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Welcome to all our new subscribers. It's been a record week for sign ups, so thank you to everyone who joined us. Lovely to have you here. I promise I'm not as unhinged in real life.

CHEERS, BUSHY

01

26 August is an important date if you're a Shopify non-Plus store. If you haven't upgraded to Checkout Extensibility, you could lose tracking on your thank you and order status pages. On that date, Shopify automatically switches every Basic, Shopify, and Advanced store over. Sadly, that means you only control the thank-you and order status pages, not the checkout page your fancy Plus friends get. The additional scripts field permanently stops firing. That's where Google Ads conversion tags, the Meta Pixel, GTM containers, affiliate scripts and all sorts of random knick-knacks live for non-Plus stores. Go into settings, checkout, and copy any additional scripts into a document before they disappear, then map them to a web pixel or the app's own pixel.

While we're doing deadline admin, YouTube is changing what a view means on 24 August, which will boost the egos of YouTube try-hards like myself. From that date, a view is counted from the very first frame, with no minimum watch time, across all formats. Previously, that only applied to Shorts. So don't get fooled by clickbaiters' shiny new view counts. Engaged Views is the number you want for comparison and the true test of whether YouTube content is any good.

02

The end-of-year reporting season is upon us, and three standout results share one common thread. Temple & Webster grew EBITDA 17% to $21.9m on revenue up 11%. The Iconic lifted EBITDA 53% to $13.6m. Baby Bunting grew total sales by 6.5% to $556m, with pro forma EBITDA up 33.4%.

All three grew revenue and profit, which is not an easy feat in this environment, and an even harder message to get out in a news cycle focused on retail negativity.

Each got there in a different way. Baby Bunting is investing heavily in its stores of the future. Temple & Webster focused on exclusive products and margin optimisation. The Iconic went via loyalty and B2B services such as fulfilment, retail media and marketing.

What caught my eye is that all three led with active customers, which is interesting given how many of us are chasing new customers right now. The Iconic was up 2% in active customers, Baby Bunting up 4.2% and Temple & Webster up 5%. Temple & Webster actually decreased new customers while growing active ones, which is probably a decent part of how they got to profit. These results weren't an accident and they deserve applause. They came from big changes and a focus on core customers, new or existing.

03

New research from Adobe shows the power of LLM referrals. All you LLM laggards, take a breath and get this… Shoppers arriving via AI generate 53% more revenue per visit than non-AI shoppers. They convert 60% higher. Engagement is up 14%. They spend 59% longer on site. They're 34% less likely to bounce. Add to cart rate is 28% higher. Need I go on? Are you not convinced?

AI traffic is not the same as organic traffic. It already has a recommendation behind it, real or not. Half the work has been done for you. The categories with strong referral growth in July were luggage, office supplies, and home and garden. Why are you describing my shopping behaviour?

Grocery had the lowest average citation readability, and apparel the highest. Which is a bit rich, because Amazon is skipping past LLM recommendation in grocery altogether and wants you to point Alexa into the fridge so it can fill the cart for you. This feels like AI theatre.

Meanwhile, Microsoft rolled out AI Max globally this week, opening up AI search term matching across Bing and Copilot. I'll say it again. There's a window right now for small-volume, cheaply acquired, high-converting LLM customers for anyone willing to spread their wings.

04

If you've convinced your executive team to go all in on Reddit to survive the AI era, skip this one.

This week, OpenAI pulled the plug on Reddit by changing how it looks for information. Query fan-out moved from trawling the open web to scoping specific sites, and Reddit went from a steady 3.8% of ChatGPT citations to 0.5% inside a week. An 86% drop. Reddit citations have declined on Google too, more slowly, but the decline is still there. On the bright side, your CEO might finally stop asking you to host an AMA.

Obviously, this is just OpenAI, but it means ChatGPT is now pointing its citations at particular sites rather than letting the open web do its thing. Another step away from standard search behaviour. Reddit doesn't care. They've made their posts even creepier by employing AI voices to turn old threads into videos as a trial. Nightmare stuff.

05

As an AFL fan, a Sydney Swans fan, and just a fan of people being good human beings, it's been a rough week. So here are two uplifting ones.

Aldi was the first UK supermarket to put free period products in all its staff and customer toilets last year, and it has now written to every major UK supermarket urging them to do the same. They've done it alongside Freedom4Girls, handing out a million products since March 2025, all aimed at wiping out period poverty.

Meanwhile, L.L.Bean, over a century old, has just launched its first standalone loyalty program outside the credit card. The beauty is that it's wired straight into their purpose. Customers sign up, accrue points, and get a vote on where $250,000 of charitable investment goes each year, to partners like the National Park Foundation, YMCA, Mental Health America and the Appalachian Mountain Club. One purchase, one vote.

I'm off to research korfball teams to follow.

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ATC PLAYBOOK #655

A charity partnership that runs on good vibes alone is always the first thing cut when budgets tighten. The partnerships that last have a commercial engine underneath.

There's a link in ecommerce that we often underplay and it's an awkward one: the connection between charitable giving and commercial benefit. Most brands partner with a charity because they genuinely want to do some good. But to get it off the ground and keep it alive when budgets tighten, they usually have to justify it on commercial grounds. That's the part that often feels a bit icky. But even if it’s not easily measurable, generosity usually carries a business upside, and it is important to be able to articulate it.

What we are chasing here is a win-win-win: a win for the retailer, a win for the charity, and a win for the community in need. Get all three right and it's super powerful. Miss one and these programs usually fall over.

Rohan McCloskey founded GoGenerosity, a pay-it-forward platform that turns small customer donations at the checkout into full-value gift cards for people in need. What always stuck with me is that from day one, front of mind wasn't to convince retailers to do good, it was how to amplify the return for the retailer while doing good. That message is often left behind.

Examples from this Playbook

🎁 Rohan from GoGenerosity gives purpose a commercial backbone. He's not asking the retailer to give anything away, he's showing them the return: donations turned into full-value gift cards, and mystery shoppers who said the giving added zero friction and actually made them want to buy. Purpose out front, a commercial engine underneath.

🖤 Laura and Sarah from Clothing The Gaps prove the backbone is real in the numbers. They lead with their values in everything, and don't even call their customers customers, they're a community of supporters. The payback is a returning customer rate of almost 47%. Lead with the why, but let it show up in loyalty and repeat purchase.

👖 James from Outland Denim leads with the product, not the cause. He doesn't want you buying because it's a charity, he wants you buying because you love the jeans, then feeling good about the impact as a bonus. The story rides along with the product through PR, rather than guilt-tripping anyone at the till.

🏠 Nick from HoMie nails the visibility half of the equation. His principle is being accountable to the customer, showing them plainly that you enabled this to happen. Pick a cause that aligns with your brand, then show the impact back to the people who made it, because alignment plus visibility is what turns a giving feature into a real relationship.