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The Write-up

Who are we?

Plus Special Guest

Luke Jonas

Co-Founder & CGO

Luke is a founding member of Nest with a strong commercial background. He lead partnerships at I Want One of Those, and launched Flurry’s mobile ads and analytics platform in Europe.

A leading industry commentator on ecommerce and digital marketing, he’s been featured in Adweek, Business Insider, WARC, and the Drum.

Group Performance Director

Lara has a career spanning digital marketing agencies and vendors, including Global-E. She has been responsible for some of Nest most prominent recent growth stories – Adanola, Damson Madder and LeMieux.

Group Performance Director

Rodrigo joined Nest from Mediacom, where he led teams working on the Adidas and Reebok accounts. He was also one of the very first advertisers to launch dynamic ads on Snapchat in Europe.

Enterprise Sales Director, Global-e

Tienerney is an experienced Sales Director and has worked in eCommerce, Payment Services and Merchant Acquiring. She has a proven track record of helping brands successfully break into new regions and scale internationally.

Lara Gibbs

Rodrigo Aspillaga

Tierney Hingston

Is international f***ed forever?

The Trump-era tariffs are proving more disruptive than anticipated for brands targeting the US. For UK-based ecommerce brands, international expansion has always been essential, but the dynamics are shifting. With increasing friction in the US, there’s no better time for both UK and US brands to double down in Europe. European markets now offer a more attractive alternative:

• Meta CPMs are cheaper

• The region has an affluent population of 448 million

• Trade barriers are significantly reduced

Luke Jonas Co-Founder & CGO

While the US remains important, its efficiency is being impacted by the new trade landscape.

The degree to which brands are affected will depend on their exposure to the US and the country of origin of their products (e.g. goods manufactured in China may be hit hardest). As consumer demand softens and advertisers pull back, US CPMs could fall, presenting opportunities for brands with strong margins and a resilient supply chain.

Key message: Stay nimble.

The outlook for the US market remains uncertain, and adaptability will be vital.

Finding efficiencies through international

Expanding internationally is not a box-ticking exercise but about identifying genuine efficiencies beyond your home market, where key metrics like CAC may have plateaued. For many brands, international markets can deliver better performance, even when factoring in the cost of localisation, fulfilment, and logistics.

To illustrate this - a few years ago, Europe was the obvious next step for UK brands due to minimal trade friction. Post-Brexit, the US

became more attractive. But now, with tariffs resurfacing, attention is shifting back towards Europe and other high-potential regions.

Despite the added complexity of cross-border trade, Europe remains the third largest consumer market in the world. The region offers both scale and relative ease of access, especially when compared to the emerging challenges in the US.

Source: databank.worldbank.org

Key takeaway: Go where the efficiencies are. The most successful brands continually reassess where they can unlock better economics, even after accounting for the operational overhead of trading internationally.

So how big of a deal are the US tariffs, and what can brands do?

Unsurprisingly - it’s a pretty big deal.

Tierney Hingston Enterprise Sales Director, Global-e

For those manufacturing in China or Hong Kong, the impact will be especially severe, and relocating production isn’t quick or easy, so the real question is: how can brands limit the damage?

Start by asking:

• Can we adjust pricing quickly?

• Should we pass some of the cost onto consumers, or absorb it?

• Can we tap into underused, long-tail markets to offset the impact?

Uncertainty is high, which makes long-term planning difficult. It’s now critical to act based on clear, up-to-date data. Brands should consider a mix of short- and medium-term strategies to adapt.

One practical solution is exploring a B2B2C model.

In this setup, brands bulk clear goods into the US at wholesale pricing, then sell to end customers at retail. It creates a compliant paper trail, is relatively easy to implement, and can significantly reduce tariff-related costs.

While some price increases may be necessary, higher margins in the US may help absorb these shocksespecially if you’re no longer using UK VAT as a margin lever.

Brands should also look beyond the US. Some longtail markets offer better trade agreements, growing consumer bases, and even large expat populations. Insights into these markets, coupled with real-time data, will be essential for staying agile.

Warehousing and local distribution in the US are options, but they come with heavy upfront investment and inventory complexity. A more flexible, insight-driven approach could be a smarter move in the short term.

Key takeaway:

Stay informed, move quickly, and consider alternative models and markets to soften the blow of tariffs and preserve profitability.

What’s Nest data showing?

The US is more expensive than the UK, but the gap is narrowing

Historically, CPMs on platforms like Meta have been significantly higher in the US than in the UK. In Q1 of last year, they were nearly double. While that made the US a more expensive market to advertise in, strong conversion rates and higher disposable income often helped to offset the cost.

However in Q1 of this year, the CPM gap has narrowed. US CPMs are now just 1.6x higher than the UK. This shift is likely due to brands pulling back on US ad spend amid tariff uncertainty.

Source: Nest data

This creates an opportunity for brands that are well set up. Those with strategies to reduce tariff exposure - such as local warehousing, or more innovative B2B2C models - may find new openings as others pull back.

That said, the drop in CPMs isn’t entirely positive. It’s been accompanied by a decline in conversion rates and click-through rates. The market is simply performing less effectively than it was a few quarters ago.

Key takeaway: While the US remains a high-potential market, the current slowdown highlights the increasing opportunity across the UK and Europe, where media costs are lower and performance more stable.

The growth apocalypse: what we’re seeing

The growth apocalypse: what we’re seeing

What we’re hearing consistently from both prospective and current clients are four recurring growth blockers - we call them “the four horsemen of the growth apocalypse”.

These represent the most common challenges brands face today and the problems we’re focused on solving:

• Dropping health metrics

• Wrong KPIs

• Lack of creative

• Lack of strategic testing

1. Dropping health metrics

2. Wrong KPIs

3. Lack of creative

4. Lack of strategic testing

1&2. Dropping health metrics & the wrong KPIs

These are very much linked. The most common issue we’re seeing, especially in pitching, is falling customer acquisition and rising CAC. Growth targets remain, but the numbers are heading in the wrong direction.

Often, this stems from looking at the wrong metrics. Many brands are still using click-based measurement and over-optimising for short-term ROAS. This limits reach to warmer audiences, stifles scale, and inflates spend on tactics like brand search and social retargeting, which may look good today but hurt acquisition efficiency in the long run.

1&2. Dropping health metrics & the wrong KPIs

One quick fix is excluding existing customers from prospecting. But if this is in place and performance is judged solely on ROAS, prospecting still gets deprioritised, because the return isn’t immediate or as obvious. A huge part of this issue is organisational. Marketing teams know they need to shift strategy, but are often blocked by stakeholders focused on short-term numbers. Driving real change requires aligning leadership around more incremental KPIs like new customer acquisition and balancing that with your profitability.

3. Lack of creative

This comes down to structure again.

The volume of creative needed, especially for paid social, has skyrocketed, yet most brands haven’t structurally adapted. Paid social can drive over 60% of business, yet receives a fraction of creative resources.

Creative isn’t just about volume either, it’s a diversity game. Paid social reaches a broad audience, and one message won’t resonate with everyone. Diversifying creative across formats, hooks, and messaging styles is essential to unlock full-funnel performance.

“I often hear brands say they can’t do top-of-funnel because they “don’t have the creative”. But the reality is, they likely do - it’s just sitting unused. With minimal effort, static assets can be turned into carousels, overlaid with USPs and CTAs to create compelling ads. We’ve tested this. It works, and it’s cost-effective.”

Lara Gibbs

Group Performance Director

4. Lack of strategic testing

With automation on the rise like Meta’s ASC, many brands approach testing with a bit of a scattergun approach: throw in as much creative as possible and see what performs. While this has some benefit, what’s missing is a strategic approach to testing.

However, strategic testing doesn’t mean constantly running A/B tests. It’s about prioritising two or three key hypotheses per quarter that could shift your strategy. It might be testing UGC vs brandled content, or lifestyle vs product-first messaging.

You’d be surprised how often the results challenge what a brand thinks it knows about its customers.

Often brands aren’t asking the big questions that could meaningfully change their creative direction. Take a client expanding from the US to the UK for example. If they suspect their American-style content wasn’t resonating across the pond, instead of guessing, they need to run a proper A/B test comparing US-centric and UK-localised content to be clear on whether the investment in a shifted creative direction resulted in better performance.

Testing also builds internal influence. If a performance team can show that lo-fi content outperforms brand-heavy creative and saves money, it gives them leverage with the brand team, and the backing of the CFO.

New developments in full-funnel

What’s the optimal percentage of media spend to invest in top of funnel for rapid growth? None at all? 5% to 20%? 50%?

What we’ve seen recently is that the ceiling is actually much higher than a lot of brands might think.

Over the past year, bold brands have gone beyond the 20% threshold, and they’re seeing strong results. Crucially, they’re measuring the impact with more rigour, using measurement solutions like Fospha, alongside MMM to understand the long-term effects of brand-building activity on the bottom line.

Lara Gibbs Group Performance Director

What the Data Tells Us

We’ve been testing increased top-of-funnel investment across multiple client accounts and the outcomes are clear.

US brand scaling from 20% to 50% top-of-funnel: One client scaled their US top-of-funnel spend from 20% to 50% during a key brand moment, adding YouTube and mid-funnel Meta campaigns .

• Over 100% increase in reach

• Significant growth in brand search volume

• Doubling of share of voice in target US states

• Strong uplift in new customer acquisition

Client 1

ToF: 20% → 50%

Result:

Increased US incremental reach and new customer acqusition

What the Data Tells Us

UK brand testing US awareness in California with 20% top-of-funnel:

A UK client entering the US had never run top-of-funnel activity.

We launched a 20% budget test campaign in California, allowing us to isolate and clearly measure the impact:

• +57% increase in revenue PoP

• +388% increase in reach

• A significant spike in brand searches

Client 2

Launched ToF in California with 20% budget

Result:

+ 57% revenue PoP, +388% in Reach

Key takeaway:

While there’s no one-size-fits-all number, brands aiming for rapid and sustainable growth should be thinking beyond 20% for top-of-funnel investment, provided it’s measured properly and supported by a diverse channel and creative strategy.

Creative fatigue

Creative fatigue is often the problem brands don’t realise they have, until performance starts to suffer.

Why it matters

When CMOs share their top challenges, they usually mention rising CACs, international expansion, or creative production capacity. Rarely do they cite creative fatigue directly. But its effects - dropping engagement, falling conversion rates, declining media efficiency - creep in over time and can quietly erode growth.

What Nest does

“For us it’s crucial. It’s a way to stay ahead of the competition in a market that is already so competitive and so uncertain. We combine our collective knowledge around ecommerce and media buying with our proprietary AI tool, Hummingbird, to monitor and act on fatigue before it becomes a problem”.

Brands that actively manage creative fatigue are gaining an edge. They understand the right cadence for refreshing content gives them marginal gains that compound over time.

Most brands aren’t prioritising this, which makes it an opportunity.

Rodrigo Aspillaga Group Performance Director

RTake an account where the average CPA is around $300 for example. One ad, left running too long without refresh, could increase CPA to $1,500 - 5x the average and well beyond the brand’s target threshold. That kind of inefficiency is entirely preventable. With the right monitoring in place, brands can ensure that their creative volume and variation matches their spend, avoiding fatigue and protecting the performance of every dollar of media budget. YOUR AD

Demystifying the impact of ads on omnichannel performance

In the early days of performance marketing, attribution was simple: you measured clicks to your website and tied them directly to sales.

But things have changed. Today, advertising is increasingly visual, mobile, and impression-led, particularly on social platforms like Meta. And for the consumer, the line between online and offline has blurred completely. If someone sees your ad on Instagram but walks into your store to make a purchase, it’s still a conversion, just one that many businesses are failing to count.

Despite this, most retailers still operate with separate P&Ls for ecommerce and stores. Advertising spend is attributed solely to online, even when it clearly drives in-store sales. When you start viewing these channels holistically, the true value of online advertising becomes much more apparent.

The business case is growing

A major UK omnichannel retailer recently reassessed this relationship. After better understanding how digital ads influenced offline sales, they tripled their online ad spend because the impact was far greater than they’d initially seen.

Meta is also evolving fast, rolling out tools to help brands bridge the gap between online engagement and offline results. Whether it’s promoting local inventory and store-specific offers in ads, to using APIs that connect offline transactions with digital exposure, the ability to both measure and optimise for omnichannel conversions is becoming a reality.

The biggest change now is the ability for these brands to then not just measure the impact of an online ad in an offline conversion, but also optimise towards conversions in general. It’s no longer just about online purchases, but any meaningful signal, whether it comes from a physical store or an ecommerce platform, can now be tracked and acted on.

Where to Start

For brands looking to make the shift, it starts with a test. A geo-lift experiment is a powerful way to prove the value of omnichannel attribution. Run ads in a specific geographic area, compare in-store performance between exposed and control groups, and measure the uplift. From there, brands can scale the approach, tap into new optimisation tools from platforms like Meta, and assess uplift versus traditional online-only strategies. With the right data, it becomes much easier to make the case to CMOs, CFOs, and boards that omnichannel optimisation isn’t just more accurate, it’s more profitable too.

Luke Jonas Co-Founder & CGO

Meta Andromeda

Meta’s latest evolution, Andromeda, has become a major talking point in recent weeks.

While in development since late last year, it’s now clear this marks a significant step in Meta’s push toward automation and performance optimisation.

Andromeda leans into three core principles that Nest has been doing for brands for a while: simplification, creative diversity, and volume.

To stay competitive, more than ever brands must consistently feed Meta’s algorithm high-quality, varied creative at scale. Without this, performance could be almost penalised.

Another key shift is Meta’s focus on incremental conversions, prioritising ad delivery that drives genuine new customer growth, not just repeat purchases.

Source: Meta

Key takeaway: To succeed with Andromeda, brands must fully commit to feeding Meta’s system with strong, diverse content, or risk falling behind.

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