Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth

Our team made more than 12,000 bid and budget adjustments across our portfolio during Cyber Five last year. For Black Friday 2026, we’re testing whether AI-assisted Meta media buying can make those decisions more consistent, timely, and aligned with business targets.
McCay Rasmussen, our Senior Paid Media Manager, joins Richard Gaffin to explain the system we’re building for all 120 hours from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. It compares performance with hourly revenue expectations, identifies gaps, and uses business context to determine what should happen next.
McCay illustrates the approach with our portfolio data suggesting roughly 27% of Black Friday revenue would arrive by 8am. That becomes a checkpoint for evaluating pacing, with a traffic-light framework helping distinguish a smaller shortfall from one that needs a larger response.
In this episode:
How an authorized AI agent could adjust a campaign’s budget at 4am while the team is offline

Why contribution margin, marketing efficiency ratio (MER), and incremental ROAS inform account decisions

Setting limits on automated changes and alerts for human review

Reviewing the timing and impact of last year’s bid and budget adjustments

Preparing for changes in demand after Black Friday and Cyber Monday peaks

The practical starting point is your own forecast. McCay explains how historical hourly revenue and your promotional calendar can establish expectations before you define which decisions to automate.
Show Notes:
Expand beyond your own site without building a whole new operation. Find out what’s possible at https://www.mirakl.com/ctc

Learn more: https://commonthreadco.com

Track your brand’s performance: https://statlas.io

Work with us: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/contact

Have a question for the Ecommerce Playbook? Email podcast@commonthreadco.com

SHOPPS started with Taylor Holiday’s own baseball card and a question: why couldn’t the founders and operators building ecommerce brands have something like that, too?
On this episode of The Ecommerce Playbook, Taylor and CMO, Grant Zanini, share how that idea became a physical trading card collection made for the ecommerce community.
The first SHOPPS collection features 100 leaders, 1,000 packs, and $50,000 in real prizes. None of the packs are for sale, so you have to win one.
They explain what it took to make cards worth collecting, why the featured players are helping distribute packs, and how the community can get involved. They also walk through the rare editions, 1/1 autograph cards with prizes attached, and sponsor Golden Tickets before ripping a pack themselves.
There are SHOPPS packs up for grabs in the comments. For a chance to win, tell us about the most valuable card in your collection or let us know if you own Taylor Holiday’s Bowman Chrome baseball card from his playing days.
See the collection and how to get a pack: https://www.shoppscards.com/
Thanks to Fulfil and Omnisend for helping bring SHOPPS to life!
-Fulfil: https://www.fulfil.io/
-Omnisend: https://your.omnisend.com/TaylorHoliday
Show Notes:
Learn more: https://commonthreadco.com

Track your brand’s performance: https://statlas.io

Work with us: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/contact

Have a question for the Ecommerce Playbook? Email podcast@commonthreadco.com

Brandon Horoho, co-founder and CMO of Montana Knife Company (MKC), joins Taylor Holiday live at Commerce Roundtable in San Diego to break down a Black Friday strategy built around product drops. MKC creates five distinct shopping events across the week, giving customers reasons to buy full-price knives as new products and inventory become available.
Brandon explains how the team plans those releases around different customer interests, gives each launch its own email and SMS push, and schedules additional drops after Cyber Monday to keep selling through the Christmas shipping cutoff.
In this episode:
Creating five Black Friday shopping events around culinary knives, pocket knives, and other product categories.

Using product availability to generate excitement without running public discounts on knives.

Why MKC sends each holiday event to its full audience instead of segmenting by customer interest.

Planning BFCM launches around real manufacturing capacity and inventory constraints.

Keeping products available for December shoppers after earlier years left the brand sold out before Christmas.

Building demand through organic content and collaborations when paid advertising options are limited.

This episode is brought to you by:
- Trybe: https://bit.ly/4xXvD08
- Alia: https://bit.ly/4yuP8ON
- Bill: https://bit.ly/4e9JQQm
Show Notes:
Q4 waits for no one. AppLovin is offering $5K ad credit when you spend $5K. Go to applovin.com/ctc to set up your first campaign

Learn more: https://commonthreadco.com

Track your brand’s performance: https://statlas.io

Work with us: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/contact

Have a question for the Ecommerce Playbook? Email podcast@commonthreadco.com

iOS 27 is raising questions about Meta ads tracking ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Tony Chopp and Steve Rekuc examine what changed, what CTC is seeing in conversion data, and which parts of your Shopify and Meta setup deserve a closer look.
CTC’s early analysis showed Meta conversion rates down roughly 15% year over year from October 8–18. That decline caught the team’s attention, but it does not establish Apple’s update as the cause. Tony and Steve explain how to investigate your conversion tracking before drawing that conclusion.
In this episode:
What iOS 27’s browser-based tracking changes target and how they differ from iOS 14.5.

How missing or incomplete conversion signals can affect attribution and ad targeting.

What to review in your Meta Pixel, Conversions API (CAPI), and Shopify data-sharing settings.

Comparing Shopify orders with purchase events in Meta Events Manager to investigate missing or duplicate events.

Why event match quality matters and what changing iOS adoption means for the timing of incrementality tests.

Start with the last 30 days of Shopify purchases and the corresponding purchase events in Meta. Tony and Steve explain what discrepancies can reveal and where to investigate before holiday spending increases.
Show Notes:
Go to https://www.universalads.com/middleman and use code UACTC to get $2,500 in matched ad credits when you spend $2,500.

Learn more: https://commonthreadco.com

Track your brand’s performance: https://statlas.io

Work with us: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/contact

Have a question for the Ecommerce Playbook? Email podcast@commonthreadco.com

Profitable ecommerce growth gets harder when repeat purchases are limited. In his Commerce Roundtable San Diego keynote, Taylor Holiday examines how Skullcandy, The Normal Brand, and Spiral Bible are growing with low customer lifetime value (LTV) and a need to make customer acquisition profitable on the first order.
Taylor walks through changes to distribution, creative production costs, and campaign planning that helped these brands find room to scale. He also shares CTC’s research on ad performance to explain why the cost of finding successful creative matters.
In this episode:
Skullcandy: TikTok Shop reached 4.3x its January level by August, while ecommerce reached 2.7x its January level. He explains how creator content can generate demand that converts across the website, Amazon, and retail.

The Normal Brand: June ad spend doubled year over year while incremental ROAS held steady. He explains how commission-based creator production increased creative volume and reduced upfront production costs, making more testing financially viable.

Spiral Bible: Coordinated marketing moments and creator production supported a 4.4x increase in ad spend from May to August, while platform ROAS improved from 1.63 to 1.91. He breaks down how the team aligned offers, creators, email, and website messaging.

Creative testing economics: In CTC’s analysis of more than 1.3 million ads, the top 5% accounted for 73% of calculated contribution value before creative production costs. He explains why that distribution changes what brands can afford to pay for each new ad.

Show Notes:
Expand beyond your own site without building a whole new operation. Find out what’s possible at https://www.mirakl.com/ctc

Learn more: https://commonthreadco.com

Track your brand’s performance: https://statlas.io

Work with us: https://commonthreadco.com/pages/contact

Have a question for the Ecommerce Playbook? Email podcast@commonthreadco.com