This content shouldn’t be free. But it is.
❤️🔥 Sean Frank goes BTS on the hottest of so-hot-right-now channels, Applovin
😷 Viasox’s CMO + Harkla’s CEO share their experience with Meta’s H&W update
💰 Top-5 stories from this week’s news with summaries and a (financial) bonus
Oh, and stick around to the end … there’s holiday leftovers!
Applovin VS AppHatin’ … But (Really) Channel Expansion
I built my business and career on the back of Meta being the best place to spend marketing dollars.
Search my history. Last December, I called Meta to a trillion-dollar market cap.
But this year, it was as bad as any year on record — as bad as iOS14.
Why? I don’t know.
Bugs, outages, forced AI adoption, consumer fatigue, consumer sentiment … who knows?
Without a doubt, Meta will still get the lion’s share of my spend.
This last Friday, we pushed $200,000 on Meta ads. On Black Friday, HexClad dropped $3 million into it.
The problem is incrementality seems broken.
An ad engine designed for short-term ROAS can’t and won’t prospect for you. You circle the same bottom-funnel pool, bidding against yourself.
The move in 2025 is to diversify spend and rebuild the ad account towards upper funnel.
We have to test it, but we’re trying to spend 40% of budget on reach campaigns.
Because right now …
Meta is getting beat out for my next dollar BY FUCKING MOBILE GAMES!
I am on record being an Applovin bull. Some even say I caused the stock to 2x.
Contrary to popular belief …
I am not an employee of Applovin, I don’t own shares in Applovin, and they have never paid me money.
They emailed me, offered me ad credit, and we onboarded like everyone else.
YET!!!
I am out here spreading the word. An apostle of Applovin, a mogul of mobile ads.
Why?
Why be so vocal over something so controversial? Something that my competitors could use to scale?
Because it’s working.
I’ve plugged X ads when they worked. I plugged Snap when it works. And Applovin is WAY BETTER — at a WAY BETTER SCALE — than any of those have been.
The world should know about good ad space.
This industry is fucking hard.
I am lucky to earn 20% net income every year. I give Meta 25% of my money MINIMUM.
Meta makes more off my business than I do.
If something is helping us survive, more should know about it. Historically, when something challenges Meta, Meta gets BETTER:
- The rise of Snap led to Stories
- The rise of TikTok led to Reels
- The threat of an Elon X led to Threads (ads coming in 2025)
- The threat of ChatGPT led to AI search and AI messaging (ads coming in 2025)
Advertising wins need to be shared broadly, loudly so the rest of the monopolies wake up and get better.
Applovin as a rival ad engine could lead to Meta licensing more ad space and powering it with the ad auction.
Imagine a world where Reddit ads use the Meta ad engine?
A 20% jump in ad space OVERNIGHT!
APPLOVIN IS WORKING.
After talking to 100+ brands, these are from my BFCM in review and a report from our internal meeting.
Meta was at its lowest %-of-total budget all year during BFCM, with AppLovin becoming just as big.
Biggest spend week of the year, and Applovin is taking 40% of my USA budget.
More than Meta, more than TV, more than Snap, more than influencer.
I have never seen a channel scale like this, as fast, as strong.
“But, Sean, how do you know if it is working?”
Kno post-purchase.
If you don’t believe the Northbeam results, if you don’t believe GA — you should at least believe customers, right?
Meta is at 25% self-reported. Some days, Applovin gets to 20%.
AND I HAVE SPENT $250,000,000 LIFETIME ON META
250 million dollars. A max NFL contract on ads to sell my cool little wallets.
So it better get lots of fucking people saying they heard of me there.
Applovin seeing self-reporting anywhere close to them already is a positive signal.
Then we get stories like this from the team …
The performance TLDR is:
- I don’t have any reason to doubt it
- We see good results (better results than Meta at our scale in Northbeam)
- We see post-purchase survey responses
- We get anecdotal evidence from customers
How do you get spending?
Right now, it’s gated. It is all account-managed.
You have to work with their team to make major changes or spend updates
The team is great, but this is why they are so slow to onboard
But I asked my team, and here are the best practices we have been told.
This won’t mean anything to anyone …
One amazing thing — it’s all short-form vertical video.
You know, the same shit you have been shooting and running on Meta, TikTok, Snap all year.
Applovin SWEARS self-service is coming in Q1.
So, the best bet is to wait.
My rep, Cathy <cathy.sun@applovin.com>, is only onboarding Meta spenders doing $20k a day.
You just need to either jump the line with lots of Meta spend or wait for self-service — when all of this will change anyway, lol
Other channels to watch?
People say Unity (the game maker) has an ad program.
They hired some former Applovin execs, so looking forward to trying that …
AS LONG AS THEY GIVE ME SOME DAMN AD CREDIT!
(ALWAYS BE ASKING FOR AD CREDIT)
I’m growing. I’m more profitable than ever.
And I owe Meta a lot for that success.
But my next dollar of growth isn’t thanks to Meta anymore.
Weird times.
AppLovin & TV Ads with Katy Mimari, CEO at Caden Lane
Our Biggest Mistakes & Lessons Learned This Year
Meta’s Health & Wellness Updates
These next two contributions come straight from the Operators Slack Community. If you’d like to join the conversation … we’d love to have you apply!
Send us your preferred Slack email, and we’ll add you to the #pending-approval channel.
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Dimos Karpouzis
CMO, Viasox
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Some fire alarms have been pulled regarding Meta’s updated Health and Wellness advertising policy.
For Viasox — whose products were created to support people living with diabetes — our future with Meta ads is uncertain.
The problem? Advertiser’s necessary changes simply aren’t clear, and time is ticking.
Last week, I got on a call with our Meta rep.
She still had no concrete information beyond vague articles about event tracking, categorization, and general support.
One thing, however, was made explicitly clear …
Meta will not provide guidance on how to make the necessary changes to appeal a categorization should you be flagged.
She could not confirm what is acceptable versus what isn’t — or how we could pivot to avoid losing bottom-of-funnel events.
We did manage to confirm a few things:
- Appeals are manually reviewed by an internal team, not by AI or automated crawlers.
- If an appeal is rejected, there’s a 30-day cooldown period before you can re-appeal.
- You can address general symptoms but not call out specific medical conditions (e.g., “bad skin” is acceptable, but “acne” is not).
- Your overall brand ethos must not suggest you support specific health conditions, only general health.
- Stripping your event data of personal healthcare information won’t guarantee appeal approval.
- If you haven’t been categorized yet, that doesn’t mean you won’t be categorized later.
- Meta will categorize advertisers in waves, but it’s unclear if you’ll even be notified when it happens.
As of today, no official articles or resources from Meta clarify these issues. We are in contact with a Meta lawyer to answer whatever questions they can.
There are a few so-called “solutions” circulating, but based on what our Meta rep said, they are speculative at best.
Any approach that isn’t strictly conservative — no conditions, no health-related language, no health-based branding — is unlikely to gain approval. And, if not already categorized, it will likely be categorized in the future.
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Casey Ames
CEO & Founder, Harkla
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Harkla is one of the world’s largest sensory product companies, helping tens of thousands of families every year — particularly those with special-needs children.
We were categorized by Meta’s health and wellness update.
My Meta Rep got me connected with someone on the technical side familiar with these categorizations.
This is what’s going on for us.
The Technical Pro (or whatever) was able to look into my account and tell me exactly why I was flagged.
He said most of this is happening with keyword triggers in campaigns, ad sets, and ads. So, they’re likely not scraping your website to fully understand your company and products.
We have a digital course about Sensory Diets — specific to our niche; it has nothing to actually do with food.
I usually abbreviate it as “SD” in every situation in Meta. But in one campaign from October, I wrote out “Sensory Diet | Therapists” since it was targeting Occupational Therapists.
He said since the words “Diet” and “Therapist” were in the campaign title, it got flagged.
Thankfully, he was familiar with the term “Sensory Diet” and knew we weren‘t selling a “diet therapy” or anything like that.
He was unsure why my review was rejected but said none of my other campaigns should or would be affected.
And he said to disconnect my pixel, wait 24 hours, then reconnect. That should “reset” the category, and if it doesn’t, he gave me a link to reopen my case with him personally.
Overall, he seemed pretty confident that …
- We shouldn’t be categorized
- Our other campaigns shouldn’t be affected
- Most of this is just keyword triggers in naming campaigns, ad sets, etc.
🤓 Editor’s Note: Two One Resource
For more on the update, here’s a direct link to Meta’s official Health and Wellness advertising policy. However, Andrew Foxwell’s Sensitive Ad Categories Changes Coming to Meta in 2025 is the most helpful + thorough resource I’ve found.
This week’s top-five trending news stories, curated by the editor of CPG Wire
1. The Kardashians Raise $4.5M for Snack Venture: SEC
According to a recent SEC filing, Khloe Kardashian & Kris Jenner raised $4.5M for Khloud, a mysterious new consumer brand. After digging into trademark filings, we learned that Khloud is a popcorn brand. The creator-led popcorn category is fairly crowded, though. The Jonas Brothers have Rob’s Backstage Popcorn, and the D’Amelio family has Be Happy Snacks.
2. Spindrift Acquisition on the Horizon: Twitter
San Francisco-based private equity firm Gryphon Investors is close to acquiring Spindrift for around $650M. Founded in 2010 by Bill Creelman, Spindrift is best known for its sparkling waters that contain real fruit juice. Spindrift expects to finish the year with over $300M in net sales and EBITDA of $25M, so Gryphon buying the biz at a 26x EBITDA multiple.
3. Alex Cooper Breaks Into Beverage: PR Newswire
Podcast juggernaut Alex Cooper (Call Her Daddy) is getting into the beverage game with Unwell Hydration. Developed alongside Nestlé, the brand will hit Target shelves early next year.
Cooper has a massive audience + credible partner in Nestlé, but beverage is arguably the toughest CPG category — as evidenced by PRIME’s numerous struggles. Trademark filings also reveal Cooper plans to launch Popular Vodka in the near future.
4. AG1 Launches Airport Vending Machines: Athletech News
AG1 (FKA Athletic Greens) is rolling out branded vending machines at airports across the US. This is a clever activation for a few different reasons.
First, these vending machines double as billboards in high-traffic areas, and there’s a very limited supply. Second, travelers are a captive audience. Third, many travelers are looking for wellness solutions to combat the effects of flying.
5. Violette_FR Secures Funding: The Industry
Violette_FR, a multi-category beauty brand launched in 2021, raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding. The round was led by Silas Capital — with additional funding from Experienced Capital, Monogram Capital Partners, and Felix Capital. Violette Serrat, a renowned French makeup artist, co-founded the brand.
BONUS 🤑 Huel 2024 Financial Results
Friend of the newsletter, Drew Fallon, unleashed another ringer — this time on nutritionally complete food maker Huel. His analysis presents a model for digitally native CPG or wellness brands on how to scale to nine figures in revenue and “turn on the profitability spigot.”
About those “holiday leftovers.”
All ten of these signed beauties were claimed last week via email-response memes.
But only seven gave us their mailing address …
So, we still have three!
Reply with your own meme to score one of the last limited-edition Sean Frank t-shirts.
First come, first serve.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff (Executive Editor)
PS: In a rare show of repentance, Sean has amended his 3-star review of Kno to 4.4; pending its new UI, 4.6 (rounded to 5).
