What We Learned at the 2026 Meta Summit

[00:00:00] Richard: Hey, folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffan, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And joining me today as, as he often has recently, is our VP of Ecommerce Strategy, Mr. Luke Austin, joining us live from the Newport Harbor right now.

[00:00:15] If, if... Turn your camera around Luke, and show, show them the yachts real quick. There we go.

[00:00:21] Lap of, luxury. So Luke, Luke--

[00:00:24] Luke: none of those, are mine, I don't think.

[00:00:26] Richard: Yeah, yeah, none of them are yours yet. But Luke and, and the crew have been kicked out of the office as our, our partners Skullcandy are having their onsite there. So we're coming-- he's coming to you live from from the lap of luxury.

[00:00:36] We're wearing the same hat, so this is, this is perfect for a Monday podcast. So what we wanted to talk about today a little bit is, of course, last week, as you all know was the Meta Summit. And some of our folks went up to the Bay Area to go check that out just kind of get a download from Meta on, on what they're working on. And so that's what we're gonna talk about today. And, and Luke had an interesting way of kind of framing this, which is there was sort of a yin-yang thing going on. So that's gonna be the title of, of today's podcast, is the yin and yang of the Meta Summit here in 2026. So, Luke, why don't you kind of dive into a little bit about what, sort of what you learned there and, and why we're framing it this way.

[00:01:09] Luke: So yeah, the thing-- Coming out of the, the summit last week we were, we were doing some travel with some customers in person as well in, in New York and, and in San Francisco and some of the places we were, we were at. And, and conversations really over the past couple months, we, we chatted I think last week or two weeks ago about that we've launched TikTok shops at CTC and have been really invested in that.

[00:01:30] So there's this, the, there's these sort of themes going on in the in the conversations that we are having with brands and what we are seeing in terms of the brands that are winning right now. And to, And it's, it's really like a Tale of Two Cities, a, a yin and yang, as you put it, Richard, like the-- of the where the s- where the space and the conversations exist right now.

[00:01:52] And I'm gonna tease it out a little bit in terms of what what these two, what the, what the what the two cities can sort of look like in terms of the, the narrative. So in one you have at the Meta Performance Marketing Summit, there was a whole sort of subsection of talks dedicated to marketing measurement, right?

[00:02:08] There continues to be a really strong focus from Meta around the tooling and the discipline around marketing measurement. And them getting more and more... We, we were there as a sponsor of the Performance Marketing Summit. We had a ghosted dinner with the folks at Northbeam and, and them getting closer with like folks that are involved in marketing measurement and making this work for the brands that they, that they work with.

[00:02:30] And- What those conversations-- Those conversations are very sophisticated. They're more sophisticated than ever right now, and it's really a discipline of producing marketing measurement that gives you more m- higher and higher confidence in the media dollars that you are expending across your various media channels.

[00:02:46] And it goes something along the lines of you run an MMM across all of your, your media channels. It calibrates what the optimal point in time sort of allocation is. And then from that, you are gonna stand up geo holdout or incrementality testing. They're gonna be causal experiments across your core channels and tactics, and you're gonna have a testing roadmap against those.

[00:03:05] Then you're gonna also layer on conversion lift always-on studies on meta for different channels and tactics at all times to further calibrate the sort of outcome of these, of these measurements. And then when you get a result from these tests, from your incrementality tests, your conversion lift tests, there's gonna be some sort of progressive source of truth against your media measurement that you're gonna apply to that channel or tactic that then is going to inform what its true incremental impact is.

[00:03:32] Then you're gonna apply fractional credit to each of your other channels that's gonna further calibrate your media mix, and you keep this evolution of a really disciplined, very sophisticated marketing science approach to media measurement. And the, the level and sophistication at which this is being done right now and brands are, are measuring and allocating their media dollars is at an all-time high, right?

[00:03:56] Like, there's just more tools and sophistication available, and the brands that are winning are doing this really, really well consistently, right? And a- and to all the things that I've, that I've talked about. That's, that's s- s- you know, City One the order side of the, of the yin-yang symbol, let's call it, right?

[00:04:13] Like, in terms of the conversations. Then you have the second city of the conversation that's more the c- the chaos in the space. That is everything that's happening related to creator-led growth a lot of which is encapsulated in the TikTok shop conversations. And those conversations to, to to sort of draw contrast for us in how they sound relative to the marketing science conversations is we are doing-- we are reaching out to hundreds of creators through we're reaching out to 100 creators through Yuka every day or whatever your outbound email platform is bringing them on board, training them into our Discord, giving them specific incentives where they get a Burkini bag or a trip to the Hamptons with their girlfriends once they reach 100K GMV tiers and 300K GMV tiers.

[00:05:00] And we're onboarding more and more, and we're getting creators to post three videos a day for us. And it is like we are creating an army of of creators influencers for the brand that is much, much more similar to like the, you know, cold callers in the '90s on Wall Street, right? Just like it, it's just so hot and we're gonna s- call and we're gonna sell everything.

[00:05:23] And you throw in some blue chips and like you throw in some penny stocks and kind of bundle them up and like you take some swings and like that is the, that is the the chaos on-- that's that is by the way, driving a lot of the growth for the brands that are growing the most right now is some of the things that brands are doing.

[00:05:41] Every conversation you get into around creator, creator-led growth, TikTok shop. We had, we had a really great dinner on-- really great dinner on at the Performance Marketing Summit, I think it was Wednesday, Wednesday night. Had some brands around the table. Some of the folks from Ridge were there.

[00:05:56] Some of the folks leading new product division at Harry's, Harry's Razor were there. And so we were just having fascinating conversation around what, what people are doing to drive, drive growth in a really unique way. And it is the Wild Wild West, and it is the like strongest juxtaposition to the like we do the always-on conversion lift studies which calibrate your media mix and a lot of that.

[00:06:16] Like that it is just like the most contrasting sort of disciplines that exist in the space right now. And the brands that are crushing it are doing both extremely well. And, and the definition of extremely well, what I'll say is like, m- ever-evolving for both of those things and even more for those that are creator TikTok shop sphere because it's, it's, it's so new.

[00:06:38] But are are engaged at a high level in, in both the like order and chaos in what's going on in direct-to-consumer right now that is what is necessary and available to the brands to be able to engage in both of those sort of worlds, both, both of the tale of those, those two cities simultaneously.

[00:06:58] Richard: Yeah. So l-let's talk then about some of the specifics there. So, I, I wanna get to, to, the chaos side of it in, in a second here, but I, I wanna go back quickly to some of the sessions that you had or, or stuff that you heard or sat in on at, at the summit around marketing measurement. So you had mentioned to me, I think before we hit record here, that that Meta, the powers that be at Meta are going, going hard into measurement.

[00:07:21] As you had pointed out, like it is the most incremental platform. It under-reports clearly. We kind of, we have like a standard, I think, I think at this point it's 1.2 multiplier or something like that to Facebook ROAS. So talk to me a little bit about like what Meta is doing, like what's coming down the pike for in, in marketing measurement.

[00:07:40] Anything interesting there?

[00:07:42] Luke: So the thing that they continue to push on is leveraging conversion lift conversion lift tests within platform as a complement to the media measurement. And they're, they're pretty thoroughly engaged in that most brands are using at least one third-party provider for measurement specifically in doing incrementality, geo holdout, sort of causal experimentation.

[00:08:08] I think that's becoming more and more sort of, expected, sort of like a base- a baseline of, And, and that what Meta is bringing to the table is that conversion lift tests are an additional signal that their platform provides to help calibrate your marketing mix overall in a in a more, in a more helpful way.

[00:08:27] So they're, they're in terms of things net new is more, it's more-- The focus for them right now is, like, how do their tools fit in within a measurement practice and a measurement discipline? Like, that is the word that was said the most on, in that keynote and in any of those panels is, like, a practice or a discipline of measurement and, and what that looks like over time.

[00:08:49] And so their more-- Their priority right now in terms of what the things that they're communicating is on helping brands to have a consistent practice discipline of measurement and be clear on where Meta's tools, and specifically their conversion lift test, con-conversion lift studies sit within that.

[00:09:06] Because I think there's confusion where, like, I'll, I'll give an example. For some of the brands that we work with, we, there is clarity and buy-in and we engage together in having always-on conversion lift tests running or m-multiple conversion lift tests running in platform at all times regardless of if there's an incrementality test going on for Meta or not, where you can run conversion lift tests over a much smaller sort of s- sample of what's going on in your account and be able to At all times be testing something against something else or a, or a number of other things, right?

[00:09:41] Like, incremental attribution versus seven-day click attribution, seven-day click versus seven plus one optimization in, in, in the campaigns. A a, an ASC campaign that houses all video versus an ASC campaign that houses all imagery. And you can just sort of like continue to do this. We're gonna run a C- a CLS study or a conversion lift t- study over the course of a a weekend, right?

[00:10:03] Like a, a sale weekend that we have going to be able to see this sale campaign versus the evergreen campaign, what was the performance like in, in relation to one another. So there's like, all-- That's more the focus of like how can their tools be used more and more within the broader measurement ecosystem that brands are utilizing and, and making that case.

[00:10:24] I think because they're seeing that they can be pushed out of the measurement conversation unless they provide clarity on where they're sort of complimentary, complimentary or supplementary to to what brands are, are doing elsewhere. So on the measurement side, that's, that's that's their sort of core area of focus.

[00:10:42] Richard: Yeah. Okay. Well then let's let, let's jump over to the fun stuff then, the side of chaos, which is talking about what kind of-- obviously you've used sort of a-an evocative

[00:10:51] Image of sort of like the trading floor in the '90s, like a guy with two cell phones on both ears at the same time or whatever, and that's sort of like what's happening in the world of TikTok Shops right now.

[00:10:59] So a couple things. One is like the brands who are winning with TikTok Shops, you, you sort of spoke a little bit to the types of things that they're doing, but I'm curious, based on some of the discussions you had, like what the actual like concrete action, the activity is looking like right now there. And then also talk a little bit about what Meta is doing vis-a-vis kind of this world.

[00:11:18] So let's start with the first one. Like what, what are the best brands doing right now with TikTok Shops?

[00:11:22] Luke: So that's what they're doing on the mar- Yeah, we talked about what they're doing on the marketing measurement side of things, entering into the, in the conversation. I think they wanna be I think they want to be connected, continuing connected in that way. Now, in the, like, chaos side of the, of the broader narrative and what's going on in the space Meta is rolling out its competitor to TikTok Shops essentially, right?

[00:11:44] And enabling creators to do what TikTok Shops has done but to do that on on Instagram in a way that's going to be really meaningful for, for the space. And I think it's, this is something that could be underappreciated and and as folks are building out their TikTok Shops practices and seeing what's working there I think it's, it's, it's very worth having this in the back of the mind because it'll come, it'll come quick to some extent, and it's just gonna open up what's already such a fast-growing space, which is this creator-led growth mechanism.

[00:12:17] And and so Meta's entering the conversation by acknowledging that what TikTok Shops is doing is leading to it becoming the fastest sales channel we've ever seen in the history. And it's leapfrogged Walmart.com, et cetera, and, and it's and it's continuing to grow. And so Meta's acknowledging that and rolling it out on their side.

[00:12:34] What it's also going to do is just open up a broader market share that's available in in in, in the context of creators that brands have available to them and then distribution channels through this. And I-- And the shift that's gonna continue to take place over the next 12 months in particular, is that brands are going to find that to drive growth for their businesses where, where that's going to come from is finding ways to move away from like a, a media platform investment first ideology to a creator investment first ideology.

[00:13:07] Which is two years ago, we might say, "Okay you wanna grow the business find ways to spend more incremental media dollars on more media channels and make sure you have enough creative volume to be able to fuel that," right? But the main mechanism for growth is like you are- Your credit card is on the back end of Meta, and you're spending more and more on that credit card over time as an indication of the brand growing due to the results being good.

[00:13:29] What's gonna happen is the-- instead of it being the Meta ad spend that's growing at that rate, what's gonna grow at the quickest rate in terms of the, the, the cost outlay to produce growth is your creator incentives or your grow-y creator incentives, whatever platform you're using or directly through TikTok.

[00:13:46] What you are paying out to creators is incentives for them to post videos on behalf of your brand with your brand mentioned, your product linked, and then the creator's incentivized against those. M-more and more of the dollars being paid out in terms of the growth over the next twelve to twenty-four months is going to go towards these, these creator payments.

[00:14:06] Incentivizing creators on the front end and then paying them out a percentage of GMV based on their variable performance. It's going to be helpful for brands because it's gonna allow them to invert the economics of instead of paying for a bunch of creative upfront, like you don't know if it's gonna work, you pay a percentage of GMV primarily.

[00:14:22] And so if the creator does really well, great, you're paying them. If they don't do that well, you don't, Sort of inverts that in a helpful way for for brand owners. But then what al- it's also going to do is it's like the, the main driver and what's necessary is that brands are going to have to find ways to bring in more and more creators into their communities, incentivize them in more and more unique ways of why is-- why should this creator post for your brand specifically?

[00:14:47] Because there's going to be scarcity in the market and especially in this near term as it relates to creators that are really good at selling things and available. There, there just won't be enough for all the brands that are going to be pushing into the space. And so that's gonna be the, the challenge to get after.

[00:15:02] And also what we're seeing over the past six months, in particular, the brands that are, that are seeing outsized growth have, have invested heavily and engaged in sort of the chaos dimension of this in a, in a really helpful way. So Meta's, Meta's entering that sphere as they see it being a really impactful piece of it.

[00:15:19] But it's like you, you could not draw a more like distinct contrast when you think about like new platform on Instagram to rival TikTok Shop. It's gonna be like reach out to creators, build out your community, incentivize them on percentage of GMV, and you have some that are driving half a million GMV, some are-- that drive none and versus-- and then you have like on the other side is here's your always-on conversion lift study that feeds your causal MMM that then improves your channel calibration and here's your marketing measurement practice.

[00:15:45] It's like the most distinctive rhythms that brands-- the brands that are doing-- that are crushing it right now are doing both of those things really well. They're engaging in them in a high level, and they're really different practices, the culture of those things and the people necessary the, the, the vendors, the people necessary that to, to be able to engage and do those well.

[00:16:04] It's a challenging problem to solve. And so that's that's what the brand-- that's what brands should be building for is how do, how do we, how are we able to engage in both of those disciplines in a really effective way? As we head into this, the back half of this year and into next year

[00:16:18] Richard: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And I think like this definitely bears out or would bear having a separate session or session, what am I saying? Podcast on just talking about like the mindset shift between from like, oh, this is their outlife that we're spending on meta two. We're actually budgeting for creative in a way that we never really done before and thinking about creative as like a money in, money out thing, which I feel like is sort of a, a different frame of mind from the way that we've been doing it. Even though we've been talking like this for a little while, like the actual practicality of it, we haven't really been doing it. And so I think that'd be interesting to dig into a little bit more in a separate episode. But for now, I think we're gonna cut it there. Obviously thank you for your observations. Useful as always, Luke. But yes, it's a yin and yang world out there. So if you can embrace the order and discipline in your measurement while diving straight into the chaos of this new sort of TikTok shops creator world, then you're gonna have some success there. But as always, if you're interested in working with us, diving into the yin and yang of it together cometherego.com.

[00:17:17] You know where to find us. Hit the hire us button. We would love to chat about working with you a little bit more. But until next time, take care, everybody and we'll see you