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What If You Shifted Just 15% of Your Ad Budget?

Prime Day is behind us, and Q4 is right around the corner. If you’re rethinking how to get more out of your Amazon ad budget, now’s the time to run the numbers.

Use our Affiliate Shift Calculator to model how reallocating a portion of your Amazon ad spend into affiliate marketing could improve ROAS without increasing your overall budget.

You’ll get a custom forecast built by a real affiliate expert (not a generic tool), tailored to brands doing $5M+ in revenue. Here’s how it works:

• Submit a few key data points from Seller Central

• Our team models your affiliate forecast

• You receive a custom scenario showing what affiliate could unlock

With another Prime Day expected in October, it’s the right moment to reassess your media mix. See what’s possible when you pay for actual outcomes.

See Your Affiliate ROAS Potential

☕ ESPRESSO SHOT

Morning, gap-hunters.

Your ad dollars are drifting. Audio is sneaking budgets from social, LinkedIn video is printing free reach, and shoppers are finding products through AI answers instead of blue links.

No BS, no webinars, just what to copy before your competitors do.

GAP OF THE WEEK: “Context Wins Audio”

The hole:
Brands still treat audio like leftover budget and run generic spots that sound like hold music.

The wedge:
Contextual audio buys tied to mood, activity, and moment. Think running playlists for fitness gear or “deep work” podcasts for B2B tools. Spotify’s own studies show audio ads drive 24% higher recall than display and are twice as likely to lift purchase intent. Podcasts are graduating into a premium tier and siphoning spend from influencer buckets. (ads.spotify.com, Digiday)

Why now:
• Podcast audiences keep widening. Even listeners 55 plus are up to 27% weekly consumption in 2025. (Edison Research)
• IAB sees digital ad growth this year, with retail media and video hot. Audio is riding the same measurement tailwinds and brand-lift tooling. (IAB)
• Mood and context targeting is built into the pipes. Brands can buy around listening states, not just demos. (ads.spotify.com)

Exit vision:
Build a 4-week audio sprint. One host-read test, one contextual Spotify flight, and brand-lift measurement to prove recall and intent. Treat it like social used to be: sharp creative, frequency discipline, and a landing page that matches what they were doing when they heard you. (Veritonic)

SPOTLIGHT: Gumball’s AI “Adaptive Ads”

Gumball rolled out Adaptive Ads that auto-fit host reads to each episode context across partner networks like Audioboom and QCODE. Translation: fewer copy-paste reads and more relevance without wrangling 20 creators by hand. If you avoided podcasts because versioning was a hassle, this takes the excuse away. (Podcaster News)

Why it matters:
Context and creative fit are the difference between wallpaper and response. Pair this with a brand-lift or pixel study and keep the winners. (Veritonic)

⚡ TWO-MINUTE GAPS

LinkedIn Video Is Free Real Estate
Native video posts show outsized engagement versus static. Benchmarks put video at about 5.6% average engagement in 2025, up from 4%. Post short clips with a cold open and a single takeaway. (Socialinsider)

Prime Day’s Spillover Is Your Cue
U.S. online spend across retailers during the 4-day Prime event hit roughly 24.1 billion. If you are not running your own tentpole during industry spikes, you are spotting points. (Adobe Business)

GEO Is Now a Channel
Traffic from generative AI answers to retailer sites is up 1,200% since last summer. Optimize product pages for LLM answers, not just Google snippets. (Adobe Blog, Retail Brew)

WEEK IN 3 TWEETS

1) Hey! That’s a Homer Simpson’s line

2) You’re called crazy until you’re a genius

3) No, it’s not

🤯 STAT OF THE DAY

27% of Americans 55 plus listened to or watched a podcast in the past week in 2025. The medium is not just for Gen Z anymore. (Edison Research)

🧨 VIRAL STORY OF THE DAY

Coupon Extensions Are Eating Creator Commissions

Creators are calling out coupon browser extensions like Honey for hijacking last-click attribution at checkout and skimming affiliate revenue. The Washington Post reports legal fights, platform policy tweaks, and a broader push to rethink attribution so the actual driver of the sale gets paid. If affiliates drive your sales, audit your checkout flows and coupon behavior now. (The Washington Post)

⏭ CLOSING LOOP

Publishing Monday through Friday.
Forward this to the team still measuring audio like a banner ad and wondering why nothing moves.