DTC Podcast

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup

Liam Robinson and Nate Vankoughnet were two of Pilothouse's first employees and spent years scaling some of its biggest accounts on Meta. Now they've spun out Marlbank Digital (website coming soon), a Meta-only agency built for the brands Pilothouse moved past as it went upmarket: pre-launch up to $100K/month.

Want them in your ad account? Email nate@marlbank.co or liam@marlbank.co. No website yet. They've been busy in client accounts.

If you're a founder running your own Meta ads, or the one marketer at a brand doing under $100K a month, this episode is a working session on why your account structure is probably answering the wrong question.

What's inside:
The Meta hierarchy of needs: unit economics at the base ("you'd be surprised how many people need a 3.5 ROAS to barely break even"), marketing strategy in the middle, creative at the top. Most brands skip the middle.
Circumstance testing, their replacement for jumping straight to creative: articulate your product's real distinction, find the cultural currents it's relevant to, then map the specific moments it fits into someone's life. Each moment becomes a campaign.
A full anonymized case study: the ceramic to-go cup brand that couldn't scale on pretty product shots or the eco angle, and unlocked the account with one question: "Would you use a metal mug at home?" Selling an upgrade to existing to-go cup users beat converting the single-use crowd, and the commute became the winning niche.
What this looks like in the account: open audiences, existing customers excluded, CBO single ad set, 4 to 6 ads per set, creative held constant so circumstance is the variable.
Why one ad usually takes 80% of an ad set's spend, and how to structure launches around that.
The four foundations they ask for before a brand spends a dollar: a decent website, email flows, some social presence, and Meta.
Plus the origin story: the agency is named after the small Ontario town where they spent a summer hand-building tree stands for a bow-hunting brand.

Who this is for: ecom founders and marketers between pre-launch and $100K/month, and anyone whose Meta account is a graveyard of creative tests that never compounded.

What to steal: before your next creative batch, write down your product's distinctions, then list every circumstance where it slots into a customer's day. Test those against each other first.

Work with Liam and Nate: nate@marlbank.co / liam@marlbank.co | marlbank.co

Timestamps:
00:00 Why Meta Marketing Has Changed
02:01 The Story Behind Marlbank Digital
08:14 Why Foundational Marketing Beats Meta Tactics
13:15 The Ceramic Cup Case Study
20:10 How to Structure Circumstance Testing on Meta

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF633
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup

Melissa Dusendang ran a summer contract at SheFit to "manage the chaos" for one marketing director. She never left. Years later she runs ecommerce and operations, and her actual job is stopping the company from lying to itself with its own data.

If you own the P&L, the dashboard, or the customer experience, this one is for you. Melissa sits in the finance meeting thinking about how a tax decision hits checkout, and in the marketing meeting thinking about which numbers are secretly inflated. She calls it being a puzzle person. Eric calls her a silo obliterator.

Why TikTok Shop can quietly wreck your new-versus-returning customer math. Masked and missing emails on marketplace orders mean Shopify can count repeat buyers as new, so "we 2x'd new customers" can really mean you gave existing customers a discount.
The attribution question to ask before anyone reports a ROAS or MER number, so two teams aren't arguing about goals while measuring different things.
How SheFit found its best-selling ad hooks inside customer reviews and comments, and why phrases like "my boobs don't move" outperform copy the team writes.
The Emerge Sports Bra story: how customer comments drove a custom-strap design (skinny straps on smaller sizes, wider straps on larger sizes) that sold out on launch.
Why real women feeling the "aha moment" when they lift the straps is SheFit's top new-customer acquisition move, run through micro-influencers and ambassadors instead of a gym-only ad.
Her honest read on TikTok Shop: better customer control than Amazon, but a margin eroder that can turn a premium brand into a "always on sale" brand.

Who this is for: Ecommerce and ops leaders, founders wearing five hats, CX and community managers, and anyone trying to get finance, marketing, and product to agree on what the numbers mean.

What to steal: Pull your own review and comment language and use it as ad copy verbatim. Before your next growth review, write down which attribution model each number is using. And check whether your marketplace orders are inflating your new-customer count.

Timestamps:
0:00 Why TikTok Shop metrics can be misleading
5:18 Breaking down silos across ecommerce teams
10:01 Why customer language beats marketing copy
15:09 Building products from customer feedback
23:21 Using AI and social listening for better decisions

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup

AppLovin just opened to everyone, and most DTC operators still do not know how it actually works. Jacob runs Meta at Pilothouse, which has spent on AppLovin for nearly two years, back when it was invite only.

He breaks down what he sees in real client accounts: the product price points that work, the creative volume it takes to scale, and the end card, a full-screen animated step between the ad and the product page that has no equivalent on Meta.

What you get:
The $50 rule. Why products in the $30 to $150 range win, why below $20 gets tough on margin, and why $1,000 products are a bad fit for someone mid-game.
The end card. What it is, why it acts like a second landing page, and the basketball-into-the-hoop trick for matching the ad to the app.
Creative volume. Start with about 10 videos, add 10 to 20 a week, and what the ramp looks like at $50k/day.
First-hour buying. Around 80% of purchases land in the first hour, and the other 20% almost always convert on a different video.
The learning phase. Why you confirm tracking, then leave it alone for a week, sometimes two.

Who this is for: DTC operators and media buyers weighing AppLovin as a third channel next to Meta and Google.

What to steal: the creative-volume cadence, the end-card structure, and the measurement discipline to prove new-customer CPA instead of trusting platform ROAS.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:00 AppLovin vs Meta Performance
05:20 Best Products & Creative Strategy
11:10 Measuring Incrementality & New Customers
17:10 Scaling with Creative Volume
23:00 Halo Effect & Campaign Best Practices

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://www.pilothouse.co/?utm_source=AKNF631
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup

Most brands treat unauthorized sellers and copycats as a cost of doing business. Mario Simonyan treats them as your biggest untapped revenue source.

Mario is a former Amazon seller turned brand protection attorney. He started selling kitchenware and artificial turf doormats out of his driveway during law school, got ripped off, and discovered that not a single attorney he called understood how marketplaces actually work. So he built the firm he wished he'd had.

In this episode he breaks down how one eight-figure fitness brand walked away from 1.5M a year on Amazon after attorneys and enforcement agencies failed them, and how his team got them back to 95% control of their listings. He explains why cease and desist letters get burned in people's fireplaces, why sellers fear account suspension far more than lawsuits, and the three-pillar approach his firm uses to get marketplaces to do the enforcing.

He also goes into the dark side: the seller who allegedly flew a duffel bag of cash to Costa Rica to bribe an Amazon employee, the competitor who planted the word cocaine in a rival's backend keywords to trigger an automatic ban, and the copycat running a cloned website doing a million dollars a month off someone else's brand.

Request a 100% free, custom Brand Audit Report from ESQgo here:
https://esqgo.submitrequests.com/brand-audit-report?utm_source=dtc_newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter_sponsorship

What you'll learn:
Why 15 to 25% of your revenue may be leaking to sellers you've never heard of
The trademark material difference argument that removes sellers moving genuine product
The three pillars: IP, marketplace policy, and regulatory compliance, and why using only one is why most enforcement fails
Why an unauthorized seller priced higher than you is still an emergency
How brand protection raises your multiple when you sell the business

Who this is for: Brand owners and operators doing 5M or more who sell on Amazon, Walmart, or any marketplace with a shared buy box.

What to steal: The 500% ROI framing, the material difference memorandum, and the free brand audit at esqgo.com to see what you're actually losing.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:53 How unauthorized sellers steal 15–25% of revenue
4:09 The Amazon strategy that actually removes unauthorized sellers
11:56 Why brand protection is a revenue driver, not a cost
17:47 The 3-pillar framework for Amazon brand protection
31:02 How to find marketplace revenue leakage

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup

Ari Murray runs DTC, Amazon and customer experience at Salt & Stone. She came from Sharma Brands, and before that worked on influencer and celebrity brands including a Kardashian line and Halsey's beauty brand. She started as a customer service agent.

In this episode she breaks down why the old brand-versus-performance argument is collapsing. Customers now shop with a chatbot in the loop. Those bots read your reviews, your Reddit threads, and your actual customer experience. You cannot hack that, which means product quality and brand protection have become growth levers.

She also gets specific on creative: what "socially native" really means, why she is chasing ads that don't look like ads, and the protein powder ad where the product is the seventh ingredient in someone's recipe.
For: DTC founders, growth leads, creative strategists, retention and CRO teams, brand marketers.

In this episode:
Why she left the agency side for Salt & Stone
Why Salt & Stone has never acted like a deodorant brand
AI visibility, Reddit indexing, and why you can't hide from real customer feedback
The collapse of the middle of the funnel in agentic shopping
Why she doesn't feel a desperate need to move spend out of Meta
How they actually measure incrementality (holdouts, Status, Northbeam, Triple Whale, hunting for an MMM)
Socially native creative, and why splitting a hook five ways is played out
Why a brand with boundaries makes better ads
What makes a brand feel cheap
What makes a brand deserve to be iconic

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter