Richard Gaffin
Hosts the Ecommerce Playbook podcast at Common Thread Collective and interviews CTC’s specialists (e.g. Tony Chopp on Meta bidding). Mostly frames questions and summarises; the substantive media-buying claims in his episodes usually come from the guest.
Bias to keep in mind: in-house host promoting CTC’s methodology, services and events.
Sources: sources/youtube/common-thread-collective/.
Notes citing Richard Gaffin
- BFCM prep — housekeeping, offer, homepage and email plan (CTC checklist)CTC's Black Friday/Cyber Monday checklist for seven-figure brands, least to most impact — billing limits and 90%+ match rate, a simple 20%+ site-wide offer, AOV bundles when BFCM cohorts have poor LTV, a whale bundle (a $1,000 bundle for a $50-product brand), the homepage as the landing page, and the email/SMS cadence through the free-shipping cutoff.
- Evergreen discount collection pages for scaling ecommerce adsThe ad landing page Smart Marketer moves to once a single product page ("butter chicken") stops scaling — no top navigation (+22% in one test), standing ~10% discount, UGC, hero products with add-to-cart, a bundle for AOV, reviews, VIP offer at the bottom.
- Giveaway campaigns to build a list before a big saleInstead of a "join the VIP list" campaign before Black Friday or a holiday sale, run a 2-week high-value giveaway on a conversion objective with an offer on the thank-you page, judged on ROAS, then draw the winner live just before the sale opens.
- How many Black Friday ads to make — CTC's BFCM creative volume researchCTC's research across its Meta accounts — BFCM-specific ads take only ~30% of holiday spend (evergreen ~70%), October ads out-spend Black Friday ads by 50% over Q4 so don't sacrifice them, diminishing returns don't arrive until ~1,500 BF ads (one brand went $5K→$55K/day), make at least 2x last year's count, and the production order frames → catalogs → statics → video remixes → new creator content.
- How many promotional emails to send — campaign cadence tied to the marketing calendarCTC's case that email is a promotional channel, not just retention — Spiral Bible (no LTV) went from 18 to 27 campaigns a month with every send tied to a calendar moment, 2.8x campaign revenue and 28% of revenue from email — plus the BFCM cadence (3/week → daily → 3/day → extension → shipping cutoff) and how story emails fit in.
- Knowing if your ecommerce brand is winning — CTC's three pillars (source of truth, shared target, execution)Luke Austin's operating framework for ecommerce growth — one trusted source of truth joining financial, marketing, order and calendar data; one shared definition of success (contribution margin at the top, daily targets laddering down to every channel); and relentless execution through calendar, ad, email and creative workflows plus MMM/geo-holdout testing — built in that order.
- Meta bid strategy — minimum ROAS vs cost per result goal vs lowest costCTC's analysis of ~$1.5B Meta spend across ~320 accounts (Mar–Jun 2026) found minimum ROAS lands within a few percent of its target at portfolio level while the cost-per-result goal hit target less than half the time (on Google tROAS 1.3× target, tCPA 0.8×); why value bidding gives the algorithm more room, how CTC sets the target from margin and incrementality, budget liquidity, and the low-volume counter-advice to avoid manual bids.
- Meta's incremental attribution model — should you switch from standard?What Meta's ad-set-level "incremental" attribution model does (predicts which conversions the ad caused, and optimises for them) versus standard 7-day click / 1-day view / 1-day engaged-view, why results look worse after switching, and who should use it — Jon Loomer says most advertisers, Ben Heath says only larger advertisers with a customer base.