October eCom Wrap-Up - Everything You Can't Miss

Hey 👋

Hope you had a happy Halloween! 🎃 October’s over, and here’s the gist of all things eCom, including:

FTC’s “Click To Cancel” Rule ❌ 

Tiktok’s Smart+ Campaign for Automated Advertising 💰️ 

Consumer Product Content Benchmark Report 📉

New & Improved AI Google Shopping 🤖

Squarespace Going Private (again, officially) 😂 

…and some more hot topics (including Trump’s election), plus a freebie waiting for you at the end 👱‍♂️

Let’s get right into it 🔥

1. FTC’s “Click To Cancel” Rule ❌

No more endless subscriptions — the FTC just introduced the “Click to Cancel” rule, making it super easy for a consumer to cancel a subscription.

This also makes it very hard for the companies that trap those same people in an endless cycle of “where did my money go again?”.

Sellers need to follow this exact legal framework:

1️⃣ Avoid misrepresenting important details when marketing products or services with a negative option feature

2️⃣ Clearly disclose key terms before collecting a consumer’s payment information

3️⃣ Obtain the consumer’s clear consent before charging for a negative option feature

4️⃣ Provide an easy way for consumers to cancel and stop charges immediately

Honestly, certain subscriptions have been impossible to cancel — and now companies are forced to be transparent, and I’m all for it 🔥

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Ecommerce & Unicorns! Subscribe now:

2. TikTok’s Smart+ Campaigns 🤖 

TikTok just added a new advertising option that’ll help advertisers automate campaign creation — Smart+ 🤔 

Advertisers input their assets, budget and targeting goals, then Smart+ auto-creates and selects the best creative assets using TikTok Symphony (Tiktok’s very own AI content creator). Finally, Smart+ chooses the right audience and time to show the ad.

This looks like near-complete automation of the advertising process, and it’s available in these formats:

TikTok said that advertisers using it’s Smart+ campaigns see an improvement of +52% in ROAS by lowering CPA, and even Ray-Ban’s performance marketing manager claimed -50% in CPA, a 47% increase in conversion rates, and a 42% improvement in ROAS.

TikTok doing my ads for me was NOT on my bingo card this year 😂

P.S — This goes hard with the newly released TikTok Search Ads 🔥

3. Consumer Product Content Benchmark Report 📟️ 

1WorldSync shared their 4th annual report with insights gathered from 1.75k shoppers from the U.S. & Canada, here are the stats that matter most:

1️⃣ eCom Growth — 41% of shoppers increased their use of online sites and marketplaces, with only 9% reducing online shopping

2️⃣ Shift Away from DTC — 21% are using D2C sites less, likely moving to more established marketplaces

3️⃣ Reviews & Mobile Research — 11% of shoppers use mobile devices to research products before they purchase (in-store, by the way), and 65% of shoppers read ratings & reviews often or always, with 49% leaving pages with too few reviews

4️⃣ Holiday Shopping — 42% plan to do more holiday shopping online, with 10% intending to shop online-only

5️⃣ Influencers Have A Big Say — 49% made a purchase from an influencer recommendation, and 26% shopped on TikTok Shop (mostly due to influencer suggestions and/or discounts)

DTC traffic dipping by 21% just means Amazon’s winning, again... 😬

4. New & Improved Google AI Shopping 🛍️ 

Not many use Google Shopping at all, so Google’s stepping up their game by adding.. even more AI to it?

As per Google, they’ve paired 45 billion product listings in the shopping graph with their Gemini AI model, here’s what that actually means (most of these points can be seen in the visual above):

1️⃣ AI Shopping Assistance — searches will provide an AI brief showing the most important things to know before buying, say, a jacket for Seattle’s winter, with recommendations showing you why some fit your needs

2️⃣ Shopping Feeds For You — just like TikTok’s “For You” page, Google’s copycat will help you discover new products based on your interests & search history

3️⃣ Tools for Deals — it’s easier to find absolute steals with price comparisons, insights & even price tracking, they’ve even gone as far as making a personalized deals page

We’ll just have to wait and see how ad-infested this whole thing will be 😂

5. Squarespace Acquired & More News 

Finally, Permira completed it’s $7.2B acquisition of Squarespace, bringing the company back to private ownership and removing it from the NYSE.

As a part of this transition, CEO & Founder of Squarespace, Anthony Casalena, kept a big portion of his stake in the company, making him one of the largest shareholders — he’ll also continue in his roles as CEO & Chairman of the Board.

Here are some more hot topics that came about last month:

1️⃣ Shopify’s New Customer Account Page is now branded

2️⃣ Temu has been selling products in Vietnam without a license since early October

3️⃣ Elon’s X is charging companies with API access

4️⃣ How Trump’s election can impact eCom

5️⃣ Walmart and Amazon announced their upcoming Black Friday deals

…and speaking of BFCM, check out our BFCM Checklist to see if you’re ready for it 🔥

Your Freebie 💝 

Check out the latest Operator’s Newsletter post, with Ridge CEO roasting the operations of almost every DTC brand & other partners (warning — he’s unhinged 😂)

🎧 ECORN Radio This Week:

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Thanks for reading and supporting E&U (Ecommerce & Unicorns)

Daniil from ECORN