Data's telling two completely different stories about consumer confidence this week.
While official surveys are screaming recession panic, actual purchase behavior says people are spending like nothing's wrong.
Meanwhile, Meta's spinning up a TikTok clone made entirely of AI videos, and Google just admitted keywords don't actually matter anymore in their ad auction.
This is what happened in a nutshell:
Consumer confidence hits lowest point since 2014, except actual buyers are more confident than last January
Meta launches standalone Vibes app where every video is AI-generated (and might start charging for it)
Google Ads now runs on inferred intent instead of keyword matching
The gap between "savers" and "spenders" is tightening after years of widening
OpenAI gives ChatGPT a Facebook-style makeover with news feeds and trending topics
Let's see what the common thread is.
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Data's telling two completely different stories about consumer confidence this week.
While official surveys are screaming recession panic, actual purchase behavior says people are spending like nothing's wrong.
Meanwhile, Meta's spinning up a TikTok clone made entirely of AI videos, and Google just admitted keywords don't actually matter anymore in their ad auction.
This is what happened in a nutshell:
Consumer confidence hits lowest point since 2014, except actual buyers are more confident than last January
Meta launches standalone Vibes app where every video is AI-generated (and might start charging for it)
Google Ads now runs on inferred intent instead of keyword matching
The gap between "savers" and "spenders" is tightening after years of widening
OpenAI gives ChatGPT a Facebook-style makeover with news feeds and trending topics
Let's see what the common thread is.
Sponsor
AppLovin
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Meta Wants You Scrolling Through AI Videos All Day
Meta just spun Vibes into its own standalone app.
Every video in the feed is AI-generated.
You can create videos from scratch, remix what others made, add music, adjust styles, then post to the Vibes feed or cross-post to Instagram and Facebook.
Think TikTok, but the algorithm's not recommending content … it's creating it.
Meta says early traction was strong enough inside the Meta AI app to justify going standalone.
They're also testing premium subscriptions that unlock more video creation capacity each month, launching in the next few months.
This is a direct shot at OpenAI's Sora, which launched its own social video app right after Vibes debuted last September.
Except Meta's betting people want a dedicated space for AI content instead of mixing it with regular posts.
Google Admits Keywords Don't Run the Auction Anymore
Google Ads doesn't match keywords to queries anymore.
It matches your offering to inferred user intent.
When someone searches now, Google's AI uses "query fan out," splitting complex questions into subtopics and running multiple searches simultaneously before the user even finishes typing.
Then it serves ads based on what it thinks the person is trying to solve, not what they literally typed.
Example: Someone searches "Why is my pool green?" They're not shopping. But Google infers they'll need pool-cleaning supplies and shows product ads alongside the answer.
If you're still structuring campaigns around exact match and phrase match, you're building for a system that doesn't exist.
Broad match, Performance Max, and AI Max for Search are what get you into AI Overviews and AI Mode conversations now.
The auction logic fundamentally changed. Your campaign structure probably hasn't.
Consumer confidence surveys say people are terrified.
Actual purchase data says they're spending more confidently than last year.
That gap matters because most brands make inventory and marketing decisions based on sentiment reports that don't reflect buyer behavior.
Both Meta and OpenAI are betting on social feeds powered by AI content.
Meta's building Vibes as a standalone TikTok for AI videos. OpenAI just redesigned ChatGPT to look like Facebook, complete with trending topics and personalized feeds.
They're competing for the same thing -daily engagement that doesn't require users to have a specific task in mind.
Google confirmed what a lot of PPC managers suspected but didn't want to believe - keywords aren't the foundation anymore.
Intent inference is.
That means campaign structures built on match types and keyword groupings are already outdated, even if they're still technically functional.
The through-line across all this? The systems we built our strategies around are shifting faster than most teams are adjusting.
Consumer behavior's diverging from surveys. Ad platforms are inferring intent instead of matching terms. AI companies are becoming social platforms. Content feeds are becoming AI-generated.
If your playbook still assumes 2025 mechanics, you're already behind.
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