You’re Preparing Too Late

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Together with Insense

You don't have a creator problem. You have a workflow problem.

A creator goes quiet. A package gets lost. Someone forgot the contract. You're two weeks behind on the content your paid team is waiting on. The fix isn't hiring another person. It's not doing it manually anymore.

Insense is the self-serve platform built to replace that chaos. 

One place to receive creator matches from 80,000+ vetted profiles, run briefs, ship product, automate contracts and payments, and own full lifetime content rights. The results speak for themselves:

• Nurture Life cut turnaround time from 2 months to 2 weeks using just one marketer and Insense
• Solawave received 180+ ad-ready assets in a single month by simply shipping products
• Matys Health achieved 12× reach through Spark Ads on TikTok

Over 3,500+ brands, like Quince, Monster Energy, and Paysend, get first applications in 48 hours and save 40+ hours a month. That's what fixing the workflow looks like. 

Book a free strategy call by May 15 and get a $200 platform credit towards your first campaign.

👀The Receiving Dock Is Your Real Competitor This Summer

Amazon brands above £250k turnover are about to discover that H2 isn't won in July. It's lost in May. Prime Day sits nine weeks out, but the decisions that determine whether you scale or stall are being made right now, in the eight-week prep corridor most operators sleepwalk through. 

Your competitors aren't outspending you in peak. They're outpreparing you in the off-season.

The three moves below aren't tactics. They're structural shifts that compound across every dollar you'll spend between now and Black Friday.

Strategy 1: Treat Your Ad Account Like a Fossil Dig, Not a Dashboard

Wasted spend doesn't announce itself. It calcifies. Campaigns you built around hero SKUs from six months ago are still bidding against keywords for products you've quietly demoted, deprecated, or stopped restocking. 

Open every campaign and ask one question: would I build this from scratch today? If the answer is no, archive it. Refresh negatives against the last 90 days of search term data, not the lifetime view. 

Re-bid against current contribution margin, not last quarter's targets. When category CPCs lift 30 to 50% during Prime Day, inefficiency stops being a rounding error and becomes the difference between profitable scale and a panic pause.

Strategy 2: Read the Six-Month CTR Drift Before Peak Reads It For You

Most brands look at CTR and CVR as snapshots. The signal is in the drift. Pull each ASIN's performance against its own baseline from six months ago. Anything that's slipped two points or more is leaking, and Prime Day traffic turns slow leaks into hemorrhages. 

Main image is your highest-leverage CTR fix because it fights for the click before the listing ever loads. For CVR drops, the cause is rarely the listing itself. It's a competitor who quietly repriced, added a bundle, or refreshed their A+ while you weren't looking. Diagnose during normal traffic. You can't read signal through the noise of peak.

Strategy 3: Book Inbound Against the Worst-Case Calendar

Amazon's receiving timelines stretch the moment Prime Day is announced. Stockouts during peak don't just cost the sale. They reset organic rank and hand the slot to the brand directly below you, who keeps it through Q4. 

Forecast July and August demand now, then inbound against the slowest-case receiving window, not the average. Your real competitor in June isn't another seller. It's the FBA check-in queue.

The brands compounding in 2026 aren't reacting faster. They're deciding earlier.

📱 Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn All Dropped Ad Updates This Week

Three platforms made meaningful ad moves this week, one putting AI in your DMs, one taking ads to your TV, and one opening LinkedIn's event tools to the whole internet.

The Breakdown:

Snapchat Put AI Chatbots in DMs - Snapchat launched sponsored AI chatbots appearing directly in user inboxes alongside personal messages. Users can talk to branded bots and ask follow-up questions about products.

The Numbers Behind the Bet - Snapchatters sent over 950 billion chats in Q1 2026. Sponsored Snaps already drive 22% more conversions than other formats.

Pinterest Takes Ads to the TV - Pinterest launched CTV placement via tvScientific using its high-intent audience signals, delivering 27% more outcomes per $100 spent and 65% more purchases than standard CTV campaigns.

LinkedIn Opens Event Ads to Everyone - LinkedIn's Event Ad format now supports webinars and hybrid experiences hosted outside LinkedIn, complete with lead gen objectives and direct links to brand registration pages.

Meta tried branded DM chatbots in 2016 and pulled them after user backlash. With Snapchat's growth stalling and staff cuts recently announced, this feels as much like a revenue play as a product one. LG saw a 73% jump in unique households reached via Pinterest and CTV, US CTV spend is heading past $45 billion by 2028.

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👨‍💻 Quick Hits

🎬 Vine is making a comeback through a new app called Divine, blending nostalgia with a strict anti-AI stance by prioritizing human-created content and verified video authenticity.

📺 YouTube upgrades Multiview, letting users fully customize multi-screen viewing by selecting any live streams, combining subscriptions, and controlling layouts, transforming how audiences consume multiple events simultaneously across devices.

🤖 Google Search revenue jumps 19% as AI features like AI Overviews and AI Mode boost usage, increase queries, reduce costs, and reshape how users interact with search results and content.

☁️ Amazon is integrating OpenAI models, Codex, and agent capabilities into Bedrock, enabling enterprises to build, deploy, and manage AI solutions within AWS using unified tools, security, and scalable infrastructure.

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