The Beginning of the End for Ad Agencies?
TikTok launching GMV Max next week
Hello friends!
I’m back from a beautiful week in Croatia 🇭🇷, can’t recommend it enough. Hope you’re all soaking up the last few days before Labor Day, ideally from a sun chair with a cold drink in hand.
A lot’s been happening in social commerce while I was gone, so let’s skip the pleasantries and dive straight in.
🚨 This Week’s Headlines
(August 26th)
📉 TikTok Shop launches GMV Max on Monday
Starting September 1, TikTok is making it mandatory for Shop advertisers to run campaigns through GMV Max, its AI-powered system that automates targeting, spend, and optimization. TikTok says the tool is designed to maximize sales and even offers “ROI Protection,” issuing ad credits if the campaign falls below 90% of the performance target set.
Digging deeper on this further down.
📎 Read more via Business Insider
🛒 M&S partners with eBay on resale
UKs Marks & Spencer just launched its resale program directly on eBay, giving shoppers access to secondhand clothing from one of the UK’s most established retailers. The move underscores how mainstream resale has become, blending legacy retail with platforms that already dominate recommerce. With eBay’s built-in trust and reach, M&S gets scale without reinventing infrastructure.
📎 Read more via ChannelX
📌 Pinterest launches Thrift Shop
Pinterest has unveiled a new Thrift Shop feature, letting users buy secondhand items directly on the platform. Known for inspiration boards and aspirational shopping, this launch signals Pinterest’s push into real-world conversions, especially around circular fashion. For a platform that thrives on intent-driven discovery, secondhand is a natural fit.
📎 Read more via Retail Tech Innovation Hub
📏 Marketers want harder metrics
Digiday reports that marketers are increasingly under pressure to prove creator spend is working, with leadership demanding harder metrics than impressions or EMV. That means conversions, sales attribution, and multi-touch measurement are rising to the top. The fluffy days of “awareness” might not be enough anymore.
📎 Read more via Digiday
🎤 Seller Spotlight
Rita Ora and Anna Lahey doing a joint TikTok Shop
On Friday, British singer and entrepreneur Rita Ora co-hosted a TikTok Shop live shopping event to mark the exclusive launch of Typebea, the hair-growth brand she co-founded with Anna Lahey.
The livestream, broadcast from Ora’s TikTok account, featured both founders on screen for the first time. Shoppers were able to purchase limited-edition bundles, claim exclusive discounts, and take part in prize giveaways — all while engaging directly with Ora and Lahey in real time.
According to TikTok Shop UK’s Nora Zukauskaite, the event highlighted how founder-led livestreams can blend celebrity reach with hands-on product storytelling. For Typebea, the launch doubled as both a commerce debut and a chance to connect closely with customers from day one.
🧠 Brand Move of the Week
Aligne (UK) Affiliate-first market making
Within the first eight months alone, the British womenswear label notched $1 million in sales in the US through an affiliate partner.
A growing number of brands are using affiliate-driven strategies not just to sell, but to create entire markets. Take Aligne: the UK fashion label entered the US by leaning heavily on affiliate partners, essentially outsourcing early customer acquisition to creators who were incentivized by performance.
Within its first eight months in the US, Aligne reached $1 million in sales through ShopMy’s affiliate network — purely from creator-led traffic driving DTC conversions
On August 1, marking the end of its first fiscal year as a DTC brand, the US accounted for 70% of Aligne’s total revenue — exceeding its initial 35% goal and surpassing UK sales
Instead of burning budget on awareness ads, brands can tap into creator networks where commission keeps costs aligned with outcomes. For Aligne, that approach gave them traction in a crowded US market without a traditional above-the-line blitz. Expect more challenger brands to see affiliate not as a supplement but as the launch strategy itself.
📎 Read more via Retail Brew
🔭 Trend Watch
Who needs agencies when the platforms own the data?
If you want to advertise on TikTok Shop, starting Monday, all advertisers will be forced into GMV Max, an AI-powered tool that takes over targeting, spend, and optimization.
On paper, the pitch is simple: you pick the product, set the budget, and the algorithm does the rest — even promising “ROI Protection” with ad credits if results fall short.
“TikTok’s GMV Max is asking for us to put a lot of faith in the platform.”
Not surprisingly, big brands aren’t thrilled and agencies say the tool is a black box, stripping them of audience insights and making it harder to measure beyond TikTok’s own ecosystem. Some brands even asked for deadline extensions, while smaller sellers have been quicker to adopt, calling it a time saver and sales booster.
Feels like the latest chapter in the “trust us, we’ve got the data” playbook.
But here’s the real shift: agencies have always acted as the interpreters between brands and platforms but with moves like GMV Max, platforms are saying, we don’t need interpreters anymore. We own the pipes, we own the checkout, and now we (AI) own the strategy too.
So what’s the takeaway?
The problem is leverage. Brands lose it. Agencies lose it. And platforms tighten their grip with fewer insights back in return.
This puts brands at a crossroads: embrace platforms as full-stack partners (media, data, commerce) or hedge by building their own ecosystems through affiliates, communities, and loyalty programs.
Either way, it feels like it could be a pivotal moment for digital ad agencies.
What do you guys think — will brands really hand over the keys to the algorithm?
See you next week. In the meantime, Sell! Sell! Sell! 🫡