Latest / The DTC Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Direct-to-Consumer Brands, Shopify, and E-Commerce Growth / How DTC Brands Fight Ad Fatigue With Vertical Video
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've scrolled Instagram or TikTok in the past six months, you've probably seen the same DTC ad three different ways from three different brands. And chances are, you've started swiping past them without even registering what they were selling. Luna: That's ad fatigue in the feed—and it's hitting DTC brands harder than ever in 2026. Lucas: Yeah. The algorithm rewards fresh creative, but scaling a brand means you're constantly fighting diminishing returns. So the question is: how do you keep people watching instead of scrolling? Luna: And the answer seems to be vertical video—not just reformatting your existing thirty-second spot, but making creative that's native to the platform. Lucas: Exactly. We're talking about video shot in a nine-by-sixteen aspect ratio, designed to be watched with sound off, and optimized for that first three seconds. A lot of brands still treat vertical as a crop job, but the ones winning—like Death Wish Coffee or The Sill—are building campaigns entirely around the vertical frame. Luna: Death Wish Coffee, the brand that positions itself as 'the world's strongest coffee'—they've been doing really well on TikTok with short, high-energy clips. What's their secret? Lucas: They leaned into what makes the platform work: authenticity over polish. Their ads look like they were shot on an iPhone in a kitchen, not in a studio. And they front-load the hook—within one second you see someone taking a sip and reacting. That's the key: the hook has to be visual, not verbal, because half your audience has the sound off. Luna: So it's not just about being vertical, it's about rethinking the entire creative strategy for that format. Lucas: Right. And the data backs it up. I've seen internal benchmarks from a few performance marketing agencies: vertical video on TikTok and Reels generates about 23 percent higher conversion rate compared to a horizontal version of the same ad. Not because the creative is better, but because the format doesn't break the user's experience. Luna: That makes sense—when you're holding your phone vertically, a horizontal ad is an interruption. You have to turn the phone, or it sits there with black bars. Lucas: Exactly. The platform wants to keep people in the feed, so it prioritizes content that feels native. And that's where a lot of DTC brands trip up. They spend big on a gorgeous horizontal spot, then just slap it onto Reels with letterboxing. The algorithm reads that as low engagement and throttles the reach. Luna: So what's the actual framework for a vertical video ad that works? Lucas: There's a structure I've been seeing more of this year. It breaks down into three parts: hook, value, ask. The hook is visual and under three seconds—something surprising or relatable. The value is the product benefit shown, not told. And the ask is a clear, low-friction call to action, usually just 'shop now' or 'link in bio.' No hard sell. Luna: And you see this working across different verticals? Not just coffee or plants? Lucas: Yeah, even in categories you'd think are harder to sell on social, like mattresses or furniture. I talked to a DTC mattress startup recently—they were spending heavily on Facebook feed ads with product shots, and their CPA was creeping up past eighty dollars. They switched to a vertical video strategy on Instagram Reels: real people unboxing the mattress in their apartment, talking about back pain, very raw. Within a month, their CPA dropped to around sixty-five dollars. Luna: That's an eighteen percent reduction just from changing the format and creative approach. Lucas: Exactly. And the view-through rate on those ads was higher too. Which brings up an important metric shift: in vertical social, completion rate matters less than view-through rate at two seconds and six seconds. Platforms now optimize for 'stops the scroll,' not 'watches the whole thing.' Luna: That's a different way of thinking for a lot of brand marketers who grew up on thirty-second TV spots. Lucas: Totally. And honestly, that's the hardest part of the transition—unlearning the old metrics. But the brands that embrace vertical-first production are seeing real advantages, especially as ad costs keep rising. When your creative resonates better, your frequency cap goes down, you reach more unique users, and you delay the onset of ad fatigue. Luna: I want to push back a little, though. There's a risk that in chasing that authentic, low-production look, brands lose their identity or come across as amateurish. How do you balance authenticity with brand safety? Lucas: It's a fair concern. The trick is to define your brand's visual language within the vertical format. For example, Glossier uses very soft, pastel-toned vertical videos—still shot on iPhones, but with consistent color grading. The viewer knows it's Glossier without a logo. So it's not about throwing out your brand guidelines; it's about adapting them to the frame. Luna: So consistency in aesthetics, even if the production value is 'lo-fi.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's what separates a brand that looks like it's doing user-generated content because it has to, versus one that's doing it as a strategic choice. The audience can tell the difference. Luna: You know, it's interesting—this whole conversation reminds me of something our listeners have brought up. A lot of them say these episodes have given them practical ideas they've actually implemented, like testing a new ad format or rethinking their creative pipeline. And honestly, that feedback is what keeps us doing this. Lucas: Absolutely. We hear from founders and marketers all the time who say something we discussed here shifted how they approach a campaign. And that's exactly why we keep the show ad-free—so the content is purely about what works, not about selling you anything. Luna: And a couple of dollars a month from listeners who find value in it genuinely helps keep the lights on. If you've ever taken a tip from this podcast and it saved you time or money, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference. And now back to vertical video—because I want to talk about one more tactic that's flying under the radar. Luna: What's that? Lucas: It's the idea of creating a 'creative version matrix' specifically for vertical platforms. Instead of making one ad and running it across Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts—which all have slightly different best practices—you create a batch of vertical variants that test different hooks, different pacing, different audio tracks. Luna: So you're treating each platform as its own channel, not just a distribution outlet. Lucas: Right. For TikTok, the hook might need to be more overtly entertaining or trend-based. For Reels, you can sometimes get away with a slower, more educational opener because the audience leans slightly older. For Shorts, the algorithm favors longer watch time, so a hook that leads to a two-minute explainer can perform well. Luna: That kind of platform-specific creative strategy requires more upfront production, but the payoff seems worth it. Lucas: It does. I've seen brands run the same product shot with three different hooks—one question, one surprising stat, one testimonial—and get radically different CPA across platforms. The ones that optimize per-platform see a 30 to 40 percent better blended ROAS. Luna: And you can do that without a huge production budget if you're using ugc style content. Lucas: Exactly. A lot of the brands doing this well are shooting in batches—one afternoon, multiple angles, multiple hooks, and then they edit for each platform. It's not about a single perfect ad; it's about a system for generating and testing creative at speed. Luna: So for a small DTC brand just starting out, what's the one thing they should do tomorrow to fight ad fatigue? Lucas: Take your best-performing horizontal ad, identify the single most compelling visual moment—maybe a product shot or a reaction—and rebuild that moment as a vertical video. No letterboxing. No crop that cuts off heads. Shoot it fresh if you have to. Then run it as a dedicated campaign on just one platform for a week and compare the metrics. Luna: Start with one platform, prove the concept, then scale. Lucas: Yeah. And don't be afraid of the raw look. The algorithm rewards content that blends in, not content that screams 'ad.' If you can make a viewer forget they're watching an ad for the first three seconds, you've already won half the battle. Luna: Vertical video, native creative, platform-specific testing—it's a shift from the broadcast mindset to the feed mindset. Lucas: And that's the fundamental change for DTC in 2026. The feed is the new prime time. If your ad doesn't earn its place there, the algorithm will make sure no one sees it.