform to CPM plus 54%. Spend down 32 percent ROAS plus 7 percent year over year. Now I want you to think based on what you know and believe, which is each platform, see if you can guess. And at the end of the episode, we're going to reveal it. But for now, we're going to start with mother's day because it is coming up. The time is now to make a move for mom.

So Jeremiah, what have we learned and what are you going to be revealing to us in the DTC index about mother's day? 

[00:05:23] Jeremiah Prummer: So we are looking at data from 2023. to help us better understand what may be happening in 2024. So we looked at the question, who is this purchase for? It's the same question that we look at each month as we are looking at these different gifting moments in time. And when it comes to looking back at Valentine's Day, for instance, typically purchases that the shift that you see is and purchases for significant other Mother's Day is different and that you have purchases for a significant other rising and you also see purchases for a family member rising, right?

So that's both. You know, I, as an adult have my own money and can buy a gift for my mother. But if I am buying a gift for my wife on behalf of my children you know, buying for my mother as a family member, buying for my wife is going to be a significant other, right? So you typically see a pretty large rise in both of those.

And so what we saw last year was That the peak of, I, I won't share exactly what the peak was, but looking at when the trends started we saw last year, April 21st, a Friday was when the buying trends really started to take off. And that's basically that, that weekend three weeks prior to Mother's Day was when the gifting started.

For us, that's coming up really soon. And so we're going to be breaking down a few of those different timelines. We're going to be looking at a couple of things to some really actual insights that you may want to take away from this in terms of how you should be thinking about the, the pricing of the items that you are selling to people at different timeframes.

So we're going to break that down a little bit, but ultimately. What we want to be able to do is give you the ability to see like what the actual buying process looks like over that several weeks surrounding Mother's Day. And hopefully that gives you some ability to go ahead and take that information and apply it to your business.

[00:07:23] Taylor Holiday: One of the things I'm always amazed by every time I look at this is that things start a little earlier, but they last longer than I expect in terms of gifting. I think sometimes in e commerce, we get stuck in the logistics framework of like, when can we get a product to a person? But the data tapers out a little bit longer than that.

Is that a fair to say, Jeremiah, is there anything that you think is actionable for people as it relates to the specific period that you're seeing?

[00:07:49] Jeremiah Prummer: Yeah, absolutely. I think the Mother's Day and so when we looked at Valentine's Day, just kind of to recap that we saw that the buying of Valentine's Day gifts Carried through Valentine's day, like fully through Valentine's day. The, there seems to be a tail off a little bit faster for mother's day, but there is a difference in the way people are buying and the amount that they're spending.

And I think that's something that we really want people to be able to take away from this as they dive into the data. The, the way that I would think about it is you may want your strategy two weeks before Mother's day to look a little bit different than it does two days before Mother's day. But in general, what we're seeing on holidays is that people will buy.

Up until the holiday, even through the holiday sometimes when I think about my own behavior it makes sense. I am not a great pre planner when it comes to these things I would be lying if I said that I have never bought my wife a gift the day of taken a picture of it and dropped it in a card

And I think that's probably a common experience. So that's something that, that I, I think we just need to be thinking about. Like in to Taylor's point, we, we oftentimes think about things from, in terms of shipping, logistics, but that's not always the way that people buy products and, and the behavior of that purchase cycle.

Mm-Hmm.

[00:09:02] Yarden Shaked: Yeah, this is one of the things that really, I mean, like, I really surprised me looking at no commerce data and we went into Veros data just to confirm. I mean, there's. There's a lot of sales coming in. You know, last year Mother's Day was on May 14th. So May 13th and 14th, which probably is not getting there in time.

It was surprising. My guess is a lot of brands are even kind of giving up on that revenue because they're going up to the, you know, sales of two days. Before. And so, you know, there, there, there's seems to be a play here of really leaning into and making a big splash the day of Mother's Day and the day before even though it can't ship there, there's still a lot of sales happening.

[00:09:45] Taylor Holiday: And as a reminder, this data is all gathered through the delivery of a post purchase survey from customers as they through nose platform. And that's a good setup for Steve coming to you on the project that we've been working on with no commerce now for over a year. Which are a set of survey questions related to consumer confidence.

And maybe you can tell us a little bit about what are the questions we've been asking and what important milestone both in terms of the, the length of this project, as well as the peak of this project that we just hit in March.

[00:10:20] Steven Rekuc: Yeah, absolutely. So we started off with five essential questions in determining their confidence on their own ability to purchase in the present the future the economy and how they were looking at themselves as a spender or a saver. So we start off, the first question I believe we ask is, do you enjoy the, the value of saving money or seeing money in your bank account?

Or do you see yourself do you enjoy splurging and that kind of in a way primes them for some of the other questions So when we see a little bit of the responses coming in for these few other questions You'll see kind of how that may affect it and then of course we asked do you expect to spend more in the present or did you spend more in the present month?

Than normal. And then do you intend to spend more in the next three months than normal? And so what we found actually and then finally we asked about the economy. What do you see, what do you anticipate the economy being better or worse in the future? And we actually hit a milestone as you were pointing out, Taylor, it was that the most positive view of the economy that we've seen since we began this survey.

This is 13 months of this survey. Now, we've completed a full year and we've gone up to, it's still a pessimistic kind of view of the economy somewhat, but part of that is due to the order of the questions. I think if you're asking them, if they're a spender or saver, and they say saver, And then they are kind of a little bit more they'll view things perhaps as a little bit more pessimistic.

So it might, yeah, it might anchor them in the survey.

[00:11:56] Taylor Holiday: yeah. So it's interesting, right? And I think this is I want to stay here for just a second. Is that two things are true at the same time. This is going to be a theme, I think, for us in the month of March is that one is that we have reached an all time high for the over a year that we've been running this survey in terms of consumers perception of the economy, which is like pretty amazing.

Like really, when you think about it, and I think this is one of the things that we hope to do with this little slice of data that we're building is that we're looking at an industry view. Right. So often in the general media, we're sort of competing against a broader narrative of all of America or all of the globe's view of something.

And we're just trying to say, what do DTC shoppers think about the world? And so we've reached a moment where today in the month of March, again, pretty interesting. We can unpack some hypotheses about why, but customers are saying that they are the most possible. Positive that we've seen them in over a year, but that actually is still a little cynical and negative.

It's not that they are exuberant about the future of the economy. Is that fair to say?

[00:12:57] Steven Rekuc: Yes, absolutely. There's still minus 20 percent of seeing the economy better than worse. I think some of that is because of the line of questioning.

[00:13:08] Jeremiah Prummer: Yeah. And just to kind of jump in here a little bit, I think Taylor, your point about the fact that we are measuring DTC shopper specifically is really important because it's not really a surprise. I don't think to most people, but in general, the data we've been diving in a lot more on the no commerce side in terms of looking at demographics data and like, what is the makeup of people that are buying products online?

And that's something that we're continuing to research more and more over time. But what we see is that things like household income is higher than average, right? There certainly are lower income household shoppers that, that buy online with, with the types of brands that we're all working with.

But the reality is that, like, you know, if, if like my D, D to C coffee subscription is going to be, like, I'm not buying comment here. For example, if I am somebody who makes 35, 000 a year, it's just not going to happen. I'm going to buy something off the shelf at Walmart or 7 Eleven. So I think it's, it's, it's a really important thing to keep that in mind that this is a little bit different type of thing.

Shopper, and they may actually view the economy totally differently than the the average of the total U. S. Consumer market.

[00:14:19] Taylor Holiday: Awesome.

[00:14:19] Yarden Shaked: mix that, you know, the mix makes sense, right? Like, I think it's a, it's a confusing time. I mean, like if you overlay this to a stock market chart, if it's SMP, it probably comes close, right? Like SMPs are at all time highs. Unemployment is, is very low right now. But on the flip side, you know, inflation inflation is high.

People are still interest rates are really high. It's hard to buy a home. People are still jaded from, you know, past couple of years, the market's been very tumultuous and there's a lot of fears. Going on. And so like, there's still this fear factor, but the other shoe hasn't dropped, but like the numbers are hitting that and it's like, it's a very confusing it's a very confusing time.

[00:15:00] Taylor Holiday: agree. And if you dive into the DC index, another thing that Steve covers that fits into this juxtaposition is the relationship between inflation and discounting. So dive in to see what's happening in terms of how e commerce brands are sort of handling. The price issues that they're facing in some of the ways in which that might be driving some of the efficiency and acquisition.

So that's a little tease for some of the depth of what Steve has in the episode for us. All right, Yarden, you started it. You teased out juxtaposition and the sort of challenge of sorting through what is happening in the world. Earlier. I gave a little tease of the platform data. Do you wanna reveal what platform one and Platform two are and talk about what we saw in the media buying and revenue world this month?

[00:15:44] Yarden Shaked: Sure. Yeah. So platform one is meta. So, so meta is the one where spend is up you know, 40 plus percent, CPMs only up 6%, and Ro has only down 3%. I say only given, you know. You have to look at the spend increase as well, where tick tock was actually up over 50 percent on CPMs down 32 percent on spend and up 7 percent on row as so different than what you may think and what you may hear.

And I think that's the general view of what we're seeing in March. I mean, when we, March's data. We, you know, we basically looked at it every which way. And we're kind of saying, I mean, this is a bull market. Like, things are, things are actually looking good. Like revenue growth for seven figure brands you know, is, is up over 40% and for eight year over year.

And for for eight and a nine figure brands, it's up nearly 20%. So, you know, things, things are good. It actually, those revenue growths accelerated from what they were in February year over year, you know, people are spending more without seeing significant ROAS deterioration. You know, common threads, these CCI data is, you know, showing very similar things to, to what we're seeing in, in actual reality and, and actual performance.

Yeah, yeah,

[00:17:10] Taylor Holiday: And it's funny, so I feel, I feel in your voice the, and we talked about this, that it's hard sometimes. There's almost, and this is weird, it feels bad saying this right now. Like that's how I feel in this conversation is that reporting this data is somehow an attempt to diminish the experience of people who have had struggles or something in some way.

And I think you do a good job at the end of this of acknowledging that. An aggregate data set is a composition of a lot of experiences. And this is important is that there's a spectrum of experience that happens inside of a data set that we can both acknowledge and empathize with the people that are not on this side of the bell curve.

Right. And can say that, like, that's true too. There are people that are struggling. Is that fair?

[00:17:55] Yarden Shaked: yeah, totally. And I think like, you know, it goes back to the, to the, to the economic situation of, I think, you know, every business owner right now, including us is like in their heads, you, you feel something in the air. There's some sentiment that's not, it's, it's not very positive, right. People are holding their money tighter and things like that.

But on the flip side. You know, on, on an aggregate, the, the, the numbers are actually good everywhere you look and, and, you know, there are some amber lights and reasons for, for concern. And there's definitely companies being affected and being heard and not hitting the numbers that they'd want to hit.

And there's probably more of those than, than usual, but, but in reality, that's what happens every year. You know, like it always happens that there's some companies that struggle, some parts of the market got hurt or got affected or it's out of fat and things like that. That's the situation here.

It's probably a little bit bigger, but one, one of the amber lights that we're seeing is actually the percent, like, so, so overall revenue growth is strong year over year but what's really carrying that is the, the repeat revenues in, in March. So, you know, new customer revenue is still up, but, but the, the big numbers that people are hitting is, is being driven by, by this return in revenue which is, you know, in e commerce, not, not necessarily a sustainable way to to grow a business, you know, you can, you can bring profit to it in, in the near term, but You need to balance both.

You need to, you need to be filling the top of the funnel more.

[00:19:34] Jeremiah Prummer: Yeah,

I was when I saw this data, I'll I feel like I'm a bit of an outsider on the advertising side of things, right? Like, that's not really the where I come from, where I operate. We don't even do paid ads at no commerce in terms of for our own business, but we do measure it and in a way. That's different, I think, from you know, what the, what a lot of other solutions are doing.

But I think like, I don't live in the day to day of spending dollars on paid ads. And I think when I saw this data in a vacuum, if I didn't know what was being talked about on Twitter, I would have thought things were really good. But because of what was being talked about on, on Twitter and LinkedIn, I think we, you know, looking at that number specifically yard in with you know, new customer versus returning customer revenue.

I did find that pretty striking. And so one thing I'm curious about just for people who are listening is, is that part of what you're looking at? Like when you go out here and you say that your, your numbers are bad, is that partially because you know, is that a difference of new customer versus returning customer revenue?

I don't know. I haven't seen that kind of nuance and conversation to understand if that's what's going on. But I would love to know, like just from people who are having these struggles, if that's what you're seeing, or if it's just like across the board, everything is down. 

[00:20:48] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. One of the things I think is important to remember is that businesses get to their revenue in very different ways. I'll give you sort of an example. This past two weeks, I've interviewed two different brands on my podcast. This podcast, one was the Missouri star quilt company in any given month, 90 percent of their revenue comes from their existing customer base.

Okay. Then I interviewed loop earplugs. Both of these are nine figure brands, very similar in revenue size, but for loop earplugs, 90 percent of their revenue comes from new customer acquisition. Okay. If there's an issue on Metta, one of these brands is going to be substantially more affected than the other.

And this is where, again, this experience of any issue in platform or otherwise is not evenly distributed. It doesn't impact businesses in the same way. And it's clear that the issues themselves aren't evenly distributed. Right? So in a bell curve of thousands of businesses, there are inevitably people at different ends of these spectrums and our job, what we're trying to do here.

I guess it should say none of our job, but what we're doing with this report is to try to give a view of the market as a whole, that is very different than the individual experience of any user within that market. Cause any market has winners, losers, strugglers. People succeeding at any given time, but what we're seeing is that meta spend.

And I expect this to be reflected in their earnings calls coming up was that the spend is up dramatically in this platform, 40 percent year over year with only a 3 percent reduction in efficiency. Like, if any of us could sort of be given that choice to say, Hey, If you just could right now grab, next month, you're gonna be plus 40% in spend and flat to efficiency.

You would take that immediately. That would be ized as like remarkably successful performance. And then at an aggregate level, that's what's there now to the point. If new customer revenue is a smaller percentage of it, then that 40%, then either that spend is being distributed to existing customers in a way.

Or that new customer acquisition isn't possibly as efficient as the overall Ross might be presenting. And so that's, that's worth unpacking. And there's a hypothesis I have around ASC and the way that that sort of structurally setting up that met is trying to grab more of the existing customer revenue.

There's also businesses maturing. There's a lot in that pot, but it is worth acknowledging and pointing out something to keep an eye on as we go forward. But Yarden, what do you make of TikTok? Like, so set aside the meta thing for a second and just go CPM plus 54%. That's a huge number spend down 32%. What is happening on Tik TOK?

[00:23:21] Yarden Shaked: Well, look, first of all, I mean, I think we know, and we get into some of this data, but I like tick tick tocks, making some changes that they're, they're pushing shops more and things like that. And you know, it, it, it could be affecting it, but I think it's it's a year or a couple of years now of efficiency.

And efficiency, you know, tick tock is a, is a channel that people haven't really figured out yet. There's a few that did, but like for the most part, they haven't figured it out. It's like an additional channel. It's hard to attribute it as it is today. So it's, you know, sometimes seen as brand spend and, and, and things like that.

And so any of those channels are losing spend to, to meta. I mean, even in these months where people are talking about, you know, problems in meta like Taylor talked about the spend, but it's not just the spend, it's the share of wallet. Like they're, they're increasing a share of wallet. And you know, naturally when you increase share wallet and you're increasing spend, like a lot of times you take spend from other places.

And, and I think that that's, what's been happening to tick tock in, in the past couple of months. Now it's, that's worth saying, you know, this, this month in, in the DTC index, we did analysis of, of tick tock shops. Verse Metashops Taylor with your permission. I think it makes sense to talk about that here.

Yeah.

[00:24:44] Taylor Holiday: I did want to tease. I do want to save a little bit of this for people to go check out, because I think it is really interesting, but it is. It is worth noting that I think TikTok shops is a growing and impactful arena where maybe some of that value of TikTok is shifting from out of the ad product on a direct response basis to maybe, maybe we're seeing a TikTok emphasis and direction is moving more towards Amazon competitor, Shopify competitor, then meta advertising competitor.

Is that what you're seeing?

[00:25:12] Yarden Shaked: I won't get into like all the day. I think it's really I think it's really interesting but but my point was similar to yours that. I actually, like, I'm not very bearish on TikTok. I mean, because, because on the one hand, yes, spend is down year over year. But on the other hand, there's a lot of other macro things that are going on that people are pushing to channels that they know and have already scaled and have already optimized and, and TikTok is iterating and, and they're, you know, they, they really are on the cutting edge with a, with a lot of these things.

And with TikTok shops, they're, they're pushing to a different platform. That's. You can track conversions a lot better and it's not going to be considered brand spend and, and people are going there and people are, are increasing spend, albeit it's still, you know, it's still small. But just because it's, the whole thing is down year over year, I think that they're seeing this data and they're, they're, they're figuring out a way around it and I wouldn't bet against them necessarily.

[00:26:06] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, we actually, go ahead Jeremiah.

[00:26:07] Jeremiah Prummer: One thing I think is really interesting. It's just looking at that row as up year over year on TikTok. And I think when you're talking about efficiency, this is a people a couple of years ago, there was extra money. Right? And so people tested things not needing it to be efficient. And so now you've got people, like, really leaning into the efficiency side of it.

But just, you know, Again, to, to what you're saying, yard. And I think seeing that like row as up year over year, that's a sign of that. Seeing the tick tock shop growth as a sign of that. And again, to your point, garden, like closing that loop makes it so much easier to measure that and be certain of the efficiency.

And I think that's one thing that's been really hard with we don't really cover this data here. But like one of the, the number one question actually asked on our platform is how did you first hear about us? And we look at that data. Yeah. That discovery data and we compare it to the click data.

And we do see that tick tock and YouTube have much lower percentage of much lower percentage of respondents have a click associated to those channels versus something like a meta or a Google. And I think that's part of that equation too, where there is different user behavior, it makes it hard to track.

And ultimately when people are in an efficiency mindset, that hard to track is going to impact spend. And again, to, to Yarden's point, the fact that tick tock is. Like really leaning into how do we combat that and, and build a platform that solves that problem is, is really smart. And so I think they've got a really good long term future looking at it that way.

[00:27:35] Taylor Holiday: it's one of the things that we left our conversation being optimistic for e commerce generally, is that we saw consumer confidence rising. We saw platforms continuing to produce efficient demand creation on the advertising side, and we see the emergence of this, like we're calling it sort of the third place, right?

Like Shopify, Amazon and tick tock shops, really becoming another option to drive net new customer acquisition and transaction for brands in a way that's really is starting to emerge more and more. In the zeitgeist. And so that's just hopeful that continues to be a bunch of reasons why there's opportunity ahead.

And so, despite where we walked into the conversation together, I think we leave March feeling optimistic. We feel hopeful. Maybe there's a bit of trepidation and still, we want to see some things play out, but maybe each of you could give me your sort of final sentiment of the state of the industry.

As we head out here, where are you? I would put mine at cautiously optimistic, bordering on hopeful Steve. Where, where do you leave today?

[00:28:36] Steven Rekuc: I would say I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm a little bit, probably a little more pessimistic than you. It really, I wonder if some of the confidence numbers here are impacted, you know, into April by consumer price index, like continued inflation. And we did see Easter happen earlier this year. So those Easter sales did occur in March rather than in April.

So for brands that were using that moment, so I'm, we'll see what happens in April. We're certainly seeing as we begin April, we've seen a little bit less spend on our part, a little bit lower than last year currently, but that might increase significantly with Mother's Day coming.

[00:29:16] Taylor Holiday: Okay. Yarden. Where are you? I

[00:29:21] Yarden Shaked: I think I'm similar to you, Taylor, like partially optimistic, bordering optimistic, I think because for like, you know, I'm a numbers guy, the numbers are good. And, you know, there's something really healthy going on because it's a mix of the numbers are actually quite good and people are highly focused on efficiency and they just spent a year getting more efficient.

Yo, we're not an e commerce company, but we got efficient in 2023. And I know that that really helped our business. You know, our, we, we put our mind in things that were much more business focused and much more important. So did you know, many of these brands. And so they're coming out here with they're putting up pretty good numbers.

And they're in a different mindset. They made a lot of changes in the past year. So if this holds, you know, they like, this could start being a actually efficient market here. I, I, I hope now there's a lot of macro fears and things like that. And, and it's, you know, related to this, but if things hold and how the numbers are, it's a, it's a good thing.

[00:30:25] Taylor Holiday: Jeremiah.

[00:30:25] Jeremiah Prummer: Yeah, I would put myself at cautiously optimistic as well. I, when I think, when I think about this moment in time, things don't feel great. I think one as a consumer, the one thing I'm thinking about right now is everything is so expensive. Like that's the only thing that gives me some hesitation here is that from the consumer side of things, everything is extremely expensive, even compared to a year ago.

That said, if I look back at a year ago, the economy feels more stable now than it did a year ago. Right? Like if I actually like put myself in that mindset of, of what. What early 2022 looked like. And to Yarden's point, we also spent all of 2022 focused on efficiency. Sorry, 2022, 2023 I'm off a year and 2024 as well as going to be focused on efficiency.

And so I think when, and many of our customers are doing the same. And so the, I would also go with cautiously optimistic. I would say though, I want to see what the next. six months look like? Like, do we continue in this trend or do we start to, to move back into feeling more uncertainty? But yeah, the numbers do look good and I, I do feel like it's getting better.

[00:31:32] Taylor Holiday: Well, you know, it's not too expensive. Jeremiah, the DTC index. And right now, if you want to get in on the the March edition, go to DTC index dot com sign up. It will be in inboxes here very shortly, and we would love feedback. We want to know what other data you want to see, what information would be helpful.

Whether the format is useful, whether you'd like more insights, more narrative, more raw numbers, more, whatever the heck you want. Let us know we're here to serve you all. And again, I want to just put out into the world that we want to represent the broadest aggregate view of the industry we all exist in.

There's no attempt to diminish any individual experience within the context of this. And we're hopeful that you all are killing it. We want to provide you the best insight into the places to help your business grow. So we appreciate you tuning in. D to C index. com, Jeremiah yard. And Steve, thank you all once again.

And we'll talk soon.